Some new Non-Sports Additions

I don't like to do a lot of "Hey look at my new stuff" posts...I like to put more effort into it, make it more interesting to read, and not look like bragging. That isn't me...I am always grateful for any cards I can get.

But I have not been in much of a writing mood lately. (Have you seen the last time I updated my other blogs?!) . All kinds of stuff has been going on, most of it not good...Honestly, I am still reeling from my remote hard drive dying, that really messed up everything I was doing. Constant health issues are taking a toll on me as well. Part of the reason I won't be going to the National, even though I have been looking forward to it for about 3 years now, when I found out it was going to be in the next state away. I've only gotten one good night's sleep in the last week because my scumbag neighbor is constantly making the house vibrate with their "music".  On Monday I only got 3 hours sleep. And this happens every day.

But I have still added some new cards to my collection, mostly non-sports. I visited my favorite local non-sports dealer for the first time since February last Sunday (Sunday before last now). You've already seen one thing I got from the dealer, now here's the rest. As usual, I spent a lot more money than I planned to....but I kept it under $100, although if I got everything he had that I wanted it would probably go into the 4 digits. I am mostly just hoping it doesn't sell out before I can save up enough to get everything. Anyway, I am going to show you most of the cards I got from this latest trip, and I'm going to break them down by subject.

I got 7 new holograms, which is the most I've added to my collection in about 18 years. (when 1997-98 SPx came out, the last hologram based NBA set) I LOVE holograms and will always go for them if I can. I have dreams of completing the hologram sets from the DC and Marvel issues of the 1990s....again, someday. I consider holograms the best "hit" in the history of the hobby...better than autographs, relics, SN cards (which I also love), etc. To me, the holograms were the glory days of my youth, so there's the cool factor and the nostalgia factor.

I thought about titling this post Hologramarama! but decided against it because I had more non-holograms to show than holograms.

History

History is my favorite subject, I am always reading something related to history. So I naturally go for history cards when I can get my hands on them. I added three new history sets to my collection and one of which I didn't even know existed before I got it.

1957 Topps Planes is a set I've been trying to add to my collection for years. I have bid on them on ebay multiple times, and I keep losing. He brought in a lot of them- probably about 100 cards- but I didn't see them until I had picked out everything else, so I only got two. I love blimps- I would ride in the Goodyear Blimp if I ever got the opportunity, and this is the very first blimp card in my collection! The Aerocycle is actually my first card from the set, and I have to say, that seems like a really poor idea. Which is probably why it didn't take off (pun intended). Both are blue backs. The set was made with both red and blue backs, and the blues are more common. I don't know why there are two versions.

1954 Bowman Power for Peace is another new set for me. It's the only card he had from the set, and now I have it. It's normally large Bowman size, which means it's taller but not as wide as modern cards, making it a little hard to store.

1958 Card-O Planes, Trains and Ships was the set I was not aware of before I found it. As you can see, it's in really poor shape, but I don't care. I don't normally accept ripped cards in my collection, but I couldn't pass it up. (it was also free, due to condition...apparently nobody else wanted it.). The corners are rounded but I don't know if they were supposed to be, or if it is just wear/damage. It's only a 20 card set, but are numbered up to 30. Several numbers were never made. I didn't realize how common that was back in the day until I started getting older cards. When I was younger anything older than 1977's Star Wars seemed forever out of reach.

I also got a handful of 1956 Topps Flags of the World. I had two cards previously but both were trimmed. (I think whoever did it was trying to make them match standard size cards, which debuted the very next year, but failed miserably) These were not trimmed, and are in better shape to begin with. I got every one he had.

#2

#18

#39

#68

#77

The Norway card is my favorite, for several reasons, which I hope to detail more of in a future post.

DC Comics
As I've mentioned several times, I grew up reading DC Comics. I had my first one read to me when I was 5 days old, and I've been with them ever since...until July 1st of this year, when my last new one arrived. The people running DC now have no idea what they are doing and have pretty much killed it. I never imagined a time I would not be getting DC Comics, but...that time is here. I've talked about this before. Luckily, there are older comics to chase, and older cards too. Including....Holograms!

The first one is from the gray bordered set from 1992 called simply DC Comics, while the next two are from the 1993 Cosmic Teams set, which has purple borders. They continued the numbering system for the holograms from one year to the next, though. The first ten are in the gray set, the last six in the Cosmic Teams set.

