An actual post about cards! + Contest announcement

 Most of my posts lately have been more focused on the "history" part of Cardboard History, but today there is a very small post about cards. I actually scanned some for the first time in months! I had to get my scanner out so I took care of a few odd shaped cards, and I thought I would share them with you all, mostly just so I could actually put up a post with some fresh card content. 

I'll start off with the biggest card first, one that barely fits onto my scanner tray. 

That is the Matt DiBenedetto hero card I got at the showcar appearance back on September 11th.

And you get to see both sides. Look how much info they can cram onto a card this size! Of course, I'm glad this isn't standard size because collection storage would be a lot harder. NASCAR hero cards don't have a standard size, although this is probably as close as you'll come to one. They come as small as 2 standard size cards to as large as 14 inches (and maybe more, that's the largest in my collection). This is the first hero card I've gotten at a show car appearance since 2008 so that's pretty darn cool, too. 

Next come the two cards from the Sports Cards Inc. A Word from the POTUS set that I showed photos of back when I got them, here are legitimate scans. These are neat cards and luckily I have a good scanner because I didn't take the Reagan card out of the holder. The back is partially obscured by the sticker they sealed it with but it's just some color that's lost, no words or anything. 

Finally, we have this 1999 Racing Champions promo card, which I didn't even know existed until my friend sent it to me. Kraft apparently was a secondary sponsor on Kenseth's Busch car that year and they made a promo of it that included this card. Like I said, I had no idea but I'm glad to have it. The promos can be kind of a love/hate relationship. I love when I get them, but I hate the fact that I'm missing some of them because I simply don't know they exist so I can't look for them.. I know of at least two other 1999 promos that I found out existed within the last couple of years. Haven't tracked them down yet, though. 

It's not much in the way of cards, but at least I got a cardboard post onto Cardboard History. 

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I feel like doing a contest. Next Monday, October 18th, is my birthday. But one of you is going to get a present...of sorts. Back in January I bought a large lot of NASCAR cards, but many of them are in low condition. Bad corners and surface scratches abound. They aren't good enough condition to put onto my tradelist but perhaps one of you out there might like them. So, here's the contest. Sometime on October 18th, I'll put up a post about the contest and maybe my birthday too. Be the first one to comment on THAT post (not this one) that you want the NASCAR cards and I'll send you a whole bunch of them. That's it, simple as that. You can promote it if you want but it won't get you anything, just be here...that's all that's required. 

Thanks for reading.

COMC Christmas: NHL & NASCAR

Combining two of my three sports into one post, since I didn't get a whole lot of either of them.

First, hockey, which has already surpassed NASCAR in my list of favorites- although, while I type this up on Sunday afternoon, I'll be watching the Busch Clash or whatever they call it now instead of the Rangers/Jets game.

I only added one of my favorite NHL Player, unlike six of my favorite NBA player and three of my favorite NASCAR driver. Just how the cards shook out this time. However, this is a serially numbered insert parallel, my first numbered card of his, so it's a good one!

 My first card from 2003-04 Black Diamond on the hockey side, and my first Leafs relic. Sorry, CrazieJoe, I got this one for me!

 Manon Rheaume made history when she played in two pre-season games for the Lightning in the 1992-93 season. I wish she had gotten into a regular season game...but it was not to be. She was exclusive to Classic at the time, which did not make NHL cards. So, she didn't get a proper NHL card until many years later when they started making "history of the sport" sets, as 2008-09 Upper Deck Masterpieces was. I had been wanting to get a card of her in Lightning gear for a while and finally found one in my price range.Even though it's a painting, not a photograph, it still counts.

 I got this one because I'm good friends with someone with the same name. and it cracks me up whenever I see a reference to this guy. And, it's SN. I didn't realize until the box arrived and I was entering the cards into my listings that it was also my first card from 2012-13 Artifacts.

