(Belated) Birthday cards

 My birthday is October 18th, and every year I know my family will give me cards. It's the main thing I ask for, usually. This year was no different, and my family covered all three of the sports I collect.

Mom had actually given me the Star Rookies set once before, but I did pull a blue parallel of Lane Hutson, who won Rookie of the Year. 

Donruss 2025 has been a frustrating set. I purchased a blaster back in August and a Mega Box in September. The Mega Box was fine on the outside but every single card inside was badly damaged. The contents of this blaster were mostly the same as the first blaster, but I did get replacements for 4 or 5 of the damaged cards from the mega box. In typical Panini style, the cards are in the same order with different parallels/inserts. 

I pulled a Ty Dillon autograph which was really cool. 

The highlight of the Birthday cards was the Haunted Hoops. I really love that set, which is perhaps a bit surprising as I generally don't care much for Halloween. These are so fun though. They have updated photography post trade deadline so in a lot of cases it's my first cards of a player with a team. They also have in game photos from rookies instead of posed Rookie Photo Shoot shots like the flagship Hoops and Donruss do. Since I don't get many cards anymore there's also quite a few players appearing in my collection for the first time here. However, they are also just genuinely fun, especially the parallels. 

The base cards look like flagship Hoops but without foil and spiderwebs added:

There are two main parallels that are pretty common- you get one parallel per pack and it's most likely going to be one of these two:

Pumpkins or Slime. I really can't decide which one I like better. Slime is neon green (my favorite color!) and purple, while Pumpkins has those awesome pumpkins. Wait, I'll show the Tribute subset which shows them even better.

It's impossible for me to not love these cards. 

But wait, that's not all!

There are multiple holofoil parallels this year too! There are 5 holofoil "level 2" parallels and I was able to pull two of them. 

Webs, which is black and orange themed, and Bats, which is also purple and green, which is so cool. And it's serially numbered! There were no numbered cards at all in last year's set.  There are two other numbered parallels I was not able to pull- Trick or Treat, which I don't know what it's numbered to, and Sky, which is numbered to only 31 copies. Hopefully some day I will be able to add some of them to my collection. 

It still looks so weird and wrong for Klay Thompson to not be in a Warriors uniform. This is, I believe, my first Mavs card of him. 

Panini only did this set for two years and I'm generally not a fan of Panini's stuff, especially the last couple of years, but I am genuinely going to miss this set. 

As usual, my family gave me a great birthday, and my apologies to them (even though I know they won't care) that it took me so long to get this post written. 

Guilt free...but I still feel guilty

I feel guilty for two reasons- it takes me a heck of a long time to get a thank you post written- and I feel guilty/bad about the fact that I'm tapped out on stuff to send back, since I have not been buying too much lately. Of course, I am referring to madding's Guilt-Free Basketball Card Club, and the recent package that arrived from the Pacific Northwest chock full of Nets, Warriors, and now Knicks, goodness.

And when I say goodness, I am not kidding.

This Jarrett Allen autograph floored me- this is a big time card. Certainly a card I am too much of a cheapskate to ever buy for myself, that's not in question. But that wasn't all!

 From 2012-13 Totally Certified, a memorabilia parallel.

 My first card from this year's Certified

 He sent me two copies of this card- one with a white fabric swatch, and this one, which is dark blue, but scans black. It's my first card from this insert, to boot!

 I didn't know they did a blue Velocity in last year's Optic until I got this card!

 While Westbrook doesn't play for either of the thee teams I've claimed, I'm happy to have this insert from last year's Hoops. Westbrook does not get enough credit for what he's accomplishing.

 Most people classify this as a Warriors card, but I actually track it and class it as an All-Star card.

 Love the texture on the various Kings inserts from that year's Donruss.

 An insert I needed from 1994-95 Hoops, one of my all-time favorite sets!

This isn't the base Fleer card, I completed that set a long time ago. This is the Tony's Pizza promo version, which is much harder to find! In fact, it's only my third or fourth from the promo set. The only difference in the cards is the Pizza cards are not numbered.

And that's not all. There's still 19 more cards I have not scanned yet- but I can't hold this post off any longer while I wait to get them scanned up.

Thank you Kerry!