 Not a huge Lobo fan, but...holograms make everything better.

 Not one of Jon Bogdanove's better artistic pieces, kind of a surprising choice. You can really see the blue and red of his costume though in hand.

 DC Master Series Foil of Hawkman.

 Primal Force was a great book, unfortunately it got cancelled after only about one year, and the characters mostly never appeared again.

 A base card, an insert and a two-panel promo from Power Chrome Legends '95. I still think I have a complete set of these somewhere lost in storage, but the heat has affected them, so I will still pick up base cards when I find them cheap enough.

 An insert from 1996's Superman Holo Series. I now need only #H1 to complete the 4 card insert set!

I actually passed on a couple of other cards from this hologram set, not too often I pass up Holograms, but I wasn't sure if I had them already or not. I knew I didn't have this one. The Holograms were one per pack. The movie was not good, but at least it gave us holograms.

Marvel Comics
I never really got into Marvel. But I have more Marvel cards than DC...Marvel always did a better job with cards than DC did, and in fact, many years DC didn't bother to have cards at all. Marvel took a break from cards but is back in full force now. The largest selection of cards I got this trip are Marvel cards.

A hologram from 1991 Marvel Universe and one from X-Men Series 1, the latter gold. I don't know if they are all gold or if this is a parallel. My first hologram from each set. This Gambit one is the first hologram I found that day.

 Four cards from 1993 Marvel Masterpieces. I like this set because each card has two different color foils, and the colors are ones you don't see too often- light blue, green, purple, red all appear on these four cards. I got some of this set when it was new but not too many.

 Four Holofoil inserts from 1994 Marvel Masterpieces. These are really nice in hand. Very sparkly. I had Captain America previously so I now have half the set.

 Four inserts from 1994 Marvel Universe, my favorite Marvel set. I am actually closing in on completing it. I'm six cards short of the base set, two short on the Power Blast set (Punisher) and I think three short on the Suspended Animation insert, which were all printed on clear plastic and have all yellowed badly. I loved the cartoon these Suspended Animation cards were all based on by the way, although it's been about 20 years since I've seen an episode. Somewhere I have an actual cel from the cartoon I won in a contest circa 1993.

This one is from the 1995 X-Men Chrome set, it looks really cool in person so I got it. Much better than the scan. This is only my second card from the set- I have one other insert card, no idea where I got it as I know I didn't open any of this set.

There's one more Marvel card that needs the other scanner, but I don't feel like getting it out for one card so it'll have to wait for another post. 

Star Wars
I may have had my love for Star Wars pretty much killed by the horrible decisions they have made under the Disney regime, but there's still classic Star Wars to collect from the good times.

 Card #1 and three of the 6 embossed inserts from 1996's Star Wars Finest. I didn't realize the Solo kids got cards in that set, for some reason I didn't get any when it was new, and in fact I only had one card from the set before these. I need to hunt down the card for Jacen.

This is actually a post card advertising 1997's Star Wars Vehicles set. As my family can attest to, I've always loved the B-Wing so it was cool to see that it was chosen over the more popular and well known X-, Y- and A-Wings. The card is kind of flimsy so I'm surprised it's survived as well as it has for the past 19 years. The cards in the actual set are unfortunately mirror foil. Technically it's an ad and not a card but I counted it as a card- close enough for me.

Everything Else
I picked up some other random cards as well.

 A Canvas insert from the 1996 Amalgam set. For those who don't know, in 1995 DC and Marvel had a collaboration where the characters fought each other (I still have several ballots, including some never opened) and then, the year after, they collaborated again to make Amalgam, where the characters were merged with the other company to make new characters with traits of both companies. This character is very obviously a mix of Wonder Woman from DC and Storm from Marvel. They created a shared character named Access who was supposed to appear in both companies books, but he only appeared in one comic from each company and then they started fighting again.

This three-card panel advertised the comics AND the card set, and I don't think I have to tell you who were merged to make Dark Claw. It's the size of three full-size cards, but that doesn't really show up well on the blog.

The Fire Engines set is the largest automotive set in history, running 500 cards over 5 sets and two card publishers. This is a Prism insert from 1993's series 1, and depicts a 1938 American LaFrance owned by Denver, Colorado.

