don't eat off THESE plates!

 I love me some printing plates, and I got 8 of them in my latest order from COMC, covering three sports. 

Even though they are 1 of 1 they aren't too expensive and this is the largest grouping I've ever gotten at one time, breaking my old record of...two I think. Maybe three.

This one, a Cyan plate of Norris Cole from 2015-16 Court Kings, is probably the most visually interesting. Since I had sorted them based on price, lowest first, I didn't even realize I got a different card from the Impressionist Ink insert, although a black plate...

but it's not as colorful as the Cyan plate was. This features Tarik Black, and is only my third or fourth card of him. 

This card comes from 2014-15 Flawless's Transitions insert, which was a neat concept...they tracked the different teams the player had been with. With only 2 cards in the set, Tyreke Evans was the smallest part of the checklist and I'm now halfway to completing him.  

The Nets became my first team with multiple plates in my collection when I pulled this out of the box, although the Pelicans and Lakers would follow by time I finished the box (not shown in order of getting). This Markel Brown card, however, is my first from the Brooklyn era. I pulled a Richard Jefferson from 2004-05 Topps Total when the set was new, and interestingly enough, I happened to be in New Jersey when I pulled it, having bought a box to bring and open at the motel the night before the NNL East model show. 

This Magenta plate of Nick Young is pretty colorful...the plates don't actually scan all that well, they are all nicer looking in person. This card is from 2015-16 Court Kings

the final NBA card comes from 2015-16 National Treasures and the Colossal Materials checklist. There's a lot of interesting detail in there which would normally be covered by a jersey piece on the non-plate version. Kind of a shame to cover it actually! This is Ty Lawson. 

Flawless and National Treasures are both stupidly expensive sets, and I will never open a pack from either of them without winning the lottery, so at least I was able to get some cards from them this way. 

I picked up this plate of Cayden Lapcevich from 2018 Victory Lane, which becomes my 4th or 5th NASCAR plate. While I was there, I also picked up the Red parallel and the base card for good measure. 

This set is all etched foil and scans really poorly but they look nice in hand.

I also picked up my second NHL plate, and from one of my favorite sets, 2019-20 MVP. This is one of the short printed cards from the end of the set, and it actually turned out to be my first card of him, making that the first time ever my first card of someone was a printing plate, or a 1 of 1 of any sort. It was just pure luck because I also grabbed the base card in the same shipment. 

He is wearing the alternate, throwback inspired design here as well, which is cool. 

Although this is only barely grazing the surface of the COMC order, there are no more cards that are 1 of 1 coming up but there's still a lot of great stuff. Thanks for reading.

Three Firsts and a Last

With my latest COMC box, I received my first ever NHL 1/1, a printing plate of my favorite player, Henrik Lundqvist.

2011-12 Rookie Anthology Printing Plate Cyan #75

Unlike a lot of people, I'm a big fan of Printing Plates. I have not counted up how many I have, but this, by being default my first NHL 1/1, is my first from my newest sport. I've actually been fortunate enough to pull two over the years myself, one each in NBA and NASCAR, but the last one was on Christmas Day 2006, so it's been a while. Hopefully someday I will be able to pull one from the NHL. Until then, though, I will pick them up when I can. The fact that my first one happened to be my favorite player is really awesome, too.

Before the COMC box arrived, I posted about getting our new car, and that I got two packs of 2016 National Hockey Card Day. Each pack only cost me $1, and I guess that's a good thing because the first pack only gave me two new cards, and one was the one-per-pack checklist. This was the first card added to my collection that came home in the new car! Just pure luck that it happened to be a Ranger! (and a current Golden Knight, tying my two teams together nicely)

2016 National Hockey Card Day #USA10

The third and final first for me is the first time I have pulled a card from the longest running parallel in cardboard history. The UD Exclusives parallel has been in the flagship Upper Deck set since the 1998-99 season, and I've pulled a bunch in the NBA. However, this is my first hockey example, and the NBA version is not the longest running parallel- the last issuance of it was 2009-10, and the 2001-02 set went by a different name. I opened a pack of 2010-11 Upper Deck Series 2 to get my Card of the Day and was quite pleased to find this one later in the pack.

2010-11 Upper Deck UD Exclusives #359

I don't actually have the base card yet, but I have very little from this set so that's not too much of a surprise. Maybe I will pull it from one of the other packs waiting in my stash? Serial numbered cards and parallels are two of my major obsessions, so this hits both of them, can't beat that.

