Basketball Hall of Fame Part 6 Kobe Bryant exhibit

 Today's installment of the Hall of Fame series focuses on the Kobe Bryant exhibit, which is a special put on by Panini. 

My favorite part of the exhibit, even more than the official recognition of cards in the Hall of Fame, was that all 5 of Kobe's Championship rings were on display together. 

World's largest basketball card.

Note the gold NBA logo, which signifies this as a 1996-97 season jersey, Kobe's rookie year.

The rings!

Those dots are reflections of the lights

I had no idea this promo pack existed until I saw it at the Hall on December 19th. Andy aka bbcardz of Stadium Fantasium sent me one of the packs as part of my Secret Santa gift on the Trading Card Database just a week later! 

They also had a small room that was showing the movie he made and won an Oscar for on a loop.

Kobe

Shocking, sad news out of the NBA today...Kobe Bryant was killed in a helicopter crash. Man, Kobe was an icon of my generation. The 1996 draft was the first I saw, one of the best ever, and Kobe was probably the best player in that class.

There's not much more I can say that hasn't been said by others already. He was just a special talent. I know he may not have been perfect, didn't always do the right thing...but that doesn't mean he isn't an icon.

After he retired, he dedicated much of his time to coaching youth sports, and that's what he was doing today...flying with his 13 year old daughter to a game, which she was to have played in and he to have coached...hearing that the other people on the helicopter was a teammate of his daughter and one of her parents, and the pilot. None of them survived.

Just last night, LeBron passed him for third all time in NBA scoring. His last social media post was congratulating LeBron.

Kobe was only 41 years old. Names and ages of the other people on the helicopter have not been revealed yet.

So many sports people have been killed in small plane crashes, just since I began watching them...it's terrible. And people wonder why I won't fly....it's partly because I keep seeing people I know of getting killed.

Kobe cards rank 2 out of my top 5 greatest pulls ever...

 This scan is not very good...I didn't know what I was doing when I started out...I pulled this card on Christmas Day, 2000. It was only the second jersey piece I had ever pulled myself, the first coming earlier that day. And it was autographed as well...

I don't remember when I pulled this one, although I'm sure I have the info on paper. The AutoFocus set from UD Glass is printed on thick clear plastic.

I'm still in shock over this...RIP Kobe, Gigi and the other three people who we don't yet know the names of.

A visit to a new dealer

I was happy to find a new dealer recently. But that's not entirely accurate...I've known the dealer since around 1994...he moved to a new location which is much easier for me to get to, and even better, he's got a lot of new stuff. I was able to go thorough only 3 of the boxes he had there, before my back gave out. I managed to find over 100 cards, and even a couple of new sets and one person who was missing from my collection. Here are some highlights. And by highlights, I mean more than half of the cards I got. (Over 100!)

Only NASCAR card he had that I didn't, I do now of course.

He had 5 RC from this set, and two of them were SN093/300

2009-10 Panini Season Update is a new set for me

2013-14 Court Kings is a new set for me

FINALLY got this Elton!

Dwight Buycks was the only new player added to my collection. I thought I added two but it turned out I already had a card of James Anderson, and forgot

I originally wrote this post up in November 2015, and never posted it. I determined that it didn't have the usual thought and effort I put into posts, and was just showing a bunch of cards with little context other than "Look what I just bought!". I can do better, so it sat untouched in my queue for more than 2 years. I decided to go through my drafts to see if there was anything from one of my posts that never went anywhere that I could salvage. While this is not my greatest post, I decided to finally post it, just to get it out of my queue. Since that time I've visited the dealer about a dozen times so "new" is not really correct anymore, but....it is what it is.

Sorry for the lack of good stuff to read, but hopefully you enjoyed the scans, at least. I'll be back to hopefully quality posts next time In theory!