A 20 year old mystery solved

 I've been working hard on my Recovery project that I detailed a few weeks ago. I'm trying to get it done before Christmas, and as usual I found a bit of a rabbit hole to go down, and ended up solving a mystery that's been befuddling me for 20 years. 

Now, I don't mind mysteries in the hobby. It's part of the fun to figure out something that you come across and can't really identify easily. However, it's very much a frustration when it's something you got new yourself and just didn't remember, and that is the case with these cards. 

These three cards have been that mystery for me. I was thrown a bit by the fact that they are copywritten 1999, and feature 1999 season photos. I thought they were 1999 releases. They are lenticular and the picture moves when you move the card, but that is extremely difficult to capture in a scan.

As it turns out, they are actually from 2000, and were an Avon exclusive. Called the Avon Millennium Series, they came as a set for $9.99 in early 2000, and this is the complete set, something else I was not sure on. 

I ended up solving the mystery via ebay of all places. I had looked in the past with no success, but this time was different. A seller has a set for sale on there, and even better, posted the ad for them! 

This photo, taken from ebay seller treasure23, solved the mystery. 

There's a pretty good chance I have this page, apparently taken from an Avon catalog, somewhere in my storage unit. But possibly not, as I'm loathe to cut up a magazine, even a catalog. (If I do have it, it's likely still in the full catalog). 

I'm really glad to have this mystery finally put to rest. Although I have not really discussed it much on here, the cards that came with 1/64 diecast are a specialty of mine, and these were the only ones in my entire collection that I could not properly identify, so that makes it all the better. 

History's Calling

Are you reading this on your phone? In the past two decades, the cell phone has become a ubiquitous part of life. I know only one person who refuses to get one...everyone else has one, I even have two of them, one smart phone and one stupid phone. I can't imagine life without them, especially considering that since my TV died in 2016, I have been watching everything on my phone...it even allowed me to get into hockey.

But cell phones were not always the miniature computers they are now.

Like so:

This photo, taken in 1992 and appearing in the 1993 Action Packed set, may be the earliest card to show a cell phone. It's certainly the earliest card I've seen to show one. And, because it's Action Packed, it's also embossed, because that is what they did. The Action Packed cards generally don't scan well, though, because the scanner picks up on the embossedness (yes, I made up a word- if Shakespeare could do it so can I) and puts weird white lines on things....like his chin and nose. Almost like a reverse shadow.

The back of the card even captions the front photo:

1992 would turn out to be Kyle's best Cup season. Under the points system used from 2004-14, he would have won the Cup championship, in fact. He raced until 2008, and is currently a broadcaster for NBC. He still has the same haircut, although now it's kept in a ponytail.And is much grayer.  Felix Sabates still owns a portion of this team, now driven by Kyle Larson, although Chip Ganassi is now the primary owner of the team.

Hot off the Scanner Tray week 7- all 1990s NASCAR edition

It has been a slow week for me. I didn't really do a whole lot of scanning or anything else, even missing a few days where I didn't scan a single thing.

It doesn't help that I was sick again. 4th time in 2015.

I did do some scanning, though, and it was all NASCAR, all working on prepping the backs of the cards that I had previously done the fronts of during 2009-12. I've talked about that before.

Remember last week I showed a card where I accidentally cut the bottom of a diecut card off the scanner? Here's the replacement scan.

 I did all the base cards I had for 1999 Press Pass, which is all of them. But the final 36 cards in the set were short prints and I don't have all them. 1999 Press Pass is my favorite Press Pass design.

I finished 1996 Pinnacle Pole Position, a K-Mart exclusive set. Remember when K-Mart was a big deal in retail cards?

 I remember pulling this insert from my very first pack, back in 1996. In all this time I've only gotten two other cards from the most common insert in the set. (Interestingly, but coincidentally, the other two cards I have in the insert are Darrell Waltrip and Dale Earnhardt, the two drivers posted above. I just got the Earnhardt a few months ago) The card is holofoil.

 Sometime in the 1990s I purchased what was supposed to be a complete set of the foil version of 1996 Pinnacle. Instead of the actual #13 of Dale Jarrett, they included the Winston Cup Collection etched parallel instead. My copy got damaged being in my storage unit for several years. (I forgot I even had those cards until we found them down there!). I am missing the foil version of the card, making it 1 card short of the complete set.

I did all of my 1997 Pinnacle Certified set...a grand total of two pack's worth.

I also did all of the 1997 Racer's Choice and 1997 Skybox ProFile that I mentioned/posted several HOSTs ago.

I prepped, but have not posted yet, 1997 Pinnacle. I really like this set but I didn't get a lot of it when it was new. 1997 was not a good year for me for NASCAR cards, most of the ones I have I got much later.

Unfortunately not all the cards I have are in the greatest condition.

It looks like somebody used the back as a cutting board. there's more damaged that didn't even show in the scan as it was on the white portions of the card. I wish I could say this was the worst condition card in my collection, but it's not. Someday I hope to replace it with a better condition copy. Like I've always said, I'd rather have a low condition copy than no copy at all. And, the price was right (I was given this card)

That's it for this week, like I said, a slow week. Being sick kind of slowed me down as well, I have several posts in the Draft stage that I just didn't get to finishing, making this the first time I've posted two HOSTs back to back.