 I'm sad that Jarome Iginla appears to have retired, but glad I got to see him play, at least briefly, during 2016-17. When I was reading about the sport shortly after I discovered it, he jumped out as a favorite because he has done a lot of work to try and combat diabetes, one of the many things that I have wrong with me. This is also my first card from the set, and it's numbered, so winning all around here.

This is a brand new set but is exclusive (no pun intended) to Canada, so I likely won't see it for sale anytime soon. I decided that I wanted an example for my set, and I figured, I might as well get a SN parallel, and the UD Exclusives concept has existed since 1998-99- the longest running uninterrupted parallel in cardboard history. (THAT pun was intended). I also figured, since I was hand picking a card, why not get one of the Women's Team members, thus adding a new person to my collection and slightly increasing the vastly-outnumbered portion of ladies in my sports card collection? I was only half successful on that regard, because it turned out I already had a card of her and had forgotten. She got one in Sports Illustrated For Kids about a year ago. I'm still happy to have this card. And, the other one is a Multi-Sport card and this is a hockey card, so they technically count as two different collections. She didn't make the Olympic team this year.

 I pulled a Clear Cut parallel of Brayden Schenn from my box of 2016-17 Upper Deck Series 2, and I thought it was really neat. So I looked to see if I could add some more to my collection. They are a little pricey, but with how rare they are that's not too surprising. I was able to add one each from 2016-17 Upper Deck Series 1 and 2017-18 Series 1. I've always liked clear plastic cards, and these are just plain cool.

With a tip of the hat to the similarly named but not related Kin Kinsley, I stocked up on Young Guns from 2016-17 Upper Deck series 2. I got a hobby box from my Mom for Christmas, and I had remembered Kin mentioning that thanks to E-Pack, you could get most of them for cheap on COMC. He wasn't kidding. None of these cost me more than 42 cents. All but four of them are my first card of the player - Milano, Kylington, De Leo, and Johns were previously in my collection. with Kylington and Johns joining my collection on Christmas day. The Sonny Milano is actually from series 1, I meant to only buy S2 cards but my enthusiasm got the best of me I suppose. With the Auston Matthews in series 1 I doubt I'll be able to ever afford a box so the Milano should not ever be a duplicate anyway. I know, thanks to the Matthews in particular, I can never hope to complete the 530 card Upper Deck Flagship, (I count the updates as part of the set being updated, not the set it was packed in), but I will get as many of them as I possibly can.
I was in such a rush, I accidentally purchased a copy of a card I had just gotten in the box I got for Christmas. It's not shown. Oops!

Now, I move on to the NASCAR cards I got with this Christmas present. It's only 5 of them, and only three drivers are represented.

 For some reason, NASCAR cards on COMC tend to be higher priced than NBA and NHL cards. I rarely add any from there, and if you recall I've mentioned that I wasn't able to add any Dale Jr. cards from COMC in the past. That changed, as I added two numbered cards and a relic. I don't know why that changed, but I am certainly happy about it! Dale Jr. is my all-time favorite driver, and I look at his cards regularly. I don't know if its because he's retired now (I'm unhappy about that, but with his injury history I am not too terribly upset- another bad wreck might not have been walk-away-from) Interestingly, the Stealth card that leads off this section of the post, I have the base version of. I only got one pack of 2007 Stealth, so the odds of having that base card from my sole pack must be pretty low, despite only being a 90 card set. (this one's also Refractor technology!) I had to rescan my base version recently because I had accidentally cut off the bottom white border when I originally scanned it circa 2009. The card also shows the biggest problem Dale Jr's cards have had- every Cup card from 1999-2007 were censored. Drives me nuts. Luckily, when he went to Hendrick Motorsports in 2008, Budweiser did not go with him and thus, no more censorship. The Car cover from 2009 Press Pass Pieces comes from an insert set that was available only one per factory set. I got Jeff Gordon in mine, can't complain there.
The 2011 Legends Gold is just a cool card.

