Total Blaster #19

White Flag! The penultimate 2014 Total Memorabilia blaster was today, and it wasn't a bad one.

Josh Wise is new. I pulled the red parallel previously. Dale Jr. red is new- the first time Dale Jr. has appeared in this project- the Dania Acceleration and Tim Flock cards are both duplicates. I have one blaster to go and all I need to complete Acceleration is Dale Jr. We'll find out on January 1st if I do complete the insert. Knowing Press Pass, it'll be another Keselowski, which would be the 5th in the 20 blasters. 

Relic is Kenseth. It's new. I could have taken a better picture, but...it's Kenseth. good enough.

These might be the last cards I get in 2016. I still have two days and I'm waiting on a trade from the Trading Card Database. Since we have no working car we can only check the PO Box on Saturdays so I may end up getting them on the last day of the year. I don't intend to open any more packs in the remainder of the year so if they haven't arrived yet, this is it...and it's been a great year. These three cards bring me to 10,469 new cards in 2016, and if the trade gets here, that's about 20 more. (I'm not worried about it getting here, it's the third or 4th trade I've made with this person, I just mean if it gets here this year).

I will probably publish another one of my COMC Black Friday posts tomorrow, and then I have a rundown of my favorite new card from each month of 2016 to post on the 31st. I'm going to end the year with a whole bunch of consecutive days of posting, and by publishing this post December 2016 now takes the lead with most posts in a month...I didn't really plan it that way, but I've had a lot to post about lately. And it's going to continue into 2017 because I have a bunch of posts ready to go in the queue already. I don't think I can go post-a-day-everyday like some of the bloggers but that would be fun to try and do sometime.

Total Blaster 1 & 2

A few days ago I came across the pre-Black Friday sales Blowout Cards was doing, and while there was a lot of nice stuff at good prices, what caught my eye was a deal on 20 Total Memorabilia Blasters from 2014. The normal price on this was $400...and they were on sale for $99.11. That's more than I like to spend at one time, but I couldn't pass that up. Each one sold for $20 when new so that's some major savings. And I had very little of the set, too, which meant that in theory most of the cards would not be duplicates. I had only two blasters worth of the set, plus a couple of multi-piece relics I purchased on the secondary market. (Retail finds are usually single piece).

Well, they arrived yesterday and I determined that I was not going to open them up all at once, and spread out the fun, with my target date to finish opening them on January 1st. That came out to 1 box every three days after I did two the first day.

Just for fun, I decided I was going to blog about each box. I have not been posting too much NASCAR stuff lately but this will give me 19 posts between now and January. If I follow through with my plans...I don't always.

I also came up with a way to take better pictures of the cards too. Press Pass was making every insert mirror foil and the depth of the relic pieces make 3 out of 5 cards per pack tough to scan...so photos it is!

Box #1:

 Each pack contains one base card, one parallel and 3 inserts, one of which is guaranteed to be either a relic or an autograph. Most of them are from this insert set, single relic pieces, most of which are tire chunks but there are also cards with firesuit pieces and maybe some other stuff. I only had three base cards going in and the Almirola was one of them.

They go up to 4 relic pieces per card and each version has a different color foil. The silver foil single relic pieces are the most common. this Biffle piece shows quite a bit of cording in the tire as well, something I like to see even if it does mean that it's from well inside the tire instead of the surface that touched the track or the sidewall.
The Acceleration and Hall of Fame placques are mirror foil.

Box #2:

 Oof, a duplicate already, pulling the same Acceleration Brad Keselowski from both boxes. With only one base card per box, I don't think I'll complete the set, even though it's typical Press Pass microscopic 50 cards. I needed the Kurt Busch card shown here.

Now that's a great tire piece! This looks like it's got burn damage from the burnout shown on the card. I love race dated relics, too. I wasn't expecting this card, I forgot this insert was in the set.

