30 Years ago Today...

 I became an NBA fan, and nothing in the hobby for me would ever be the same. 

By April 1996 I had already been collecting NASCAR and Non-Sports cards for years, but I was the only one in my friends group who collected either of those topics. My mom worked in my school and noticed that everyone else was into basketball. So, for Valentine's Day that year she gave me a pack of 1995-96 Fleer Series 2. 

Later that night, I found a game on TV. It was my local team, the New York Knicks, on the road at Charlotte. The Hornets dominated and won by 20 points. For many years I thought it was the last day of the regular season, but once I discovered the game logs on Basketball-Reference, I discovered that it was actually Valentine's Day. Muggsy Bogues instantly became my favorite player, eclipsed today only by hometown hero Elton Brand. 

Collecting NBA cards became my obsession. I barely collected NASCAR cards (focusing more on diecast) and I stopped collecting Non-Sports cards around 1997-98 somewhere. I built my collection like my life depended on it, and after my father lost his battle with cancer in 2002, getting new cards was one of the only things that kept me going. 

In 2004 I lost my excel file that I kept track of how many cards I had of each person. I didn't realize it at the time but that was a tipping point. By 2006 I was burned out. I wasn't enjoying watching the game, and I wasn't enjoying the cards. I told my family not to give me any more basketball cards for my birthday/Christmas that year. I truly thought I was done, and there was a year where I didn't watch a single basketball game. (don't remember if it was 2007-08 or 08-09 anymore). 

I thought that part of my life was over. Thankfully, I was wrong. 

In 2011 the Dallas Mavericks ran to the NBA finals, and I watched it with my mom. Jason Kidd is her all-time favorite player and he got his NBA championship that year. I really enjoyed watching and it got me wanting to start scanning my collection. In the interim where I wasn't collecting the NBA, I was now collecting NASCAR fully and had begun scanning all of them in 2009, a project that I am still working on. 

I started to pick up some cards again in 2011, but only a little bit, not full time yet. When the 2012-13 season started, I got back into it full time. When I discovered that the Trading Card Database give you stats on your collection, I got out my paper listing and entered in my entire collection. It was so much fun, and the memories of working on my paper listing came flooding back, and I missed it. Then I discovered my local Target had 44 cards packs of Hoops for $5. That's it...I was back in full time. The 2012-13 season is one of my favorite seasons in NBA card history. I was also watching the NBA regularly again, even when I was in the hospital nearly dying from a disease I didn't know I had in April 2013. 

I realize now that there was nothing inherently wrong with the cards in 2006. It was my mental state. I regret not collecting in those years, and I will never stop collecting ever again, I know that for sure. 

When I stopped collecting in 2006, I had 73000 something cards. Now, in 2026, I have 102,000something cards, hitting the 102 thousand milestone just last week via trade. That's NBA only. I will always favor the 1990s cards, but the sets from 2002-03 in particular mean more to me than other years do as well. I'm a better collector now than I was then, but the memories of then are better. (I look back on some of the decisions I made and wonder what the heck was I thinking?) Nostalgia means so much.

I love the hobby, it has given so much meaning to me. I don't know what the future holds, but I know it holds a lot more basketball cards, and cardboard friends of other topics, to look forward to. 

I do have to wonder, if Mom knew what kind of obsession she was starting, if she would have gotten me started and supported my hobby all these years? 😁 I'm glad she did! And hey, she still gives me cards for all holidays and gift giving occasions, and sometimes just for the heck of it, so I think I already know the answer. 

The very first card out of my very first pack? Sam Cassell

The 1995-96 Fleer set is one of the most hated in the hobby, but I loved it. Still do. 

10 Years of Cardboard History

 Can you believe this has been going on for 10 whole years now? When I started Cardboard History back on November 22nd, 2014, I actually didn't expect I would be able to keep it going this long- I do have a tendency to start projects and trail off on them, never finishing them or even working on them again. 

But here we are in 2024 and I'm still going- even if I'm not "going strong" right now.

SO MUCH has changed for me in the hobby since I started this. Nearly everything has changed since I began this website, but while some of the changes I would prefer not to have had to make, overall I actually enjoy the hobby more now than I did back then. The most important changes:

• I didn't collect or watch hockey
• set completion was my only real goal
• I did not know how many different people I had in my collection
• I did not even consider a project of getting at least one card of every person to get one in my sports, because I did not even know it was possible to figure that out!
• I did not know how many cards I had
• I did not know what COMC was
• I had not been to a card show since 2004
• there were no local card shows to attend
• I did not believe I would ever get to a National
• I had not even envisioned the Cardboard History Gallery yet
• I did not own a card from the 1800s
• Press Pass still existed
• I was an avid Star Wars fan & collector
• repacks were readily available and my favorite way to grow my collection
• I had never opened a case of cards

Personally some pretty big things have happened since I began this too:

• I began a series of Adventures with my brother
• I have now visited 35 states (12 when Cardboard History began)
• I have now seen 3 of the 4 big man-made things that I consider the main things I wanted to see (Mt Rushmore, St. Louis Arch, Statue of Liberty)
• I got to enter a car show as a participant, achieving a lifelong goal
• I got to visit Roswell, New Mexico, something I've wanted to do since I was a kid
• I won a gold medal/1st place for my modeling, twice although I was the only entrant one of those times
• I got to see a cuneiform tablet in person, twice
• I got back to Lake George, my favorite place in the world. When I started this I was under the impression that I would not ever be able to return due to health reasons
• I walked around Manhattan and visited all five boroughs of New York City
• I got to the New York International Auto Show
• I completed my project of building one of every car number in 1/64 NASCAR Diecast that I began in 2005
• I returned to collecting 1/64 NASCAR diecast after having to walk away in early 2014
• I attended a pavement/road course race
• I saw a professional basketball arena in person
• I was named Head Automotive Judge at my club's scale model show
• I got a smartphone
• I took my first boat ride 
• I got a permanent modeling workspace

Obviously, for this website, becoming a hockey fan and collector is probably the biggest change. Since I got into hockey, it has become a part of every single day of my life, and going forward it surely will be. Even when I am not working on card stuff, I'm still watching hockey pretty much all the time. 

