Total Blaster 20: The End!

I bet the few people who are reading these are happy this is the end. I know I am! Not because I dislike the cards, but because I really dislike how Press Pass did it. It was only a 50 card set, and you only got one per box...yet I got more duplicates than new, I think, including today, where it goes out with a whimper...as only one card is now.

 Stenhouse base is a dupe, Stewart red parallel is a duplicate, the Edwards Acceleration is not even the first time it's been a duplicate and that is the most frustrating. It's a ten card set...you got one per box and I got 20 boxes, so you'd think I would have completed the insert, especially considering I already had two of them before the project started...but NO. I did not get the Dale Earnhardt Jr. card. Ingram is also a duplicate.

The one new card is the relic, which is Kasey Kahne. This makes it the first year ever my first card of the year was a "hit", I think. (relic/autograph). This one has a scuff on the tire piece and two wear tabs, so the relic is a nice one. I'm happy to get that one even if the rest of the box was a waste.

The best thing though I think, is that this very disappointing series is now over. Let's never speak of it again. Unless you want to trade for any of the many duplicates, that is.

And to think I put off my Goals of the Year post for this...

Total Blaster 15

It's funny how November was a great month for me for posting, but December has been dragging. I got my big order from COMC - big for me- that will give me at least 5 posts. Hit a couple of big goals/milestones as well...But I have not done them. I wrote up two, and I still have posts from November- and some going back to 2015- in the queue but I just can't be motivated to post them. In November I could have easily cranked out two or three posts a day.

I can barely crank out these Total Memorabilia blasters that quite obviously nobody cares about based on views/comments on the posts. Only 5 more to go after this one!

 Michael Waltrip base is new. This is now the 3rd time I've pulled that Vickers red parallel in this project. Even though the set is only 50 cards. Typical Press Pass.
Tony Stewart is a duplicate, I'm down to only needing the Dale Jr. for that set.
I could swear the Maurice Petty was a duplicate, from this project, but my records show the card as being new, and he's not got a tag yet, and I've been tagging everyone who appeared in one of these blasters. Even I don't want to go read through the previous 14 posts in the series to see if I made a mistake somewhere along the line, LOL.

Relic's a nice big piece. I'm not a huge fan of Harvick, but I'm still happy to have it. Even though the picture is craptacular (I should have used my cell phone, instead of my actual camera) it does one thing for me- I didn't notice that there is a piece of blue on there, letting me know this comes fromt he sidewall. There is a blue outline around the yellow tire lettering and I didn't see it when I was looking at the card...now that I saw it on the photo I checked and you can see it- I just missed it. Also, have the base of a wear tab although the tab itself is gone. That's kind of cool.

Total Blaster 6

A little later than I normally post in a day, but let's face it- nobody cares about this series so I don't feel too bad about it.

Today was the final day of the NASCAR season, and I actually watched the race...normally I just listen while I do other stuff. (that's how I do most sports actually). I enjoyed it. Not necessarily my pick who won, but I can't say I'm really unhappy with it either.

I opened my blaster of 2014 Totally Certified when the race was on about lap #70, but since I was actually watching it, I never got a chance to post it before the race finished.

I have not been all that happy with NASCAR lately, but I find when I actually watch as opposed to just listen, I enjoy it more.

Ricky Stenhouse Jr. is a subset celebrating his 2013 Cup Rookie of the Year. There are only three subset cards in the 50 card set and this is the first in my collection.
Tony Stewart Red parallel, fitting to pull on the three-time champion's final race day.
The Danica Acceleration is a duplicate, and the Dale Jarrett Hall of Fame Placque is the Holofoil version. I wish they were all holofoil, it always looks better than mirror foil, but Press Pass loved mirror foil.

I really messed up the photo of the relic- sorry about that. Usually the relic photo is better than the overall photo but today it's reversed. It gets the job done.
Kyle Larson is on the cusp of superstardom, he's found success in the Ganassi cars which usually are some of the weaker entries of the Chevrolet field. He broke through with his first win in 2016 and I can't help but wonder how many wins he would have in a Hendrick or Gibbs car. It would be more than 1 for sure. He looked really good tonight, nearly pulled off the win and without late cautions he probably would have. I'm a big fan of his and I think this may have been his first relic card ever issued. I don't know for sure because I focus more on base cards. He is also the first driver of Japanese descent to ever win a NASCAR race. His grandparents were interred by the USA during WWII. This relic card is from before he moved up to Cup.