And that's box #1 and 2. Future posts in the series will have only one box per, in theory. I'm not really known for my follow through, after all. I'm hoping I pull more of the truck tires from the first Eldora dirt race. I pulled Austin Dillon's from a blaster my brother got for me when the set was new. It's a fairly small insert, I think six or 8 cards, so maybe I will be lucky enough to complete it...or, barring that, I will get closer to it and be able to pick up the missing cards on ebay or COMC or something.

3 Years ago today I almost died.

Literally, 5 minutes later and I would not have survived. As I've alluded to in the past, I have health problems...Well, one I didn't know I had was diabetes, and it turned into Ketoacidosis. At the NNL East the week before, I had purchased a Mountain Dew out of the vending machine and by the time I was halfway through with it I was feeling really sick. (that didn't stop me from finishing it, however). As the day went on I was feeling worse and worse, to the point where eating anything made me nauseous. I blamed it on the Dew, sure that it had been tainted.

Over the next week, I got worse and worse, but I refused to go to the doctor. I have...issues...with doctors and will not go as a general rule.

Finally, on the 26th of April 2013, I could no longer stand up, I could barely see, I was having trouble breathing- it was bad. A call to 911 and a trip to the hospital led to the discovery that I was diabetic, and that I was suffering from DKA.

My blood sugar was so high that the ambulance could not read it; the doctors at the emergency room speculated that it was over 1200. The healthy range is 80-120. I had a 5% survival rate, and my mom was told that if 911 had been called 5 minutes later, it would have been too late.

I don't really remember much of that day- I was pretty well out of it. I do remember having them put the Knicks-Celtics playoff game on in the ICU and, bizarrely, I remember seeing Buffalo Wild Wings out the ambulance windows, but I was basically out of it all that day.

But I did survive....and I am actually in better health now than I've been in years, although there's still work to be done, and of course, there's the other stuff that insulin injections can't fix.

To celebrate the fact that I'm still alive, I decided to break into my pack stash and open up a few cards today. I opened up 2 packs of 2012-13 Panini Contenders, 2 of 2015-16 Complete, 1 each of 2009-10 Panini, 2010 Wheels Main Event, 2009 VIP, 2012 Press Pass (flagship) and 1988 Leesley Bigfoot, which, as you may recall, was the set that got me started in the hobby when it was new.
Normally I like to celebrate on May 1st, because that was my first day home, the start of a new life, if you will, but I decided to do some celebrating today too. For me, opening a few packs is a celebration!

Here are some highlights.

Could there be a more fitting tagline for today?

I actually got 1 Bigfoot card I needed- rare, the set is the worst ever for pack collation I've ever seen!

 This card is die cut.

My only new card from 2012 Press Pass flagship or 2009 VIP, where even the insert in the pack was a duplicate.

I'm sure glad that I am still here!

Birthday Cards (Of course I got cards for my birthday!)

Today is my birthday. My family makes a bigger deal out of it than I do to be honest, especially after I almost didn't have anymore back in 2013. (I turned 31 today, in case you are wondering). I always ask for cards, and usually nothing but cards. (This year I asked for some specific comics but didn't get any- I'll be getting them myself next month). My brother didn't get me cards, but he gave me something I have needed for a long time. A 2TB external hard drive. As I've already filled up 16 or so flash drives with my photography I REALLY needed one, and will begin exploring that after I hit publish on this post. I have been talking about getting one of these for over a year but I could never bring myself to spend the money on it when there were cards staring at me on the shelf.

And the cards, I got cards. Mom gave me nothing but cards, and I'm going to show some highlights now..