Creating the list of all the people in my collection was one of the first things I did after I started Cardboard History, circa 2015, and that would become one of the major driving forces of my collection, especially as my unhappiness with what Panini produces has led me to shift my focus from set-building-above-all to my Names Project, the somewhat clumsy name I've been calling my project of getting at least one card of every person to get one in my three major sports I collect. I've mentioned it before but that project feels more like being an actual historian of my sports than just focusing on base sets did. 
I actively seek out cards of people I don't have yet. For me, when I open packs, I am not chasing hits- I'm chasing my first card of somebody, anybody. When I am at a show or shop, whether I have a card of that person or not is often my deciding factor in which cards I buy.

Even though I don't actively collect baseball or football, or other miscellaneous sports, I still get a thrill when I get some cards from those topics and it's a new person not yet represented in my collection. At the time I'm writing this, I currently stand at 17,828 people listed, although there are a couple of names that I can't actually track down a card of them at the moment- I suspect that they are typos of people in sports I'm not knowledgeable, or come from the Sports Illustrated for Kids cards that I've misplaced since I wrote the list of who was in my collection back in 2015. It's probably closer to 17,775 people if it turns out they are all typos or mistakes.

One thing that has almost completely dropped off is my project of getting at least one card from every major set. I still care, I still document it, and I will still grab a card from a new set if I'm going through a stack at a show/shop, but the importance of that has dropped off significantly, for two main reasons- one being that the Names Project has surpassed and replaced the Sets Project, but mainly because after I went through and bought an example of almost every set on COMC for NBA, it took away almost all the fun of getting a card from that set naturally- not as a single. It happened several times and the best I can put it into words is that it made it anti-climactic. The joy of getting a missing set naturally was taken away by my efforts to force it. I've actively NOT done that with hockey since I started collecting it for the most part. I have hunted down some vintage cards, but those are sets I know I'm not likely to find locally/get in trade. I do have a list of the sets I don't have for hockey, but I'm not actively going and just buying the cheapest card available for the set like I did for NBA. I feel safe to say I will in fact never do that again, neither for the NHL or the NBA sets that have come out since I did that. 

One thing that has not changed has been my love of scanning cards. That is still one of my favorite aspects of the hobby, and the labeling and uploading them is, in fact, more fun for me than actually adding the cards to my collection. The scanning project- which I originally estimated I'd complete in 2016 (!), led to the creation of the Cardboard History Gallery, which is my actual favorite part of card collecting. I launched it on my birthday in 2018 and I finally finished building it in late 2022. It is my website where every single set, season, team, person and subject has it's own album. Want to see what I have of any person? Simply look up their album. Want to browse a team's history from the earliest days to the present? I can do that. Want to look through all the Marvel Cinematic Universe cards? I can do that too. Of course every single topic has more cards waiting their turn to be scanned. The scanning process is fairly slow, but I do enjoy it so I don't mind. 

Doing my monthly upload- which I begin on the first of every month - has become my driving force in the hobby, and most fun thing. Seeing how the numbers in each album grow, seeing the newly scanned cards automatically slot into place (a service provided by my web host), seeing how long it's been since I've scanned something new for any random set, seeing how many new people I scan in each month- I love it all. One thing I didn't even plan for but has provided me lots of enjoyment has been seeing if a scan makes it onto the first page of team albums. I don't know why that brings me such enjoyment, but it does. Building the website, in all honesty, brings me more enjoyment than actually adding the cards does, as I said. The website updates have made getting the cards more a means to an end rather than the main focus. 

I do not know what the next ten years will bring. I do know I will still be in the hobby, and I will still be doing at least one post a month as I document who I get scanned for the first time. Where will my collection, and my adventures take me? I don't know. I could never have imagined taking on an entire new sport when I started this thing, but now it's a major part of every day. As I type this I am watching a hockey game, and I can see more than a dozen hockey cards waiting their turn to be scanned. 

Will I have completed scanning everything? It's hard to say. If I stopped adding new cards I would say likely, but the odds of me stopping adding new cards are 0 percent. I fully expect NHL to overtake NASCAR by the end of this decade, let alone 10 years from now, if for no other reason than there are more of them available. (The NHL gets multiple 500 card sets a year, NASCAR gets 1 200 card set and that's pretty much it. Plus, hockey still has thousands upon thousands of cards from the past I don't have yet). I could even see it happening by the end of 2025 at my current rate of adding cards to my collection. 

My ultimate goal is still to have a museum and hall of fame for the hobby. I do not know if I can ever make it happen for money reasons mostly, but it's all working up to that. If I can pull it off it would be the greatest and largest thing I've ever done. I just don't know if I have the funds and wherewithal to pull it off. Only venturing into the future will find out. 

Finally, I want to say thank you to all my readers, and especially those of you who leave comments. I didn't expect to get readers, I figured this would be more just something to help me not forget what I was doing, but I really appreciate those of you who have stuck with me, have enjoyed what I have to say, and make it feel like I'm not just "screaming into the void". I can't say for certain but there's a good chance I would have lost interest if there wasn't a small but vibrant card blogosphere. 

On to the next decade of Cardboard History!

5 Years of the Cardboard History Gallery

 Today marks the 5 Year Anniversary of the launching of the Cardboard History Gallery, my "magnum opus" where my card collection is documented in full. Where each person, each team, each set, each year, each subject for non-sports, all get an album. But it's more than just that. There's the Alphabetical Directory which has one image for each person scanned in my collection, there's the Set Archive which has one image from each major set, there's the Peripheral folder in each of the major sections which has an album for box, pack, set, publications and more. There's the Encyclopedia where the people in the Alphabetical Directory are also copy and pasted into subject folders. 