I make it a point not to buy current season cards as singles. I did it in the past, and then got burned by pulling another copy of the same card from a pack. More than once, which led me to swear off doing that forever, except for serially numbered cards or rare inserts. Yet, I broke that self-imposed rule for this card. Photos of cars on cards is rare. Press Pass never really figured out that a NASCAR set should show cars, and when they did throw a few out there, they went with superstars only, usually only 5 or 6 per set. Panini has done better...but still manage to do it wrong. The car cards in Select are short printed. I've done three blasters and pulled one of them. The blasters are no longer available at my local Target, sold to somebody who is not me. I figured I would risk it and buy this card. which is my first Cup car card of Matt DiBenedetto. I think it may be my first of Go FAS Racing as well, but I'm not 100% sure on that- I don't remember the new cards as well as I do the cards of the 1990s. For under a dollar, I figured I would risk getting a duplicate at some point in the future, but it seems unlikely. The Select brand returned to NASCAR in 2017 for the first time since 1995. The 1995 set (which really was all about, and had photographs from, 1994) is one of my favorite NASCAR sets and I'm one card away from completing it. Panini got the brand when they got the Pinnacle brands. Until I joined the Trading Card Database, I didn't know it had a run in baseball. I thought it was a one-and-done set for NASCAR. It has appeared in the NBA for the past several years as well. All the Select brand sets under the Panini aegis all use Chrome technology, which Panini calls Prizm.

 Racing Champions is special to me. I discovered the sport via a big box of Racing Champions cars on 12/26/1992 and they remained my favorite for as long as they had the license, which was 2005. They practically invented the concept of diecast replicas of NASCAR cars, and they did invent the concept of putting trading cards with them. I have realized, a little while ago, that when NASCAR took away RC's license is when my disconnect with the sport really began. But that's a whole other topic. I have the largest known Racing Champions NASCAR diecast collection in the world. I've worked hard to build it, and in fact, when I was mostly out of cards in the 2007-08 time period, it's because a large portion of the money was going towards getting the Racing Champions cars I always wanted but never had. I estimate that I am under 200 cars away from having every single one they produced in 1/64 scale, although I constantly find promos and variations I never knew existed. Before I got diabetes, I would buy them when I did, but now I can't afford to do that anymore. I will, however, pick up some from time to time, and I have a list of cars that I would buy if I could find them, because I looked for so long and never could.

One thing I would change, though, is HOW I collected them. I got a lot of them second hand, loose, without cards. Others, I would get the five packs, which didn't come with cards (but usually had an exclusive car or two). That latter way is how I got the 1999 Jimmy Spencer car. If I could go back to 1999...I would have done things a little differently. I would have still gotten the 5-pack, due to the exclusive car, but I would have gotten the individually issued car as well, because it came with the card. The 1999 year was unusual for Racing Champions. Most of the cars were reissued several times during the year with a different card design. That year, and that year only, the card was shaped to fit the package, die cut and oversize. Hard to store. The issue number was not printed on the card but only on the bottom right corner of the package. Jimmy Spencer only got two of the 82 numbered issues, one for the standard scheme and one for the gold scheme. I got the gold one when it was new, but I didn't get the card for the red standard scheme until finding it on COMC. The more popular cars- Mark Martin, Ricky Rudd, Jeff Burton in particular- had lots of cards in the set, and the only way to tell them apart at this late stage is to find a copy of them for sale on Ebay. Luckily, most are easily found still. Unfortunately, both of Jimmy Spencer's cars and cards were censored, as he was sponsored by Winston.
This is the car this card would have come with, or darn close to it. RC would modify the cars as the season went along, to more accurately reflect the actual car, so the 5-pack car may not match the single packed car exactly. However, the 5-pack is the only one I have.

I try to search for Racing Champions cards on COMC once a month or so- or whenever I get some money, at least- and I rarely find any I don't already have...only coming up with this one in the last year. But it's one more I didn't have previously, so I'm still happy about that!
This card is #40, by the way.

Only one more post to finish off my COMC Christmas.

