Christmas Cards from Chris and Kari

A couple of posts ago, Chris of The Collector mentioned that he had sent me a PIF, but I hadn't seen it yet...it finally showed up, on the 19th...he mailed it on November 23rd! It was in perfect condition, but it would have been faster if we had just set out on foot, as Chris isn't that far away from me, haha.

Inside was a great bunch of cards, and this...

OK, that's cool! I knew he wasn't my Secret Santa because that showed up within a week of Jon sending out the names and addresses!

 From 1978-79 O-Pee-Chee, only my 5th card from this set.

 My first and second cards from 1979-80 O-Pee-Chee!

 Chris Stewart from 2013-14 Black Diamond

 A new Henrik Lundqvist from 2015-16 MVP!

 From 16-17 O-Pee-Chee

And my very first card from the 2019-20 O-Pee-Chee set! I missed this year's OPC totally...I didn't think I was going to be able to get any of them, so this is a very welcome card. Kyle Connor was the first NHL autograph I ever pulled back in the 2016-17 season, and he's become one of the most important players on the Jets.

The last card I needed was this awesomely diamond cut parallel from 1993-94 Topps! It's pretty unusual to see a cutting error on a parallel...this may be the first in my entire error collection, I can't think of any others off the top of my head! Also, 1994 is very late for a Diamond cut. I think it may be my newest Diamond Cut card as well. Unfortunately, it scanned with a bit of a yellow tinge that it doesn't have in real life, sometimes my new scanner does that for some reason.

I'm not sure which card is my favorite here. Two new sets, a new card of my favorite player, and an error that stands out as unusual! Thanks Chris!

I was going to post about this mailing when I posted about the cards I got for Christmas (I know there will be some because I bought some for myself, but my family never disappoints me) but since I was doing a post about an unexpected Christmas gift, I must mention a very pleasant surprise I got from Kari, aka Karsal, on the Trading Card Database. He sent me more than 150 cards (stickers) from a car set I never even knew existed, but would have had on my wantlist had I known it existed. It's from 1994, and made by a company called Service Line, and is called Auto 2000. It's a European set, obvious because it features European cars heavily, but it has vehicles from all around the world. There's not a lot of love for 1990s cars in the hobby (or anywhere else) so these were really fun to get. Here's just a small sampling:

 A Fiat concept car, #1 in the set.

 In the USA, the NSX was marketed as an Acura, and it's my favorite Japanese car ever.

 A station wagon card! Mercedes-Benz was one of the last to offer a true wagon in the USA. I believe Buick and Subaru both have one now, but that's it.

Believe it or not, this is the second card I have of a Dodge Caravan/Chrysler Town & Country/Plymouth Voyager! This is the European model, so it's called a Chrysler Voyager, which is unusual to me. It carries the Plymouth name, has the Chrysler Pentastar, and the Dodge grill...how different!

 Range Rovers were a status symbol then, and still are.

There are several concept cars scattered throughout the set.

Quite a few are Panini style puzzle cards, most of which I now have both of. This Volkswagen Concept 1, which became the New Beetle in 1998, is one where I only got one half. I decided to show this one instead of one where I have both halves because I don't want to struggle with combining them into one image, LOL!

These really are awesome, and the ones I don't have now ARE on my wantlist! He also sent along the first actual Christmas Card my family got this year, and I will show that on Christmas Day when I do my annual Christmas post.  Thank you Kari!

I should be documenting this!

I've talked before, several times, how my main goal, really, has been to get everyone who ever got an NBA or NASCAR card into my collection. Although I wasn't able to figure out who had cards and who was missing until I went person-by-person through the listings on the Trading Card Database a few years ago, in reality I was setting the stages for this project for many years beforehand...if I was at a place or even looking through online listings, and I had a choice of two cards, I would ALWAYS pick the one that was of a person not yet in my collection.

By time I started Cardboard History, most of this collecting was done already. I didn't start Cardboard History until my 27th year in the hobby.

Now I've taken up NHL hockey. And the sport has already embedded itself into my very being. But, I've been saying that I didn't know if I would attempt to do this project for the NHL. I'm coming in later to the sport, and I don't have as much money to spend on the hobby as I once did due to medical reasons. The NHL has 100 years of history and has been getting cards since the 1920s, 30 years before the NBA was founded and 32 before NASCAR. Unlike my first two sports the NHL has pretty good cardboard representation of it's early years. The teams also have a larger roster, too.

It seems daunting. Frankly, it seems impossible. But, I'm doing it. I'm going to go for it, no more hemming and hawing if I want to take on this task. I do. It is so much fun in my first two sports that I have to do it for the NHL too.

I have a good head start. As of 7/6/17, I have 1739 different people already, although that number does include some non-NHLers like the Women's Olympic Team members. It's also probably not entirely accurate as I found a couple people not on the list but I already had multiple cards of. Whatever, it's close enough to start with.

I have yet to figure out how many people are missing, how many got cards. It's going to be a lot of people.

Since January 1st I've been documenting the first card I got of each NHL person on a list on the Trading Card Database. But, it's currently only available to me. I keep it closed so I can add to it, and adding to it I have done- it shows 470 new NHL players added to my collection, including those that appear in this post. But I've got a blog about cards, and what better thing to do then post about a major, major undertaking? Something that, for the first two sports I did it with, was done mostly before I had a blog or even internet connection!

So, without further ado, here are the first players added since I officially declared I am going for this project on 7/6/17.

Alex Petrovic became the first person added since I decided to go for it.

I had purchased two blasters of 2016-17 Parkhurst back in April, opening one when it was new. I cracked the seal on the second one on 7/7/17 and opened two packs, which yielded these 5 new people for my collection.

You can expect to see more of this project posted to the blog over the coming years. I will be working on this project for the rest of my life, unless I win the lottery and can go on a buying spree, hah!