My ultimate goal is to open a museum and Hall of Fame for trading cards. When (if) that ever actually happens, the Cardboard History Gallery will serve as the main interactive experience for visitors. A full documentation of the museum collection. (That's also why I will take literally any card, for the eventual museum)

Although I launched the Cardboard History Gallery 5 years ago today, the process behind it was much more intense. I didn't finish creating every album until March 27th of this year. It took me two years of sorting scans on my hard drive before I was ready to launch in the first place. And of course, the scanning process has been going on since 2009, and the collecting of cards since 1988, so there are a couple of different start dates I could go with here...lol. 

Here are some statistics from 5 years of the Cardboard History Gallery:

Of course photos really means scans for the most part. There are some cards and packaging that are too big to fit on the scanner tray, and the Card Show albums are all photos, but the rest is all scans.

Using the math skills of Excel I copied down how many people and how many sets have been scanned, and let it do the math for me.

I have the sets broken out very much, but I also copied and pasted to get a total of how many sets make up the overall Non-Sports category, Other sports, and my favorite, Auto Racing.

Of course this is just what has been scanned...all numbers have the potential to go up, most of the numbers absolutely will go up. The people numbers will likely go up much more than the set numbers, but since I have no intention of stopping to collect, both numbers are not complete. And I still have thousands of cards awaiting scans, years worth of scanning. Thankfully, I really enjoy it and consider the whole process my favorite part of the hobby.

How do I remember the date I launched it so well? Well, for one, it tells me on the Statistics page. For 2, it tells me how long ago each album was created and some of them were at 4 years 11 months ago. But most of all...I launched it as a birthday present to myself. Yes, today is my birthday and I have to say...this is the best present I've ever given myself. 

 

10 years ago today...

 10 years ago today was pretty much the worst day of my life. It's the day I came literally 5 minutes away from dying. I had become diabetic but didn't know it, and it had turned into ketoacidosis, which is when your body shuts down and basically starts burning your insides in a last ditch effort to keep running...if you don't treat it, you don't survive it, and I didn't treat it for a full week....you see, I started feeling terrible a week before, at the NNL East model car show, when I drank a Mountain Dew, something I did only once a year, there. I had assumed that the Dew had been tainted, so I felt like that I just had to wait out the food poisoning I was sure I had...but I was very, very wrong. 

I got worse and worse but steadfastly refused to go to a doctor. I don't really trust doctors, which goes back to when I was in 6th grade and my health problems manifested...I went through so many tests, so much poking and prodding, all of which was inconclusive and told me nothing...the mental trauma it gave me is still affecting me all these years later. 

Finally, on the morning of April 26th, my Mom said (paraphrasing, because I was essentially unconscious- not sleeping, passed out/comatose) "the heck with what you say, I'm calling an ambulance" and I'm very glad she did. The ER doctor told her that five minutes later and I would not have made it. That is not hyperbole, it was really that close. They told her and my brother to say their final goodbye. 

I was actually pretty much unconscious the whole day. I remember seeing, of all things, Buffalo Wild Wings out the window of the ambulance and the next thing I remember is when I came to in the hospital many hours later, after they had gotten me to the point where I was going to survive. 

It's unknown what my blood sugar was...it was so high that the hospital machines couldn't read it - but they estimated around 1200 if I remember correctly. It's supposed to be around 70...yeah, it was that bad. 

But, I survived. You wouldn't be reading this if I hadn't, of course. I spent a week in the hospital and every year since then I celebrate "Glad I'm Not Dead Day" on May 1st, the first day of my second chance at life. 

However, since today is the 10th anniversary of my ordeal, I'm celebrating today...because I'm glad to be alive. Yes, I can be pretty miserable sometimes, a byproduct of my health problems mostly, but deep down, I'm glad to be here. There's so much I want to see, and do, that even though I struggle to do stuff, I am not going to stop trying.

So, I thought I would go through my photo archive, and choose my 10 Favorite photos I've taken over the past 10 years! I tried to limit myself to 1 photo from each basic topic, although it was an extremely hard choice to pick just 10 photos, out of literally nearly 100,000 I've taken since 2013. As it turns out, none from 2013 through 2016 made the cut. 

I am sharing the photos in chronological order of when I took them, which is kind of a neat byproduct of how I label each photo to keep them in order on my website. 

The earliest photo is from September of 2017, which was a prototype adventure of sorts. My brother, realizing I was very depressed, wanted to get me out and doing stuff, and my doctor literally prescribed me to get out of the house and walk, so my brother set out to do that in the most fun way possible. 7 of the 10 photos that cracked the top 10 are from our Adventures. 

This is Lake George, NY, my favorite place in the world, taken from Prospect Mountain. This was the first time we had ever gone up Prospect Mountain despite visiting Lake George almost every year of my life, missing only 2013-15. 

The next photo is from our first "official" adventure, which was the Fordham Museum of Ancient Art & Artifacts in the Bronx, NY. I have been a big fan of ancient history for quite a while now, and I got to see some amazing things there, including the oldest man-made artifact I've ever seen in my life. This is an ancient Greek amphorae. This was taken in October 2018.

I really, really love aquariums, and this was taken at the New York Aquarium on Coney Island. I love the face this fish is making! This was taken in January 2019.

Another photo from 2019, this is an F-22 Raptor (I think) doing a flyby at the New York Airshow, which had been moved to Newburgh for a couple of years. I also saw the Blue Angels practicing for about an hour but this was the best photo I took that day, and I really couldn't resist making this one of the top 10. 

2019 was the most populous year in the top 10 favorite photos, with 3 images making the cut. This one is one of my favorite car photos I've taken, with the pink tree making a nice backdrop to the black car. I wish the hood was down, and I wish the cruise in this was taken at still happened, but this photo just sticks in my memory...I almost used a photo of our Edge in front of Devil's Tower but I had to go with this one. 