NASCAR Relics

I didn't get too many NASCAR relics this time but I did get a few.

I don't have many "triple threat" cards for NASCAR, and tried to change that. But for some reason they tend to be more expensive on COMC than NBA or NHL auto/relic/SN combos. So I was only able to add this one.

 This one has something I've never seen before on a relic card...the glue holding it in place is starting to come through the card. Once I noticed that it went back in a penny sleeve.

Top 12 Cards of 2016

2016 was a great year for me cardwise. The rest of the year? Well, it wasn't as bad as 2013 or 2014, there's that.

But cardwise? One of the best, even though I spent less money on the hobby this year, the cards kept rolling in anyway thanks to the kindness of fellow collectors. Two of my top 5 most new cards in a day both came in 2016, and both were gifts from fellow collectors. A non-blogger hit me with 1192 new cards, 1127 of them NASCAR, on July 16th, and then just in November Gavin at Baseball Card Breakdown dumped a bunch of his unwanted cards on me, and I ended up getting 2827 new cards that day, the second most I've ever gotten in one day! (Thanks to the box being mostly baseball, football and naked ladies, none of which I had much of, so not a lot of duplicates). I'm writing this before Christmas, and I've already gotten 9,777 new cards in 2016. More than half of them came to me as gifts, with more than a third just from those two gift packages alone!

I decided I would go through my Excel charts, and pick out my favorite card from each month, and showcase them here in one end-of-year post.

Some months were easy, but some of them were tough. Not for lack of choice, but because I got so many great cards! Two months actually had cards that I truly feel bad to leave off, but I went both times with cards I had been chasing for 15 or more years, and that carried a lot of weight with my selections.

Here now is a look at my favorite new card from each month...some of which I've never shown on the blog before!

 January...this was the first card I got from this set, and it's Elton...with all three of the Clippers colors including a patch, plus it's SN25/25. Has a lot going for it. This won't be the last time you will see Elton in this countdown.

 February. 1997-98 Ultra is a favorite set of mine (remember it was in my Top 20 countdown of my favorite sets, which I did in January and February). I had never gotten a Platinum Medallion from the set, so I went looking for one and found Kevin Willis. Each of the Platinums are SN to 100. Later in the year I would add the Serge Zwikker from the same set. I also added the 1999-00 and 2000-01 Platinum Medallions to my collection in 2016.

 March. This is my first patch from the Brooklyn era of the Nets, and when I bought it, I didn't know it was SN1 of 25, so not only is it a bonus in that I love SN1 cards, 1 is also his jersey number!

 April is the one month I really didn't have a strong standout, usually there were one or two that stood out, a couple of months I didn't even have to really think about. This one completes the Foil set of 1996 Pinnacle. Back in the 1990s I bought a set of these at a card show, but the seller didn't know what they were doing and had included a Winston Cup Collection parallel in place of the actual #13. The Winston Cup Collection cards were one per box or less, I believe, so it worked out OK, but the set was one card short for several years.

 May. I pulled this one! It's the first time I've pulled a One of One since Christmas 2006. I never showed it on the blog because I was trying to complete the Rainbow first, but I came up short on that so it makes it's blog debut today.

 June's is a simple base card, but it's been one I've been chasing for years. I did a box of 1994-95 Topps Embossed around the year 2000, but I came up one card short...#57, this one. I've been chasing it ever since. I even had someone on the Beckett message board years ago tell me they had the card but wouldn't send to me because "it wasn't worth the effort"...even though I offered to pay for it. I finally got it on COMC this year.

 July is when I got the huge box of mostly NASCAR cards, and this was my favorite in it, that hat relic for Martin Truex Jr. is the kicker. Part of the NASCAR logo!

 August is when Panini debuted their NASCAR sets, and for the most part I'm really happy with them. I got a box of Prizm (the first set) and I knew one of the cards from that box would be the card for August. Even though I got an autograph SN10, I couldn't remember which one without looking it up...(I have several autographs from the set now) I remembered this card without any trouble and so it got the nod.