Total Blaster 5

Today's blaster turned out better, with not a single duplicate in the bunch, and as an added bonus I hit a milestone.

Brian Scott, one of the few non-Cup cards in the set. Scott made a bit of history earlier this month when he announced his retirement at the conclusion of this season, making the only driver I can think of who chose to retire after his rookie season. He has two kids and the lengthy Cup schedule took him away from them for too much time.
Matt Kenseth red parallel. I really have no respect for Matt Kenseth, not anymore, but this card is, if my calculations are correct, the 29,000th different NASCAR card in my collection. More on that below
The Tony Stewart Acceleration insert brings me to having more than half of the ten card set, I hope I finish it off.
Cale Yarborough Hall of Fame plaque, pretty clearly taken from his time with Junior Johnson's team.

My relic this time is Trevor Bayne, one of the rare non-Cup relics in the set. Hey, that's two non-Cup cards in one pack! First time it's happened in this project.

Now, with the count of my NASCAR collection, I have it officially at 29003 right now. But I'm sure it's wrong, because I know I've counted some cards that I thought were new but turned out to be duplicates, but it's been offset by finding non-duplicates in my duplicate stash from time to time. (notably the cards that had variations that I blogged about once before) Then there's the proverbial gorilla in the room, the cards that came with diecast cars. I have a large number of them- remember for many years diecast collecting superseded card collecting for me- but I've counted them all these years as a separate collection. (actually, I've never counted them at all). But I'm giving serious thought to officially integrating them into my counted, officially listed on paper NASCAR collection. I can't really think of any reason not to, other than the fact that it's just how I've always done it, since I began collecting NASCAR way back at Christmas 1992.

If I do decide to integrate them, it would bring my NASCAR collection over 30,000, which would deny me the celebration of the milestone...but on the other hand, I've been keeping track of the order I get every card since 2014 so I should have little trouble figuring out whichever card actually was the 30,000th. My OCD makes this a big deal for me. And if I do hit 30,000 without counting them...it will always have a little mental asterisk there by the number.

Honestly, this is something I've been debating since sometime in 2015, when I finished scanning them, and I've been held up by the fact that I've misplaced a large number of the cards from 1998 and 1999. I had them and was scanning them a few years ago, and now they went missing and I have no idea how that happened or where to even look, considering I've looked every place I thought they could possibly be...do I count them? I know for sure some that are missing, but I can't locate them physically...and I'm sure there are others that went missing that I've forgotten about.

As I mentioned above, I never counted them...and they are the only aspect of my collection that I don't have a count on. Something I've really wanted to come up with was an actual count of what I consider my collection. In fact, I've left an empty column for that number in my Excel chart where I type every card in order of getting since I created it in 2014.

The older I get, the more I want to have everything documented in nice even rows, uniformly, fully. I don't mind having OCD- in fact I think without it I could not function through a single day- but I wish I had the mental and physical capacity to make things ordered and even just the way I want them. With the mental part, I start so many things, or plan so many things, and then never follow through with them, and the physical part is getting harder and harder. At least I have a neverending project of sorting and resorting cards to work on.

A Prizm blaster...

My local Target finally stocked the Prizm set, and they only put out one blaster, which my brother got for me yesterday. It was a little disappointing but upon reflection it isn't too bad.

Each blaster of Prizm includes 24 cards, and for me exactly half of them were duplicates, including all three Prizm parallels which was the most disappointing...but I've already traded them for the remainder of the base cards I needed so it worked out pretty good in the end!

For me Prizm seems to be a Matt Kenseth set with some other drivers. Kenseth is my second least favorite driver currently in Cup, so of course I get lots of cards of him.

The Green Flag prizms are my favorite parallel in the set, so I am happy to get another, but it had to be Kenseth, of course.

The tire piece came in the same pack as the Kenseth.

It's SN25/75. It looks like they are doing the same as Press Pass did, hobby versions of relics show the driver and retail versions the car. I don't have a problem with that. More cards to chase and you all know by now that I love the car cards. This looks much better in person, by the way.