I love to take pictures of the road, and I love to take pictures of the landscape, and this one has both. Taken on I-84 in Port Jervis NY, we were actually up higher than the small airplane that I circled in the photo. This was taken on March 1st, 2020, just days before the pandemic shut everything down. This one is the one I was least "sold" on putting into my Top 10 list, but I really like this photo.

Due to my health problems we didn't do much in 2020, but sometimes the photos came to me. I LOVE squirrels, as is well known, and this is such a fun photo I've even used this as my profile picture on some message boards. 

The only image from 2021 to make the list, the New York City skyline is just spectacular! I actually took this from New Jersey, where we had gone to see a NASCAR show car. This was actually taken September 11th, 2021, 20 years to the day after the terrorist attacks that shook the city and country to it's core. 

Taken in May 2022, this is my best photo of Mount Rushmore. I have always wanted to see Mt Rushmore, it was one of the top things on my "bucket list"...and last year we made it happen. I still can't believe we were able to make that happen...that I was able to do it! 

This photo, from September 2022, represents the greatest day of my life, when I visited the NASCAR Hall of Fame. It's actually hard to get a good photo like this, because the Hall is too large to fit in one photo, but this was the one I liked the best that I took. I also set my record that day- I took over 3000 photos in the Hall of Fame. (And I still missed stuff!)

Just for fun, I also picked out my Top 10 favorite photos of myself taken in the last 10 years. 9 out of 10 I used as my profile photo on Facebook. 

In 2015, I got dressed in a Halloween costume for the first time since 1997ish, maybe earlier, as a Roman Senator. 

This photo was taken at the Rhinebeck Car Show vendor area. all these neon signs were for sale. I love neon and I love car stuff, so this was doubly cool.

This one is from the Fordham Museum as well, and is the only one that didn't make it to be a Facebook profile picture. That little square is a cuneiform tablet from ancient Babylon, the earliest readable language in the world.

From January 2019, this was taken at Madison Square Garden, holding a game used stick of my favorite player in the NHL, Henrik Lundqvist. 

Also taken in 2019, this was taken at the Madame Tussauds Wax Museum in Manhattan. 

Another image from 2019...I realize making this post that 2019 was my best year, lol, This was taken at the Norwalk Maritime Aquarium in Norwalk, Connecticut. This ray is in the "touch a fish section" and swam right up to me. He wouldn't swim away until I reached down and pet him, and then he was happy. 

Another from 2019, at the Adirondack Nationals. I'm not really a big celebrity person, but Faye and Bogi of All Girls Garage were really cool. They seem fun on TV, and they were even more engaging in person. 

Last one from 2019...but it's a big one! I used to attend the NNL Nationals model car show in Toledo, but it got to be too expensive and too difficult to do with my health problems and my mom's health problems, but when they announced that 2019 was going to be the last show we had to go back. While we were there, we took a day trip to Illinois and ended up on Route 66! Route 66 is an icon of America and car culture, and driving on it (riding, actually, as my health does not allow me to drive) was high on my Bucket List...higher than Mount Rushmore even. The funny thing is that getting on it was completely an accident, as we were looking for a restroom, and it's not labeled as Route 66 anymore. Due to my knowledge of it, I was able to figure it out while we were still on it and I took this photo of myself with Route 66 in the background. This was in Joliet, Illinois, and was only about a month after the photo with Bogi and Faye. This is the only selfie of the top 10.

I just really like this photo. It was taken in Yonkers, NY, at the Untermayer Park & Gardens. 

Me on the big screen at the NASCAR Hall of Fame...nothing more needs to be said there!

On to the next 10 years...

25 Years as an NBA fan

 25 years ago today, I became an NBA fan. My fandom would define my life for the next decade. More than one half of my card collection is NBA cards, despite the fact that I didn't collect them between 2007 and 2012. (and again in 2021 until ?, but for different reasons) 

It all started on Valentine's Day in 1996. My mom, who worked in my school, saw that none of my friends collected NASCAR or comic based cards, which I already did at that point for 8 years. Not wanting me to be left out, she got me a pack of 1995-96 Fleer Series 2. I loved the wild and wacky designs of that set, and later that night I found a basketball game on TV. It was the Knicks vs. the Hornets, and you can see the Game Log here if you so choose. It was a 20 point blowout, with the Knicks losing badly. It didn't matter...I was hooked. Basketball would then become a part of my daily life for the next 10 years. I would spend hours and hours sorting, resorting, looking at, etc. my cards. I watched as many games as I possibly could, for quite a while. 

After I lost my dad, 19 years ago last week, the only thing that brought me anything resembling happiness was getting cards. And I did...a lot of them. The vast majority of my collection was built from 2002 to 2006...I built up a collection of more than 72 thousand different cards. 

But then, things changed. I was no longer really enjoying the game, or the cards. In 2005 and 2006, I even let my paper listings lapse...which as you may recall from previous posts is the backbone of my collection. I've carted those listings as far afield as Indiana to Massachusetts. To not work on them...it's unconscionable...yet I did. It stems from a lot of things. The collection file on Excel corrupting, which I've discussed before played a bigger role than I realized at the time. Mostly, it was my own depression and burnout that did me in. I don't know when exactly, but sometime between September 2006 and Christmas of that year, I decided I didn't want to collect the NBA anymore, so much so that I even made an "LP", for Last Pack, notation in my card listing, although I didn't list them in time to remember the date, so that is lost to history. The Second Era, aka NBA Era of my collecting journey had come to an end. 

I really thought I was done. I stopped collecting, I stopped watching- I don't think I saw a single minute of the 2007-08 season. 

I now regret that of course. 

I didn't touch my NBA cards again un 2011. And only then because I moved them to keep them from getting wet from a possible hurricane. 

But in 2011 I started to get back into it. I really enjoyed watching the Mavericks win the Championship, which I watched with Mom as her favorite player of all time, Jason Kidd, got his championship. I picked up a few cards for the first time in years, but I wasn't fully back into it. 