 September and November were the two toughest months for me to choose. September came down to three cards- this one, my first card from 1938 Horrors of War, my first card from any version of the 1966 Batman sets, and the Bill Walton autograph that Angus sent me for winning his contest. I ended up choosing this one because Horrors of War is such an iconic set- considered to be the most historically important non-sports set ever- and I'd been hunting for an example for so long. I thought that I had found it one other time in the past but it turned out to be a different military set from the same producer (Gum, Inc, which I believe became Bowman).

 This one stands out for the month of October. I got some great cards during the month and even a bunch from this rare set, the sticker insert in 1971-72 Topps (the first standard card sized insert in NBA history) but I had to choose the ABA logos over the NBA logos. This is, I believe, the only card ever to show the majority of these logos in color. For the Condors, Pros, Rockets and Squires, I believe this is the only time these logos appear on a card...ever.

 November was by far the hardest month to choose. I had been chasing this card for 15 years, and Racing Champions holds a very special place in my collection. I also got a great sketch card, made apparently just for me, by Gavin of Baseball Card Breakdown, of Elton Brand. It came up between those two and basically the fact that I had been chasing this one for 15 years- a card I never thought I would ever get-got it the nod.
I'm basically going to say it was a tie for the month of November.

December, however, was the easiest month. Yes, I wrote up this post before Christmas, which is always a big day for my collection as my family knows what I like and treats me very well- but my very first Elton Brand Printing Plate is going to be pretty much impossible to top! I saw this card on COMC, and I had to buy it, even though it's actually the most I've spend on a single card in about 12 years- it cost me $28. Luckily, I had the money available...sometimes during the year I wouldn't have, but I did, and all was well. Ironically the card it's a plate of is ALSO a 1/1 so finding it will probably not be possible.

And that's my top card from each month. I really enjoyed doing this and I have the record of each card from each month beginning in 2014...so expect to see rundowns of 2014 and 2015 coming shortly into the new year.

I didn't want to end the year on a sad note with my In Memorium post so this goes out as the final post of 2016- my second full year of blogging, most successful by far as well, as I topped 150 pots for the first time ever...and with this being my 25th post in the month of December, it's also my most successful month of posting as well. I consider finishing a post to my liking enough to actually post it a success, by the way.

Prizm is here! Box Break Review: 2016 Prizm NASCAR

That was a long wait! The last NASCAR release was back in 2014, named as a 2015 set, and we've had nothing since. Until today! Panini got the NASCAR license back in February and the box finally hit store shelves today. I pre-ordered a box, something I rarely ever do, from Dave & Adams, and they got it to me today. Naturally, I opened it up. It was a great box! I really enjoyed the cards, and the Prizms- this is the first time ever that the Refractor/Prizm technology has been used in NASCAR. It did not disappoint, even if all my numbered Prizms were from Joe Gibbs Racing (LOL)

Since these cards take forever to scan, due to their Chromeyness (if Shakespeare can make up words, so can I) and don't look all that good in scans anyway, I decided to take pictures.

First things first, Panini actually includes car cards, which is a great thing!

Not so great, most of them look like they've been run through an Instagram filter. Especially check the #88 and #4 cars. The #4 is supposed to be a black car with a white stripe, there shouldn't be white on the roof and hood. It's a night shot so there is some reflection but it's been messed with too much.

It's still better than Press Pass, which didn't bother to give us cards of cars at all! Unfortunately, not every driver got a car card. That's one of 3 things that keep me from giving this set a perfect rating.

The Prizms! Glorious, glorious Prizms. This is what we've all been waiting for. Like I said, the Refractor/Prizm technology has never been used in NASCAR before, and it was well worth the wait! They fall on average every other pack for base Prizms, as I ended up with 10 of them in 20 packs. I wish I had pulled a Prizm of a car, because that's what I was waiting the most for, but I will be buying some retail to chase the Wal-Mart and Target exclusive colors so maybe I will get one there.