And the last...I teased this in the past...I finally finished scanning every card in my collection from the 2017-18 seasons! I finished off the NBA a few days ago, when the COMC box arrived, but put off a few hockey cards until I finished scanning all the new editions from said box. Finally, at 4:13 AM on Tuesday, August 7th, I finished scanning the 2017-18 season as currently in my collection. This is the first time that's ever happened. When I got back in the NBA in 2012, I was already setting aside cards already posted to the Trading Card Database to scan later, after I finished doing what needed to get posted. Since I finished that project in December, that later has been now.  I've been working on scanning what was already posted for myself, I've been putting a focus on new arrivals into my collection, which I am also doing quite well on keeping up with, and then I realized that I was close to finishing scanning everything of the current season, I went through my boxes of "later" and pulled out the current season. While I suppose it may be possible that I missed a couple of cards, I think I got them all now. For the first time ever, I'm complete on the current season...and I was able to pull it off in BOTH my sports, something I didn't have in the past. I know to anyone reading this it probably sounds like "so, what's the big deal?" but to me it's a HUGE deal.  I have no idea when the 2018-19 sets will start showing up, but I hope to be able to keep up with this going forward...and this is the first time it's happened. Also, I don't plan to bring in as many cards going forward, because the monthly lease fees for the new Ford Edge are not cheap. In theory it should make it easier to stay caught up. Before we got the car I did pre-order a hobby box of 2018-19 MVP but it's not here yet...anyway, this is the last card that needed a scan to finish off the season.

2017-18 Parkhurst #162

Now, that's not to say I'll NEVER scan a card from the 2017-18 season ever again. I still have some packs waiting to be opened in my stash, but those don't count as part of my collection until I actually open them and find out what cards are inside. And while I'm cutting way back on new card buying, I'm not closing it off completely. I will still always be on the lookout for cards I don't have...and cards are still the only thing I ask for at gift giving (or I should say receiving) occasions. So I will get more cards from the season at some point. I actually have some of my remaining blaster from 2017-18 Upper Deck series 1 within arm's reach, so I could add new cards from the season without even standing up. But I'm going to enjoy the feeling of actually having completed something, and being "caught up"...for the first time ever...for a little while longer.

No National for me. Going to be posting here instead.

I really thought this was the year. My 30th Anniversary in the hobby, the first time I got to celebrate an anniversary- I didn't stop to count what year it was in the hobby until #26, meaning I missed 25, darn it. (25 was 2013, the year I came literally 5 minutes short of dying)  It just can't happen. Although the getting there part is solved, thankfully, by us getting a car. Getting in the door, the motel, the fact that I wouldn't be able to buy anything, it just can't happen. Don't get me wrong, having a car and being able to go to the doctor when I need to- which is fairly often if you include the tooth doctor, aka dentist, is a great thing. But we also paid for medicine with quarters today, so, yeah, I don't have the money to go to the National.

I'm not going to lie- I'm depressed. About it. (before it too, but that's a whole other story. And frankly, even if I was able to go, I would still be anyway...)

So instead I'm going to be posting here every day the first 5 days of August. I have a couple of usual features and 1 new one making it's debut.

I also got the largest COMC order I've ever placed- just over 400 cards- that I'd been building for months and months, and was paid, in part, by the sale of some of the duplicates from that case I did. My family mostly gives me money for COMC now for all gift giving occasions, which paid for 95% of the rest of it.

Considering my thoughts on that case, maybe it's better- for Panini- I won't be there to tell them my thoughts. As it is, they don't publish my comments on their blog anymore, even when I compliment what they are doing. They probably see me as a whiner, but in reality, I LIKE what they are doing- they just don't do enough of it. I don't want to start ranting about them again, and as I know, they don't care.

I don't plan to post all the cards I got from COMC this time- I've done that the last few times, it's a lot of work for posts that are basically "hey look at my new stuff". I'll post them up when I need to, of course, and some will be seen in the coming week, naturally.

For now, I'll show one of them though.

 The order contained three printing plates, and this is my first yellow! With this one, I now have one of each color. The other two WILL get posted, but I am not sure it will be this week or not. This is 2017-18 Panini Contenders #37, and that is Klay Thompson, in case you can't tell. I truly love printing plates. and this order, I think, pushed me past 10 of them in my collection, 2 of which I actually pulled myself. I may have cleared that mark already, I've never stopped to count how many I have. (you can bet I will be doing that soon) Yellow is my current second favorite color, behind green, which is not used in plates. So, I'm pretty happy to get a yellow. The other two in the order were Magenta, which is basically pink.

My point is, stay tuned for some content that I think is going to be interesting- and even if nobody else does, I'm going to post them anyway. And if you can go to the National, if you get any NASCAR promos you don't want, please consider trading them to me. I know they will be in the Panini sets. I would also like to get my hands on any NBA or NHL promos they do, but I know there are more people who collect them you may rather trade them to. If you do get there, have fun, most of all. From what I have seen online there's some incredible, spectacular stuff to see, cards and memorabilia that you can't see anywhere else.

Maybe one day I will actually be able to see that stuff with my own eyes. Until/if then (I doubt it will ever happen), I'll be posting here.

New printing plate arrival

I really love printing plates. I know most in the hobby don't like them, but I don't understand that. I think they are great. Occasionally I'll look to see if I can find any in my price range, and I usually do...actually there are usually a lot.