Then, in October 2012, I joined the Trading Card Database and discovered they provided stats for your collection. I pulled out my paper listing- relegated to my basement, the only time it's been out of my sight since I created it at Christmas 1998!- and entered my entire collection. It brought back a lot of memories, memories I hadn't thought about in so long. (Well, it seemed like so long, even if it was only 6 years) It brought back to me how much I enjoyed my listing. Then I discovered 44 card packs of Hoops at my local Target for about $5. That was it, all those things combined brought me back to the NBA. I was enjoying watching the game again, the 2012-13 season cards were great, and the NBA had soon regained it's top spot in my collection, which it held until 2017.   

It has changed again now. I am still an NBA fan...I always will be, to some extent...but hockey has overtaken the NBA for me. It's more fun to watch, it's more fun to listen to, (the NBA broadcasts rarely ever actually talk about the game when a national TV broadcast is involved. I've seen games where they spent the entire fourth quarter talking about nothing and not mentioning the teams playing even once). The current NBA cards are terrible. Panini did so well in 2012-13, but has steadily gotten worse ever year. I no longer enjoy the cards...and this time it's actually the cards, not just me being depressed. Now I basically only watch NBA if there is no hockey on, although I still try to watch the highlight show every night, and I still keep up with what's happening in the sport, but it's not #1 for me anymore. I am done collecting the NBA for now, because the hobby has gotten stupidly insane. A box of Hoops that is overpriced at $85 is now pre-selling for $450. 

I don't know what the future holds for me and the NBA. I have gone from a diehard fan to a casual fan, and I'm ok with that. Trying to be 100% into everything simply can't work. I would still like to collect, even if it's not my favorite anymore, but right now that's not really possible. I'd like to fill in the missing holes in the 1990s sets as well...the 1995-96 through 1997-98 sets specifically. But I am not sure how much effort I will put into it...out of sight, out of mind is a real possibility. I've got my collection down to just under 20 thousand cards still needing scans...which is a lot. But I've got 76,000 scanned already, pretty much all of which I've scanned since 2012. So, I do see "the light at the end of the tunnel", which is the break even point. Of course, lately I've been spending a lot more time scanning my hockey cards, I really should focus more on the NBA. I have more left than I could scan this year but since it is a big anniversary year I should refocus. I'm at the point I get to in any project where when I start to get near the end, I start getting antsy to bring it to completion and see the end result...which is bad in a project that still has a couple of years worth of work required to complete it. 

While each pack of 1995-96 Fleer 2 was 10 cards, 8 base cards, 1 subset and 1 insert, I only remember two cards- this was the first one.

#220, Sam Cassell, was the very first NBA card to enter my collection. 

Hakeem Olajuwon's card is the other one I remember. I wish I could remember what the first insert was...the first one I remember is actually from Hoops, which was likely the second NBA pack I ever opened. (Anfernee Hardaway Top 10)

I guess, if I ever want to get to the break even point, I should stop typing and get back to scanning...however, today is the Daytona 500, so I likely won't get a whole lot accomplished scanning wise today! Or tomorrow, since I actually wrote this post at 4:30 AM on Saturday and scheduled it...

20 years ago today...

I finished my first model build! The first by myself anyway...I had built three previously with my dad, which consisted of me twisting the parts off the trees and handing them to him, and him gluing them together. Since I didn't build them though, I can't count them in my build history.

In the mid-1990s, we had gotten some kits with the intention of building them on Thanksgiving day...this was an idea my mom had to keep us out of the kitchen while she was working on dinner. My dad didn't enjoy it so the kits we had just sat...in particular, there was a 1994 issue of the AMT 1953 Ford pickup that I saw all the time, but it was something I didn't think all that much about.

Then, in November 1999, I decided I wanted to try and build that Ford pickup kit myself...so I did. And it went well, I enjoyed it...even if looking back on it now I realize that I didn't know at all what I was doing. I enjoyed it so much I pulled out one of the other kits we had hanging around and built that as well. Once that was done, we made a trip to the local Wal-Mart, which at that time carried model kits, and I bought two more...and promptly built them. Another trip to Wal-Mart led to a cart full of models, and the stash was born- today, it's grown so large that I had to rent a storage unit to hold it, it's actually TOO large- I can't find anything when I'm looking for it!

The hobby has done much for me, as well. Roughly 90% of the people I interact with on Facebook are modelers. It led to me being published in internationally-distributed magazines nearly 10 times now, including several times with my byline. It led me to two model clubs, and shows around the Northeast and beyond- I visited New Jersey, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Maine all for the first time on trips for model shows- with shows themselves in New Jersey, Ohio and Massachusetts being the base for each of those trips. I've been discussed on Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s Radio show, supposedly, although I didn't have access to actually hear it at the time. When I was in the hospital near death in 2013, the only person who came to visit me was a member of my model club. (besides my mom and brother, who were there the whole time). One of the other big facets that came from model building was my participation on the internet. I joined my first message board- The Model Car List- in August 2000 after seeing it in the first issue of Scale Auto Enthusiast I ever bought- and it led to everything else. It's where I learned about the model shows. It's where I met Rick Hanmore, who brought me into the Town of Newburgh Model Car Club, and the TNMCC is why I'm still in the hobby. (I had been extremely frustrated with my brush painted builds. They taught me how to spray paint at the 2003 Club picnic). And of course, my interest in internet message boards eventually led to the creation of Cardboard History many years later! My Fotki- my website- also largely came out of the desire to post pictures on the Hobby Heaven board, which then and now is the premier modeling message board. I launched that in 2004 and have over 400,000 images on there now.

Model building is one of the main pillars of my life, and even though it's also brought frustration, anger, and general unhappiness, the good outweighs the bad, and while I sometimes do regret ever starting up in the hobby, in the end...I am glad I did. My life would not have had many of the key aspects if I did not build that first model 20 years ago today.