I got my first two die cut inserts in the same pack.

Raising the Flag is really nice- car shots, some of them older. This one is from 2011. I have since pulled a Kyle Busch from the same set from when he won the Championship last year.

Machinery is good as it's all car photos, but there's too much design and not enough photo. I think it would have worked better horizontal, something I rarely say.

I also got another Winner's Circle insert. Guess who?

And then, out of the last pack, I got a Prizm parallel from the Winner's Circle insert...guess who...again?

I also got 6 of the base cards I needed, as the hobby box only yielded 55 of of 100.

And that's the entirety of the blaster. It will probably be the only one I open...I have all the base cards I need coming to me in the mail, and I don't know if I'll want to spend money to chase the parallels and the guaranteed one per box hit (either an Autograph or relic). Also, I got the only one available at my local Target already. So I might not even have the opportunity. I'd like to get to Wal-Mart and try one from there as they have exclusive inserts as well, but our Wal-Mart is not good for cards and there is no guarantee they will ever stock them.

While I was there, they also put out the 15-card hanger pack, which has exclusive Red, White & Blue Prizms. I love them. I got two hangers, but only opened one when I made the scans for this post. Interestingly, I pulled the standard Prizms for all three of the RWB ones in my hobby box.

 My first Legend variation!

 It appears the Legend variation Prizm does not have the borders.

I like the Winner's Circle inserts. They are the most common. 

The second hanger gave me 10 new cards out of the 15 so it was the better of the two. Of course I managed to get ANOTHER Kenseth Prizm out of it. Oh well, at least it wasn't Clint Bowyer.

I still think this is a great debut set from Panini and I'm happy to know that I will be completing it shortly, and I really love the various Prizm parallels that look much nicer in hand than in scans.

The real reason for heading to Target though was because my phone got too full to play Simpsons Tapped Out anymore...so my brother bought me a tablet!

 I have finally moved into the 21st century :)  And yes, that is a direct link to Cardboard History on my main screen on my phone! If any of you in the blogosphere play Tapped Out, let's be neighbors!

3 Packs of Dave & Adam's NASCAR Hit Parade 2

A few weeks back I Documented 4 packs of Dave & Adam's Hit Parade series 1. A few days ago the three packs of series 2 I ordered arrived and now I'll show what I got in them- again, I got some great stuff!

This is my favorite card I got out of them...it turned out to be the second card out of the first pack. Autographed relics are not something I have a lot of. I think this may be the ONLY autographed patch in my collection!

This card made a good run as favorite...it goes well with the autographed version I pulled myself.

I pulled two more of the Prized Pieces sheetmetal cards. The Keselowksi has a great pattern. I'm up to 4 of these now.

Each pack contained a copy of this Tony Stewart tire card.

Here are the remaining relics:

And here are the autographs. I got some good ones. (Of course, I consider ALL of them good ones...)

 

So, all in all, another great round of packs. I hope they keep doing more of them. Always a good day when you can add more than one Cup champion's autographs in one day (Kurt Busch 2004, Kevin Harvick 2014)



Month in Review - January 2015

I thought I would debut a new feature today, a look back at the previous month in my hobby. And of course, take a look at some cards that I have not posted yet.

January was an overall unpleasant month in real life, but the cards were great, of course. Not even counting the huge epic mailday I posted about yesterday, I had already gotten 699 new cards in the month- and more than half of them came from trades, which is always a good thing.

I have been constantly tinkering with Cardboard History itself, adding many new features in January, including a Blogroll, my Top 10 Wants, links to my tradelist and semi-complete wantlists, I figured out the Tagging feature, and I added several pages to the top, where you can follow along as I add new cards of my favorite player in the NBA, and view a listing, with links to the gallery, of all my completed sets. I have some more things I want to add, just need to make the time.

I returned to Ebay, for the first time since 2009. Back then they went to where you MUST pay with Paypal, which I do not have. Sometime recently they allowed you to pay without Paypal, so I made 4 purchases. One NBA card, two NASCAR cards and one Non-Sports card. The NBA card I chose is visible on my Elton Brand chart, #3 on the list.