I have no real idea what this card is. I bought it thinking it was from Marvel, but..it's not. It is from something called "Cyberforce" and appears to be based on some independent comic. As a DC loyalist I have no real idea. It's clear plastic and kind of holographic, similar to 1995 Maxx Crown Chrome NASCAR set.

Last card for today is actually a NASCAR card, but it kind of fits in Non-Sport too. It's a postcard, postcard size, and was issued by Press Pass for Christmas 1995. It may have been a boxloader in 1996 Press Pass, I don't know. The Press Pass flagship was usually issued very early, and by the end of their run the flagship set was getting released around Thanksgiving of the year before. it feels like the 1995 set more than 1996 though, and has the same font as 1995...plus a 1995 copyright. Either way I had to have it!

As someone who loves NASCAR and Christmas, how could I not? Don't be too surprised if you see this one again come Christmas time.

And that's it for today. I'll try to get back to actual writing someday. You may be seeing some of the "Sets in my collection" series coming up again soon.  I have about 20 of them written and ready to go, and I am just not in the writing mood so I may have to move them out of the queue. They've been waiting since late 2015 when I got on a writing jag and did about 30 of them in one day, some of which have since been posted.

Lost & Found Part 2 / NBA Finals Update

I've got a small post today, which covers two topics. First is Lost & Found Part 2. We worked on the storage unit most of the week and found more cards. (Every day has turned up at least one card, although not all of them were new).

I also processed the cards into my collection and discovered that the bag's worth of cards I showed in Part 1, well...it wasn't all duplicates. My gut reaction was that it was, but there were cards in there that were new, in all topics except the Craftsman cards which were clearly my duplicates from the packs I opened when the set was new in 1995. Surprisingly, some of the NBA stickers were NOT duplicates, and some of the NASCAR was not either, including the Bobby Labonte card shown in the photo. I am now pretty much convinced these were unsorted cards- a mixture of new and duplicates that I must have put in the bag to sort later, sometime in 1996, and never did! I would not be surprised if they were cards I got on vacation in Lake George that I put in the bag to bring home and when I got home, totally forgot about. That seems unlikely but I can't imagine any other senerio how that could have happened. Perhaps it was one of the many times I was sick or something. I don't know.

Here is a breakdown of the new cards I've found so far...

I created an Excel chart so I could get the screencap, I will try and keep it updated and post a new screencap in future Lost & Found updates.
That is a LOT of cards! Scans of some of them are at the bottom of the post. 

Unfortunately, not all the cards survived in perfect shape...

Thankfully, they were all duplicates! The Desert Storm card would not have been if I hadn't opened a box of the set in 2010. The Marlin card was really badly curved but it's already flattening out some. I think I can get it flat if I put it under a full 5000 count box. (If anybody wants it, or the Jarrett shown I will PWE it to them.) Keeping the Desert Storm card for now until I can compare it with the one from the box, there were a lot of printing variations in that set and I don't want to lose a variation by mistake.
Also, one of my pet peeves in cards is when people don't rotate a card to it's proper orientation, like making a horizontal card stand vertical...yet I did it in this very photo. Duh!

While not technically cards we did find some of my stash of card packaging. I am the kind of person that saves empty boxes and packs...all of them...no matter how many I open. (Remember, I'm a hoarder...) I will be working on scanning all of these boxes and posting them to the Database...but doing the boxes is not a lot of fun, so I may get bored and put them back in storage for a while. We'll see. That 2003-04 Ultra box shown in the photo is the first box I opened after I got my first digital camera in 2003. I know this because I took a photograph of it back then, which was the first photo of anything card related I ever took, at least on digital. I do have some taken on actual film too.

I would like to say that I kept them neat and in boxes most of the time, like so...

but most of them time they ended up stored like this...

Yes, that is a trash bag full of card boxes! And I have to say, I'm glad that they don't do blasters where you have to rip them apart to get at the cards anymore. I don't recall seeing blasters before the 2001-02 season but I could be wrong. These were some of the earliest I got, or at least remember getting. They will be fun to scan. [/sarcasm]
If I were to get any like that now, instead of ripping them I would use a letter opener to cut one of the end flaps, but apparently that didn't occur to me in 2001-02.