To celebrate the anniversary, I got it out and took some new photos of it. It turned out to be one of the best brush painted models I ever did, and the only one from that era I still have on display. All of the paint came from my limited supply of Testors paints, which I tried to clean with water- not understanding that water would not do it. (Somewhere I still have the brushes with the paint still on them). I didn't have brown, so I painted the bed gold...I didn't yet have a sprue cutter or even a hobby knife when I built this!

I still destroy about 5 models for every one I successfully complete, but my current total, at 20 years, is 319 models completed.

Ten Year Anniversary and Contest!

It was 10 years ago today that I began my project of scanning every trading card in my collection.

My hobby was VERY different in April 2009. I was, at that time, collecting only NASCAR. I had drifted away from non-sports a decade earlier, and I had left the NBA at the end of 2006, which, I thought at that time, was permanent. I now regret that immensely.

My hobby was also pretty solitary. I had not yet discovered the Trading Card Database, though it did exist then. I was a member of Trader Retreat but my activity was way down. (a forum I miss, had good times on there). I had not yet found NUTS, that would be a few months later. (sometime in August 2009)

I had zero idea what a blog was, even less so that there was already a vibrant card blogosphere. I would not discover that until I found the Trading Card Database.

Things were going to change drastically for me soon...I got back into Non-Sports in a big way in September 2010, I found the Database in August of 2011 but found I could track my collection there in October 2012 (I used it for checklists only before then) Entering my collection on there got me fully back into the NBA, after I had begun watching regularly again in 2011, and eventually, in 2014, the Database spurred on the creation of Cardboard History, and then in 2016, got me into hockey, which has since taken over my life.

But one thing began that day, ten years ago, that would become the thing I spent most of my life on for the next 10 years, and counting. Scanning my cards! In 2009, I had sorted out my NASCAR card collection from set to by person, and entered what I had of each person into an Excel chart, which I have discussed many times in the past. Well, my scanner, ever present on my table next to my computer, was of course right there so I thought to myself, "I wonder how scanning cards would work?" It worked well, and this was the first card I ever scanned:

This is the factory set special insert in the 1995 Hi-Tech 1994 Brickyard 400 set, which is embossed gold foil on both sides. Since it scanned pretty well, I decided that I would do everything else! The only way I know now what day that was, is because I instantly created an album for my card collection- at that time, one album for everything- and uploaded it on my website. Luckily, my website, which I've maintained since 2004, automatically provides the upload date of each image (and for photos, the date taken as well, if you have the camera settings correct)  At that time, I was doing only card fronts, and I did not always do a very good job, a combination of it being "close enough" to the fact that I had not yet discovered PhotoScape, which means I couldn't properly fix each scan. Since I was doing the fronts only, and since I was not putting much effort into them, I got the fronts done by early 2010, but I did such a poor job that I've been debating just starting over from scratch with them, holding off mostly because I did them on my original scanner, which was the highest quality. Since I got a new scanner, perhaps of even higher quality, in February, I may end up rescanning them instead of trying to fix my crappy early scans. I am going to work on what does not have any scans first.

And that's what the contest is about. I'm well past halfway on the scanning...I would say at least 3/4ths, maybe further, along. Keeping in mind that I originally estimated that I would finish scanning everything in 2016, and that obviously didn't happen, my current estimation is that I will finish in 2021.

Here's the contest: Guess what day I will finish scanning everything, and be "caught up" for the first time ever. Guess a specific day, and just for fun (not part of the contest, will not increase your chances of winning) guess what topic the card that ends up last is. (basically, which sport, or do you think it will be non-sport, or multi-sport or...? I have a little bit of everything left needing scans, from vintage to modern). The Caught Up Date that determines the contest winner PROBABLY doesn't reflect the NASCAR cards that I did the fronts poorly on. If I do everything else, and finish my "To-be-Scanned" boxes, that will count as the end of the project. If I get on a NASCAR and Non-Sports kick (they need to have the backs done as well) and do them BEFORE I finish my To-be-scanned boxes, then it WILL impact when I finish because the time spent on them will take away time from working on the To-Be-Sorted boxes that the contest is based on. While I'm always working on "something" with cards, I have the attention span of a squirrel so who knows what I will work on when? Even I don't know.

Whoever comes the closest, by number of days away (either direction) will win...something. I don't know what yet. I'll tailor it to whoever wins. You can feel free to promote it if you want to, but it's not going to help your chances of winning, it's one entry per person, whoever gets closest wins, end of story. (I maintain the right to disqualify anyone for any reason, but I don't forsee having to do that)

Now, like some of my other contests, this is a long-running contest. I guarantee you this won't come to fruition in 2019. I can almost guarantee it won't be 2020 either, but I can't guarantee it fully, so if you want to risk it, go ahead. I mean, if I really get going, and my health doesn't act up, I can scan 300 cards in a day. It's rare, but not unheard of.

Any cards that arrive to me- either by trade, gift or I go out and purchase them, are going to be mixed into the stash so even I cannot predict what/when it will truly be yet...and since I predicted 2016 originally, my predictions are maybe not the most reliable anyway, lol.

100 Years Ago Today

The very first NHL game was played! It was a very different time. The world was in the throes of World War I. (at the time called the Great War). Professional sports leagues, other than baseball, were generally small and regional, and struggling to find a footing. Professional hockey had been around a while, and the NHL was born in 1917. In fact, it was born in spite, of the owner of the Toronto team in the previous top professional hockey league (I have not been able to find out what the exact problem was) and has grown into something great over the last century. At the beginning, only 4 teams made up the league, and two of them did not survive that first year- one folding after it's arena burned down!

Today, it's one of the big 5 sports in the world, and considered the top hockey league in the world. 31 teams make up the league- including two of the original four- with expansion looming (I hope). Even more important for the sake of this post- it's my newest obsession. Since I began watching in November 2016, the NHL has taken up more and more of my life. And I'm not complaining one bit. I love the game, already, it's become something that I cannot live without. It has been a part of every single day of my life, and it's not a stretch to say it will be a part of the rest of every day of my life, during the season or off-season.