I'm just going to jump to the major milestone I mentioned in the last post- I knew I would hit 80,000 different NBA cards today. I sure did- I now stand at 80,025. It took me 19 years and 9 months to reach this milestone.
Here it is...from 2012-13 Hoops, Spark Plugs #6, Anderson Varejao

For some reason my scanner doesn't like 2012-13 Hoops so it puts lines on it. Close enough!  I actually got two new Varejaos today, I also got the Above and Beyond parallel from 2012-13 Panini Brilliance, but those mirror foil cards are not a whole lot of fun to scan so I am putting it off (LOL)

My birthday was not solely NBA...I know lately my posts have been more NBA-centric than anything else, but the NBA takes up literally 85% of my collection, so I have the most to post about. With no new NASCAR cards since last December also not helping. But there are lots of older NASCAR cards I don't have yet, and Mom got me an autograph, a relic, and an autographed relic, which scanned MUCH better than I expected it to!

Normally my scanner cannot handle any sort of depth, and Press Pass put the relics deep down into very thick cards. This time, my scanner picked it up perfectly. I don't get it, but I'm thrilled I don't have to use my other scanner than can do depth, but is badly damaged and means I have to practically recreate the scan. Off the top of my head this is only my 5th autographed relic for NASCAR. It's on-card, as well.

I got a blaster box of 2014-15 Threads. Each blaster box has two wood Rookie cards, and they are cool...

They are almost as thick as a relic, and the front of the card is truly a piece of wood. I only had two before today, from my single blaster I got when the set first came out.

Another cool card from Threads is the Team Threads cards. These are a hallmark of the Panini Threads brand, and they are pretty much the same from year to year- why mess with success? This year, the Rookie cards in this style are part of the base set, which is a first. I got Aaron Gordon from this blaster. It's only my second from the subset.

 

I really hope Panini does the Threads set again in 2015-16. They took 2013-14 off from the set, and I hope they don't again.

The relic from my blaster was Russ Smith. Russ was traded to the Memphis Grizzlies after the card was issued, but the jersey piece is from the New Orleans Pelicans- my very first jersey piece from the Pelicans! I now have a relic from every team in the league under their current name except the Charlotte Hornets, which used to be the Bobcats. (I have relics from the first Hornets, which are now...the Pelicans!) Every year there is always one rookie I get more cards of than any other- and even though I can't get as many cards as I once did, Russ Smith is still that one from 2014-15.

I also got a blaster of 2014-15 Excalibur. I really didn't like this set when I first saw it, but it's really grown on me. It's so easy to scan, it includes action shots from the season it was issued in, and it included a bunch of players who I didn't have in my collection- and I got two of them today!

 Bogdanovic is from my favorite team. Papanikolaou was not anywhere near as hard to write in my listing than I expected it to be :)

I also got my first Michael Carter-Williams on the Bucks card. Excalibur is the only set that includes images post-trade deadline. I am a fan of MCW.

My relic from the box...happened to be Chris Andersen. One of my least favorite players in the league. Still, I want to collect as many cards as possible, and that includes people I'm not huge fans of. I'm still happy to have it, as it's not a duplicate.
But the scan, though...I don't get it. There is not a lot of depth to this card, yet my scanner blurred the relic. I don't know how to explain that.

 I finally got a good scan of the Crusade insert! I have 7 of them now, three each from two blasters and one from a single pack, but the first 4 didn't scan well at all. Today, they did. I've always loved the refractor Prizm technology, and am glad every time I pull one, or three. Nash is my least favorite of the three players I got today, but scanned the best. (The others are Tim Duncan and Taj Gibson).

I can't let it go without saying how it irked me that Panini included Nash- who had retired by time the set was issued, the only retired player in the base set- yet refused to include Elton Brand in the last two YEARS worth of sets.

Overall, I got 56 new NBA cards, and 3 new NASCAR- although to be honest Mom couldn't wait and gave me the Nemechek auto on Friday :) I also opened a couple of packs of my stash of Journey to the Force Awakens but I have not scanned any of them yet. I have had an excellent birthday so far, and it's not over yet.

I also got a record number of birthday wishes on Facebook- last I checked, before I started typing this post, I was at 237...and this post took a very long time because my internet connection keeps going out every two to four minutes or so, causing me to fight with it and try to get it back again- which has taken a lot of fun out of posting.

We also had some snow, which is the second earliest I can recall!