Now, on the other topic....when I wrote up the post previewing the NBA Finals, I made a big deal about LeBron James making it to his 6th consecutive NBA Finals. That is a big deal, because so few players in the NBA's 70 seasons have done it. But...I made a big mistake, in that I totally forgot that James Jones is also playing in his 6th consecutive NBA Finals! Jones, a career role player, was on the Miami Heat from 2008-09 through 2012-13, including the 4 consecutive years they made the finals, and then he followed LeBron to Cleveland where he made the finals again in 2014-15 and this year.
Despite the fact that he has been in the NBA since 2003-04, he has not been popular on cards, not receiving a singe card in 2006-07, 2008-09, or 2011-12. He only got one base card in 2015-16, Complete #268, which is shown.

 I had to get this in here because the Finals may be over by the time I make my next post. The Warriors have a commanding 3-1 lead heading back home, one more win and they will raise the 2015-16 NBA Champion banner...and they get to try at home, where they beat the Cavs by 15 and 33 points(!) in game 1 and game 2 respectively, so...it's pretty much over. A game 6 will surprise me, let's put it that way. We'll find out Monday night.

Now, back to the first topic, here are some scans of cards that I have found in storage. It takes a lot longer to scan then photograph or type about so this is only a small sampling. There will be more to come.

1992 Score '90s Gridiron Stars #4

 All the football cards found were from 1992 Score, and I have no memory of them whatsoever. Three of the inserts needed to be done for the Database so they are the only ones I scanned now.

1992-93 Upper Deck Hologram Set Checklist

 I found the complete box set, which I remembered having but didn't know where it was!

1994 Upper Deck USA Gold Medal #82

 A parallel from a set I had completed.

1995 Maxx Retail #235

 I found a pack's worth of 1995 Maxx Retail, of which 4 cards were new. The Retail version has no foil, whereas the hobby version of series 2 has foil and glossy coating.

1996 SpeedFlix ProMotion #1

 There was one pack of SpeedFlix that the Marlin and Jarrett cards shown above came out of, this one and a Mark Martin card not shown were also in the same pack. They both have some curvature but not too bad- they still sit pretty much flat.

1997 Action Rich Bickle. This was a 1-race only car.

Power Chrome Legends '95 #67

 I love the Power Chrome Legends '95 set, always have. Like all Chrome/Finest/Prizm cards, though, I like them less now that I scan my collection instead of just looking at them. I still think I have a complete set waiting to be found in storage.

Power Chrome Legends '95 #73

1997 Upper Deck Electric #207

1995 Upper Deck Electric #242. This is the card visible on top of the NASCAR stack in post #1

1995 Ultra X-Men Hunters & Stalkers #3. I think this is the base version but it may be a parallel.

 The Hunters & Stalkers insert has three variations and I can't really tell them apart. I know one version was a Wal-Mart exclusive but I don't know which version this is. I know it's not the gold version because the background would have been gold instead of blue.

1993-94 Skybox 1993 All-Rookie Team #AR5

1996 Return of the Jedi Widevision Promo #P1. This is the bent oversize Star Wars card talked about in post #1

Winner's Circle 1997 Lifetime Series Dale Earnhardt Bonus Car

This card does not actually show Dale Earnhardt, though. Dale only drove one race in the #8 car in 1975, the World 600 at Charlotte. In that race, the car was solid blue with a yellow hood bulge, yet Action insists on using the car with the entire yellow roof, which you can tell this photo is by the stripes that run the length of the car. This is almost surely Ed Negre in the photograph. although Dick May drove for Negre once and Dean Dalton twice. Adding insult to injury: Negre, who was both a car owner and driver in NASCAR from 1955-79, (owner until 1981)....does not have a single card of his own. This is likely literally the only trading card to show him, and he's not even mentioned...not even on the back of the card. Negre died in 2014 at the age of 85.

Here's a photo of the car as Dale drove it. The yellow rookie stripe proves that this is how Earnhardt drove the car- Negre, May and Dalton were all veterans in 1975.

And from the front.

Photo credit on both goes to the Randy Ayers' NASCAR modeling message board.

This is the diecast that the card shown came with. Clearly NOT correct!

I and several others have been trying to get Action to issue the correct solid blue car for years, but they don't even acknowledge us and the photo evidence, let alone correct the error.

If there are any strange typos or words being in the wrong place, I managed to slice open my finger tip of my left pointer finger on, of all things, a plastic Christmas light. It's not a bad cut, but it does require a band aid, and it has thrown off my typing a bit.