I've put a lot of effort into studying it and learning as much as I could over the past year. I'm still a rookie, still with much to learn, but I'm going to enjoy learning as much as I can.

I think my hockey addiction should be pretty obvious by how many times I've written about the sport this year. That isn't going to stop any time soon...in fact, it'll probably only increase as I begin to really scan the cards my fellow collectors have gifted me with- I'd say roughly 5500 of the 8000 NHL cards currently in my collection were an outright gift, with the rest coming through trades and purchases. I am eternally grateful. If the entire world was made up of people like those who collect hockey cards, it would be a lot better place.

I'm just so enthused with the sport, and with the cards, that I wanted to get a special post up to celebrate my newfound passion.

I don't have much of the early history of the sport documented in my collection, yet, and even less scanned. The NHL has a rich history of cards, with the first set of NHL cards being issued in 1923-24. My oldest is currently from the late 1950s, so like I say...not much early era is documented.
What I do have, however, are some of the history of the game subset cards from 1991-92 Pro Set.

1991-92 Pro Set #334

This card is the earliest game action photo to appear in my collection. I have no idea when it's from or who appears on the card, but it's a great old shot that's somewhat diminished by the scanner I was using at the time putting lines across it from top to bottom.

The oldest image in my collection comes from the same subset, of Georges Vezina, who the trophy given to the top goalie of each season is named after. He played from 1910-1925, before dying of tuberculosis in 1926. He played every game, from when he debuted to when he went out of his last game, a very impressive feat in my opinion. All this info comes from the back of the card, by the way.

1991-92 Pro Set #333

So I got to thinking...I became a fan of the NHL in it's 99th year. That's a lot of time to miss, which I am always kind of going to be frustrated about, as I almost got into it all the way back in 1995-96....but...what year was it for my other sports that I'm such a big fan of?

NASCAR started in 1948, and I discovered it at Christmas 1992. 44th year.
NBA became my focus in February 1996, and makes up the vast majority of my card collection. That was the tail end of it's 49th year.
The Olympics also play a role, as I'm a huge Olympics fan. Technically, the Olympics started in 776 BC, and I really became a fan in 1992, so 2768th year. Yikes! However, there were no Olympics held between 393 and 1896, so 96 years after the debut of the modern Olympics. Just imagine if they issued cards for the ancient Olympians. How cool would that have been? Of course, they didn't wear clothes for some of that time, so maybe they would need to do a little more close-ups on the cards...of course, if the Greco-Roman world hadn't been crushed by Christianity, nudity wouldn't be a big deal, so maybe not. But I digress. One things for sure, I doubt ice hockey would have been as big a success if you had to play it naked. Brent Burns and Joe Thornton may disagree. (See this year's ESPN The Magazine body issue)

Although I may be disappointed that I didn't discover the NHL until it's 99th year, I'm glad I "discovered" it in time to see the 100th anniversary celebrations. That's something that I hope I remember for a long time. Right now, as I type this, I'm getting ready to watch a matinee game between the Hurricanes and Maple Leafs, who are wearing throwbacks to the Arenas uniforms. It's the only time this season that throwbacks will be worn, which is a shame as the 100th season would have been a great time to wear throwbacks. The new jersey supplier said no, though. Too bad they didn't get the Canadiens to play in Maroons throwbacks, that would have been cool to have the uniform designs of the first game 100 years ago back on the ice...or at least the Oilers, with Patrick Maroon!

I don't usually post this early, but what the heck- matinee game, matinee post.

Ebay 10 Year Anniversary

January 2nd, 2016, marks my 10 year anniversary of Ebay membership. I joined later than most - I've had internet access at home since 2000. Even now, I still have not used it all that much. I have a grand total feedback of...


wait for it...


100. Yep, that's it! Although there were probably a dozen transactions I've made where the seller didn't leave me any feedback despite my paying them promptly.

Granted, I didn't use it for multiple years in that time. When Ebay went to the system where you HAD to use Paypal, that shut me out as I don't have a paypal account. When they did that, I didn't use Ebay I have no idea how long that lasted for, but I did still have Ebay access during that time, as my mom does have a paypal account.

A year or so ago, Ebay made another rules change where you could pay via credit card, through paypal. That allowed me back in, and allowed me to finagle it to get my feedbacks up to exactly 100 for the 10 year anniversary.

I am not planning to set it up so I hit any specific number for any other date, but when I saw that I was approaching 10 years, and at 94 feedbacks, I had to do it.

Maybe I will clear 200 by my 20th anniversary in 2026. I wonder how many blog posts I will be at by then?

Now, I have a lousy memory span and I don't keep track of where I get stuff. But I know some of the things I've gotten on Ebay. While the majority of my 100 feedbacks are for 1/64 NASCAR diecast, there are quite a few cards too. Here's some I got on Ebay (that I remember getting there)

1911 Heroes of History/Men of History - my first Tobacco card

1912 Player's Egyptian Kings, Queens & Classical Deities

I bought the factory set of 300 cards, 2004 Upper Deck History of the United States

I got a bunch of the Useful Birds of America series on there

1971 STP, the rarest and also first NASCAR set ever

I still can't believe I was able to get this for under $15. a 5 color firesuit patch and a 3 color shoe patch, with stitching! Bayne won my all-time favorite Cup race, the 2011 Daytona 500

1948 Bowman

2012-13 Absolute Basketball Spectrum Platinum, SN02/10

2012-13 Immaculate Immaculate Standard

I don't remember anymore if this was the first thing I purchased, or the first thing to arrive. It was one of the two...and this reminds me that I have not posted on my diecast blog since I took me 5-day break for the Star Wars movie. I have been so busy with cards that I have not had time for the others.

Action 1997 Mike Skinner truck promo

After I wrote up this post, I decided to take a look through what was available on Ebay. Needless to say, my feedback will be going up shortly...

