Hot off the Scanner Tray Week 16

Been kind of a slow week for me. I didn't really accomplish a whole lot of scanning, been a little "out of it" for some reason that I can't quite explain. Normally I do 10 to 20 (or more!) pages a day, but in this past week I never got more than 6 pages, and that was the batch of Eltons I posted about in my last post.

But I did do some scanning, a mixture of older stuff and some new additions.

First, the new:
I finished my blaster of 2015-16 Donruss. I LOVE this set and I hope to get a hobby box. This season has been the best in the Panini era, design wise, in my opinion. Hoops just struck a chord with me, Complete was great, and now Donruss is another great one.

In my penultimate pack I pulled a SN insert parallel, numbered to 78...an odd number. There are two different versions, one numbered to the player's jersey number, the other numbered to the remainder of the player's jersey number, with 99 being the highest number (for players who wear #1 or #0). It's a little convoluted, and the card doesn't tell you which version you have. The version I pulled, numbered to the remainder, is called "Inspirations".

Oh yeah, it's also die-cut and holofoil.

The last pack yeilded a Karl-Anthony Towns RC...only my third RC of him, joining Prestige and Complete. I don't have his Hoops card yet.

I also got my first card showing the Oklahoma City Thunder's new orange alternate, which debuted during 2015-16.

I got my 4th CBA team set from SportLots on April 1st. I will be doing a set piece post on the CBA at some point in the future, they have a very interesting history and it deserves a closer look than a blurb in a HOST. I want to hunt down examples of some of their other sets first.

I bought a small lot on one of the card forums on Facebook, I don't even remember which one, but it yielded a patch...

I bought something called a "Loot Locker" for basketball back in February...it didn't show up until this week, and two of the packs were college. Blah. I won't be ordering again.
The sole NBA pack was a good one though....2014-15 Totally Certified, which saw me get two SN parallels and an autograph.

One of the college packs (2014-15 SPx) had a relic in it. It's only my third college relic.

Now, onto the stuff that's been in my collection a while.
Since I got the 2005-06 Topps 1952 Style Chrome Elton, seen in  my last post, I had to do a page of the old school brown back cards.

I had these two handy, so they got scanned. Yeah, non-NBA makes an appearance! Rare, I know :)

Speaking of non-NBA...

This card has been kicking around in my box of "Special- to be scanned with similar style cards" box since March of 2015. It kept getting pushed back because it is a die cut etched card, not a real common characteristic, but I did do a couple of pages worth since this one entered my collection, however, it never made it onto the scanner tray, largely because the set is done on the Database. I know I don't have 8 more die cut etched so I finally just did it with a page of non-die cut etched cards. (Normally I scan with a green backing, but when I have a die cut I want to scan with others, I put a white index card behind it).

I found this in my duplicates box. Technically it is, but my previous copy of the card had a piece of WHITE firesuit. That's a benefit of having your collection scanned, you pick up on stuff like this...eventually!

Normally, my Canon scanner doesn't pick up details of Press Pass relics of later years, because they made them set really far back in thick cards. I had an open space when one of the cards I tried to scan turned out to not work (some sets have too many lines on them, notably Upper Deck issues from 1997-99) so I figured I would give it a shot. And surprisingly, it picked up details in the black! Go figure.

Now, back to the NBA.
This one was not scanned in the last week, but I didn't post about it when I scanned it during my NBA 20th Anniversary Countdown, but I did process it to the Database this week (it was already on there) so I will show it now.

It's die cut and clear plastic. Very neat effect. I've also got Stephon Marbury from the set. It is an insert in 1999-00 Topps Gallery.

I was lucky enough to pull the Big Three RCs from 2003-04 Topps Chrome. (LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, Dwyane Wade). This is the final one of the big three I needed to scan.

 

And that's it for this week! Thanks for reading! 

My first group break- Spectacular success!

A few weeks back I signed up for my very first Group Break. My friend CaptKirk of the Database and his own blog ran a multi-box break and the price he was asking was not particularly high so I took a chance and purchased the slots for several teams.

I could not have guessed how well it would turn out when I began....but it was spectacular!

I took the Nets (always my favorite team), the Knicks, Thunder and Warriors. Had I know how much fun it was going to be I would have taken a couple more teams.

I took the Warriors and the Thunder because two of my three favorite players currently in the League play on those two teams- Steph Curry of the Warriors and Kevin Durant on the Thunder. I was hoping to get an insert or maybe a parallel.

Instead, I got these:

A Steph Curry autograph and a Kevin Durant relic parallel numbered to 25!

When I read CaptKirk's post about the box, all I could think was to quote Trevor Bayne when he won the Daytona 500 in 2011, "Are you kidding me? Am I dreaming right now?" Surely this could not have been happening to me...nothing ever goes this well for me. But here they are, in my hands..."not a dream, hoax or imaginary story!" This really did happen. I am still trying to wrap my head around this, it is so good.

This is also my first Thunder relic. They moved from Seattle to Oklahoma City in 2008, but I was not collecting the NBA at that time, and since I've gotten back into it I can't afford to buy boxes of each set issued, sometimes in multiple like I used to do, in fact I rarely get boxes at all anymore. Since I launched Cardboard History in November of last year I've done only one NBA box. So, I had not pulled any Thunder relics at all. Now, I not only have one, I have one of my favorite player on the team, and it's a truly rare parallel!

But that's not all!

I also got the Perry Jones autograph as I had the Thunder. The Magic were not claimed and Kirk randomed off the unclaimed teams, so I got Kyle O'Quinn's auto from 2013-14 Hoops. The Prestige autographs are hard to photograph due to the mirror foil they used- and I had to remove a few finger prints digitally, because I didn't take enough time to make sure the cards were clean before I took the photos. Oops.

But wait, there's more!

Lots more! These are the base cards, inserts and parallels of my teams. Some of these are going to be duplicates, but there are also more than a few new cards in here as well. Some of these are numbered, most are not. The Hoops cards of the past two years look great from the side, as well. The 2013-14 cards have no black border on top and bottom, while 2014-15 does. I did lots of retail packs of 2013-14 and a hobby box of 2014-15 Hoops so most of these are going into my trade stash...but I know I didn't have the Kevin Durant base card from 2014-15 Hoops before and there is one of them in there. I will be going and listing them in my paper listing as soon as I hit post on this post.

Kirk also hooked me up with the majority of the 1991 Topps American Gladiators cards, which I didn't know existed until I learned he had some. I loved that show when it was new, and when it was replayed on ESPN Classic a few years ago, I still enjoyed it. Looking through those cards brought back some great memories of when I was younger. I forgot to photograph them, though.

Thanks again Kirk! This was an amazing experience and if you do another, I will take the same teams and more.

Edit to add: I got 103 new cards from the group break. That does not count the Gladiators cards. And here's a scan of the Curry auto, just because...

I had so much fun with Kirk's group break, I also joined one for 2014-15 Panini Spectra on Dave & Adam's. It doesn't work the same, and it was much more expensive. It wasn't as much fun but I did get two great cards. My photo is blurry but you can see the refractor...err, I mean Prizm...technology and the Gary Harris card is serially numbered 4 of 5. I might do another with them some day but it would have to be something with more cards in a case. Quite a few people payed to get into that case break and got absolutely nothing....not even their money back.