While I'm on the topic of thank yous, I received a rather large single card PIF from cnangle of the Database. This was a big surprise to  me because we had an argument a few weeks back and I'm not actually sure we're on speaking terms right now, aside from the obvious surprise of getting a needed card from 1969-70 in the mail unexpectedly! I owe him a thank you for sure, this is not the first time that he has sent me stuff and I have not sent him anything yet. I will be changing that hopefully fairly soon, but since I move at a glacial pace it might still be a few months.

No National for me. Going to be posting here instead.

I really thought this was the year. My 30th Anniversary in the hobby, the first time I got to celebrate an anniversary- I didn't stop to count what year it was in the hobby until #26, meaning I missed 25, darn it. (25 was 2013, the year I came literally 5 minutes short of dying)  It just can't happen. Although the getting there part is solved, thankfully, by us getting a car. Getting in the door, the motel, the fact that I wouldn't be able to buy anything, it just can't happen. Don't get me wrong, having a car and being able to go to the doctor when I need to- which is fairly often if you include the tooth doctor, aka dentist, is a great thing. But we also paid for medicine with quarters today, so, yeah, I don't have the money to go to the National.

I'm not going to lie- I'm depressed. About it. (before it too, but that's a whole other story. And frankly, even if I was able to go, I would still be anyway...)

So instead I'm going to be posting here every day the first 5 days of August. I have a couple of usual features and 1 new one making it's debut.

I also got the largest COMC order I've ever placed- just over 400 cards- that I'd been building for months and months, and was paid, in part, by the sale of some of the duplicates from that case I did. My family mostly gives me money for COMC now for all gift giving occasions, which paid for 95% of the rest of it.

Considering my thoughts on that case, maybe it's better- for Panini- I won't be there to tell them my thoughts. As it is, they don't publish my comments on their blog anymore, even when I compliment what they are doing. They probably see me as a whiner, but in reality, I LIKE what they are doing- they just don't do enough of it. I don't want to start ranting about them again, and as I know, they don't care.

I don't plan to post all the cards I got from COMC this time- I've done that the last few times, it's a lot of work for posts that are basically "hey look at my new stuff". I'll post them up when I need to, of course, and some will be seen in the coming week, naturally.

For now, I'll show one of them though.

 The order contained three printing plates, and this is my first yellow! With this one, I now have one of each color. The other two WILL get posted, but I am not sure it will be this week or not. This is 2017-18 Panini Contenders #37, and that is Klay Thompson, in case you can't tell. I truly love printing plates. and this order, I think, pushed me past 10 of them in my collection, 2 of which I actually pulled myself. I may have cleared that mark already, I've never stopped to count how many I have. (you can bet I will be doing that soon) Yellow is my current second favorite color, behind green, which is not used in plates. So, I'm pretty happy to get a yellow. The other two in the order were Magenta, which is basically pink.

My point is, stay tuned for some content that I think is going to be interesting- and even if nobody else does, I'm going to post them anyway. And if you can go to the National, if you get any NASCAR promos you don't want, please consider trading them to me. I know they will be in the Panini sets. I would also like to get my hands on any NBA or NHL promos they do, but I know there are more people who collect them you may rather trade them to. If you do get there, have fun, most of all. From what I have seen online there's some incredible, spectacular stuff to see, cards and memorabilia that you can't see anywhere else.

Maybe one day I will actually be able to see that stuff with my own eyes. Until/if then (I doubt it will ever happen), I'll be posting here.

Mail from Madding does not make me mad

I recently got a semi-surprise package of cards from madding of Cards on Cards. I say Semi-Suprise because I claimed a team from him...and then totally forgot about it. Got a lot on my mind is the only excuse I have.

I had already been getting the Nets from him, but now the Warriors are added to the Nets package as well.
Cards like these:

 Jeremy Tyler's a pretty rare player- this is only my 5th card of him.

But of course that wasn't all...there were some much needed Nets, as well!

I especially appreciate the two Sean Kilpatrick cards. He was one of the few bright spots on the Nets last year, and now that they traded away Brook Lopez, he might just be my favorite player on the team. This is only my 2nd and third cards of him!

But that still wasn't all!

I love the oddball stuff in Allen & Ginter. Last year I even bought a pack hoping to get one of the non-sport cards (I did) but this year money has been too tight for that...I missed out two of the NASCAR sets and would have missed out on Excalibur if not for trading for some. This is my first card from the 2017 A&G set.

I will be sending you back some Blazers come October! Thanks again.