Celebrating 25 Years as a GI Joe fan

Today is a pretty special anniversary for me. On the day after Thanksgiving, 25 years ago today, my brother introduced me to the world of GI Joe, and it would go on to play a major role in my life.

Picture it, if you will....it's 1990, and I am all of 6 years old, having turned 6 just five weeks previously. My brother, who is 13 years older than I, had to go work, his very first job, and I was not happy with this. I wanted to be able to play with him but he had to leave. (My brother has always been my best friend, too) Even by then, putting up the Christmas Tree on the day after Thanksgiving was an annual tradition that I loved- truly, the day after Thanksgiving is always one of my favorite days of the year. To keep me entertained, he got his GI Joe figures out- and introduced me to them. This was a wondrous experience. Although I had already been a fan of action figures - DC's Super Powers line, Masters of the Universe and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were my previous favorites - I had never seen these.

I was hooked, in an instant. GI Joe has been a part of my life ever since...and in fact, before I discovered NASCAR, it was my favorite thing in the world.

Even today, I can still remember some specific events from that day, which is even more meaningful to me because health problems have robbed me of a significant portion of my memory...and these memories also involve my dad, who I don't really have a whole lot of memories of- he worked two jobs up until 5 days before he lost his battle with cancer.

I remember my brother didn't have time to teach me the characters names, so we made up our own (By we I mean myself and my dad). At this point in time I can only remember one of the names we came up with- Tattoo for Gung-Ho. I can remember not being strong enough to lift the Headquarters, and following my dad down the stairs as he carried it to our main room. I remember after my brother got home, him sitting on the couch reading the file cards to me while I sat on the floor playing with the figures. (At this point, my dad was putting the Christmas tree together, which was a lengthy process). I remember my brother reading the cards to me after he got home, until mom finished dinner. The memory is so important to me, so ingrained, that I'm pretty sure I even remember what dinner WAS! (I usually do not remember what I had for dinner two or three days later. I can remember Wednesday's dinner but not Tuesdays, just three days ago, or anything before that...lousy health problems).

The one thing I do not have is any pictures. In those days before digital cameras, photos were reserved solely for people, and in fact there is not a single photo of me playing with my GI Joe toys. Not one. The only photo taken when I was actively collecting them is this staged photo where I lined them all up. (I still have all my figures, and have photo documented them, but it's not the same)

I have this photo labeled as 1991, but it might be 1992. This was likely the extent of my collection at the time, which of course included those my brother gave me.

As I've mentioned in the past, I am a lifelong comic reader. My brother read me my first comic at 5 days old, but the first comic I read in a series- not just random issues- was the GI Joe comic.

I remained collecting until 1994, when the toy line and comic were cancelled. But that wasn't the end of GI Joe. In 1997 the toyline came back and so did I, but the newer figures were of poor quality, and I stopped collecting them...I found out later, once I got on the internet and became active on GI Joe forums, that I quit with only 3 or 4 figures not in my collection. I don't remember if I ever hunted them down, but I think I did. The comic came back in 2001, and of course, I started them again. I would go on to get my first letter published in a comic in this title- possibly even more than one. This issue is the first that recognized I sent in a letter, although I do not have a letter actually in this comic. (it was not my first time being referenced in a comic, however- I am mentioned in one of my brother's letters, by name, in an issue of DC's Damage)

The toyline also came back in 2001 and I collected them as well, but by then it was mostly just me collecting them because that's what I did. I have little to no interest in the 2001 and later figures, and I stopped collecting them circa 2003...the last item I purchased was a 4-figure set which came with a DVD, and I purchased it mostly for the DVD. The figures are still being produced but they are poorly made, with proportions that don't look anything at all like a real person, or even the good figure design of 1982-94. I have no interest in getting them. I mostly retired from action figure collecting in 2007...I still pick up a random Star Wars figure here and there, and I have also started trying to complete the seasons of Starting Lineup figures that I was close on. Had I discovered the world of blogging before I did, there is a very good chance I would have created an action figure blog. (And, truth be told, I'm considering one anyway, to document all my figures- I still have them all!)

In 2010 (I think), the original comic series was re-started and continued even with the same numbering system. It's still running and I'm still reading it, which is today my only connection to the GI Joe brand. This is the most recent issue. Still written by the same man who has written them since 1982, by the way.

I remember the first time I added any figures to my collection. It was at our local Kay-Bee, a place I really miss. This was my first figure that was all my own...

You can see why I named Gung-Ho "Tattoo"

And while some of our figures have had "health issues" over the years...

 I still have them all, safely packed away, where I can pull them out and take a trip down memory lane when I need to.

I have not had the figures out now, except to photograph them in 2012, in about a decade, though. I have considered hunting for some of the ones I missed but so far have not done it. One in particular has eluded me all these years, repeatedly (Starduster)

Since this is a card blog, although I have gone off-track to my other hobbies from time to time, there are some GI Joe cards, and in fact I believe the 1991 Impel set was my second completed card set ever, after the 1990 Classic Monster Trucks set.

This was a 200 card set that covered most of the characters and even some of the comics.

There was a smaller set, from 1993, called Mission: Search & Destroy, that was available in several versions. (With and without foil, and at least one version without text on back- I don't know about that one, or if it was the only one produced that way), These were live-action photos of current year action figures. I still have a sealed copy of comic #135 with a card in it.

There is also a card set from 1986 or 1987 (I'm not totally sure which) that uses the drawing that was on each action figure's packaging. I'd like to get those for my collection at some point as well. I have none as of right now.

There was a set issued in 1994 for the GI Joe brand's 30th anniversary, but I believe that was for the 12 inch dolls of the 1960s only; I have only one card from the set, not sure where I got it.

So, there you have it. 25 years is a long time to be involved in a hobby- and while it's no longer the huge part of my life it once was, I would not be the person I am today without it, and although I have not purchased an action figure, or card for that matter, in more than a decade...(21 years for a card)...I still consider myself a GI Joe fan...and I expect I always will.