Inserts...meh. The Competitors insert is kind of pointless as the majority of base cards use photos from the official photo shoot done in Daytona at the start of every season and these do as well. Winner's Circle includes victory lane celebrations from 2015's races. I had to pull Kenseth, one of my least favorite drivers.

The inserts all have Prizms, which is nice, and I pulled three from my box. They are hard to photograph, that is the camera flash bulb reflecting on Hamlin's hand. I like the Prizms quite a bit!

Aside from the base Prizms, there are colored parallels which are serially numbered. I love these, especially the two car cards. The Rainbow is SN24, the Blue SN99 and the Green SN199. There are some other colors I didn't get as well. These are truly spectacular and some of my favorite cards from the box.

The only die cut card in the box, I'm not sure if these are all die cut or if that comes with the fact that it's a Prizm parallel. It's a great card either way, and it's the King...the photo dates to 1992.

the green reflecting is my shirt

Here are the base cards. If I counted right I got 55 of 100, and that's one of the of the other things that keep me from giving the set a perfect rating. 100 cards is simply not enough. Especially when some of them are wasted on subsets. The Driver Introductions subset is not needed. We would have been better off if those photos were used for the base cards and the space they took up on the checklist was used for card cards- or more Xfinity or Truck drivers, who only appear in the autograph sets, which make them pretty tough to find as you get one autograph per box. Lots of up-and-coming future stars got their first cards, but appear only on the autograph checklist- drivers like William Byron, John Hunter Nemechek, Christopher Bell and others.

The third thing that keeps me from giving the set a perfect rating is the back of the cards have no stats at all. I didn't expect full stats as Panini simply never bothers to do that, but I expected last season's and career totals- and this is even more important as Racing-Reference.info may be shutting down due to the owner's poor health. (Something I'm very familiar with- get well soon!)

One thing I REALLY like about the card backs is that they include team logos. Off the top of my head I believe this is the first set ever to include team logos. Some sets have had the team name in text, most don't bother to include it at all. This is something that's been sorely missing from NASCAR cards since we first started getting them in 1988.

Now, I bet you are wondering what my promised three "hits" are...

Here they are!

I got some really good ones! The Newman tire was the first I pulled. Tire pieces are the most common relic in NASCAR, which makes sense as they go through a lot of them on race weekend and sometimes even give them away when they are used up.

The Carl Edwards autograph came up next, and it's a Gold Prizm, which means it's Serially Numbered to 10! I got SN05/10.

The Matt DiBenedetto patch came out of the very last pack and is SN 05/25. It's one of the nicest NASCAR patches I've ever pulled, and I've always supported BK Racing...for hopefully obvious reasons! The back of the card talks about his 6th place finish at Bristol this year, the text, while limited, is nicely done on all the cards I've read, although to be honest I have not read all that many yet because I've been working on getting this post and the pack I did on A Pack to Be Named Later up!

Overall, I am REALLY happy with Panini's first NASCAR effort, and I'm glad I was able to get a hobby box of it. It's the first box I've done since (I think) October so it was double the thrill.
There is certainly room for improvement but for the first effort they did a fantastic job. I have not looked forward to a NASCAR set this much in quite some time, and it really didn't disappoint. We need more car pictures, we need stats, we need more cards- 100 cards doesn't cover a sport at all- but what we did get is great.

Panini had three more sets due in 2016, but I don't think I'm going to be able to afford boxes of them; one of them is scheduled to be several hundred dollars for 5 or 6 cards, I wouldn't do that even if I could afford it. It takes a LOT of the fun out of it, (I don't like buying singles, opening a pack and being surprised is the most exciting to me) but I will pick up whatever card is cheapest on COMC just so the set is represented in my collection, eventually. The next set due out is supposed to be a blaster-only set and the cards are going to have a dark gray theme.

Thanks for reading, and thanks to Panini for bringing cards back to the sport!