2004-05 Topps Total is a favorite set of mine- one of the only sets from the 2000s that made my Top 20 Favorite NBA set countdown I did in 2016, actually. It was also the first set I ever pulled a printing plate from, I pulled the black front plate from Richard Jefferson.

Now I've added a Magenta to my collection. Samuel Dalembert is not a favorite of mine, (he basically got kicked out of the NBA for beating up his wife) but he is part of NBA history and that makes him part of my collection.

I would really like to get an example of the other two plate colors from this set, maybe someday.

New Elton Brands from COMC- My first Elton Printing Plate!

I wrote this post up before Christmas but didn't get it up before now. Right before I was about to post I got a surprise package from my friend Angus at Dawg Day Cards. It was a Christmas gift and although he mailed it more than 10 days before Christmas it just arrived. The vagueness of international shipping, I suppose! I will get a proper thank you post up as soon as I can, but it'll not be until 2017 because I not only have a full slate of posts in the lineup already, but there's a lot of great cards here and it's going to take me time to make proper scans to show in the post. It's worth the wait though! I also got the trade I was waiting for that I mentioned in yesterday's post, but I've decided to save them and open them tomorrow- so I can get some cards on the last day of the year and the first day of the year, which will be the first time that has ever happened for me. You'll see them in my December trade recap but I have so much in the queue that I probably won't publish that until the 5th or 6th of January at this rate!

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My first Elton printing Plate! (I have some of other players) It's my second 1/1 of Elton. It is my favorite new addition of 2016 and though Christmas has not gotten here yet, it's going to be very tough to top this one!

This is such a special card that you even get to see the back of it, lol.

I love printing plates. This is the first one I've ever seen for sale for Elton, and even though it took up literally more than 1/4th of my Black Friday COMC budget I knew I had to have it. It's only my second card from 2009-10 National Treasures, also.

Although this one is great, and my favorite without doubt, I did get other new Eltons!

 2001-02 Fleer Authentix Jersey Authentix Unripped. I was just paging through the jersey cards sorted by lowest price, this was on page 2 or 3 (sorted by 100 per page) so I jumped on it.

 2006-07 JetBlue promo. They did these for several years. I just found out they did them at all when I saw this card for sale. I'll have to chase down the others.

 2012-13 Totally Certified Totally Gold. SN 12 of 25! I'm building the Totally Certified Rainbow, but the Black 1/1 is going to be a killer. This is my 3rd parallel (two numbered) but I don't actually have the base yet.

2013-14 Titanium Double Double. I had no idea this card existed until I saw it for sale. This makes only the third card in the Hawks uniform I'm aware of. The red jersey piece is from the 76ers.

With these, and three Hometown Shoutouts shown in Peekskill Pride, Elton knocked Gary Payton out of the top 10 in most cards in my collection according to the Trading Card Database. I keep my collection totals differently so the actual numbers aren't quite known to me yet. The Database shows 511 cards of him in my collection...but my records, which for Elton are totally complete, show him at only 486. The Database tags cards he shares with other people, team cards, college, etc. to his number, where for me team cards and multi-player cards get their own count, and college cards don't count at all. But even though that's a pretty big difference, the other guys he's around for the top 10 spot are also probably in the same situation, I won't know for sure until I finish scanning my entire collection, which is still years away.

Just gotta post this one again!

NBA 20th Anniversary Countdown #19: 2004-05 Topps Total

As it turned out, position #19 was the hardest one to choose. This is actually the fourth different set I had originally had slotted into the spot. Then I got to thinking about it more and I realized I liked another set more than the one I currently had in the slot. This one eventually won out. 19 was harder than 20th because although I love the concept of the Topps 10 set, the design was weak enough that it earned a spot in the top 20, but I knew it would go no higher.

#19: 2004-05 Topps Total

Why I like it: It's size. At 440 cards, it covers most of the players in the league. Even better, it also includes coaches and was the first set in NBA history to include assistant coaches and mascots! The 2005-06 Topps Total set is the only other set to do so, but the design of the 2004-05 set is much better.

Set size/Completion: 440 cards/I have 332 of them, 75.5% according to the Database.

The concept of the Topps Total set was to include as many players as possible- something I had hopes for 2015-16 Complete, but Panini only issued 330 cards while the NBA has 450 players. The 2004-05 Topps Total set also included what I believe are the first card images taken from a practice facility.

The back of the card is a bit of a letdown.

Most of the back is filled with useless stuff. A concept called Total should have included career stats, and it barely even touched the previous season's stats. But it was colorful, which I like.

The set featured a silver bordered parallel, a handful of rather generic inserts and printing plates, one of which I pulled from my box when the set was new. (Richard Jefferson - black)

Not all of the photos chosen were action shots, which, being a late season release, was a little bit of a letdown:

This is the only printing plate I've ever pulled for the NBA. I have some others that I got on Ebay.

• 20. 2002-03 Topps 10
• 19. 2004-05 Topps Total