I hit NBA card #77,000 on January 1st. I knew I was getting close, so I pulled from my stash of mixed boxes until I hit the exact mark, and stopped there, for that day. I'm actually doing better with adding to them than I thought I would, it's not like the peak years where I was adding 1000 new cards a week, but I think I appreciate the cards more now. I even take the time to read the backs, something I didn't do when I was getting that many new ones- I didn't have the time to do that back then, I could barely keep up with keeping my Excel chart up to date...which I ended up losing to a floppy disk corrupting. That happened sometime in 2005, and it still stings...but, I am working on (slowly) recreating it, and even better than it was before.

I added 8 new people to my collection in January, 6 NBA and 2 NASCAR. (I only keep track of these two sports- but I got hundreds, if not thousands, of new people in baseball, football and especially hockey yesterday) 3 of the NBA players are rookies who I got in Prizm, which came out in January. My brother treated me to a shopping bag full of Rack Packs, some of which I have not yet opened. Of the 6, 3 of them are One Hit Wonders! Besides Scott Meents, who got a post in One Hit Wonders, and Rex Hughes, who was detailed in "My Largest Trade Ever", the other is Mark Hendrickson, who played briefly with the 76ers in 1996-97. He only got one NBA card, although he does have college cards in my collection, those don't count towards the NBA collection. For NASCAR, I picked up a card of former Miss Sprint Cup/current broadcaster Monica Palumbo off Ebay, and then I found a website that was selling the 1991 Track Pack Yesterday's Heroes set for a great price, and added Jim Roper, who won the first ever NASCAR race- but only ever got one card.

I only added two sets, not counting the massive amount I got yesterday. That would be 2014-15 Prizm, and this one- now my oldest card in my collection, from 1909. This was the non-sport card I picked up off Ebay. Kind of amazing, but I was able to get this 106 year old card for under $6. And it's a squirrel, so you really can't go wrong!

It appears this card predates the concept of numbering cards.

I opened one box in January 2015. Press Pass Cup Chase. I don't usually like to spend that kind of money on myself, but being the last Press Pass set ever- and the last NASCAR set for the forseeable future- I had to. I loved it, and it got it's own post last month.

I also nabbed this relic parallel on Ebay. I was quite surprised but pleased to pay less than the serially numbered print run for this one. I should have taken a better photo without the glare, but I mainly wanted the show off the green foil and the 07/10 SN.

 

Here's the Jim Roper card I mentioned earlier and a really great looking insert from 2012-13 Crusade...also named Crusade. (I hate when card companies do that). Tim Hardaway Sr.'s not my favorite player, but I have always loved the refractor technology. This came out of the mixed boxes I love so much.

 

I found out this card existed during the month of January, and added it to my collection as well. It was exclusive to Club Maxx in 1991. They also did a handful of them in 1992, of which I have the Elliott from that year as well.
From the front it almost looks like a normal card...

But it's not, though!

I found a dealer that sells cards by the pound, so my mom treated me to 10 pounds of cards. It's been a little disappointing, though, as they are mostly all duplicates- and all but 2 cards have been from the 1989-90 through 1994-95 era, of which I have most of them already- and nearly every single card has been damaged. More than 90%. I've gotten more than 20 copies of the 1992-93 Hoops Chris Ford card, however. When I finish all the inner boxes, I will line them all up and take a photo. I have gotten a few new cards, but of the two inner boxes, of 6, I've gotten less than 30 new cards. I don't plan to buy any more from them. (If I could find newer cards, like 2005-06 and later, like this, I would do it, as I don't have many from that era, comparatively)
I did get this great error, though. I love error cards...you can somewhat see the kind of damage most of the cards have from the photo though. Scuffs, bad corners, dents throughout.

And then....there's this. I never have any luck with redemptions. I usually send them and get nothing back. (Fleer still owes me some) Not this time!

Only my second triple autograph in my collection. First NASCAR. Those are on-card, too, not stickers. That doesn't matter too much to me, but I know a lot of other collectors care.

And before anyone asks....it's not for sale! It's my third Newman autograph, but first for Tony and Danica.

As always, thanks for reading! I'll post the grand total of cards added in January when I finish going through all the new ones I got yesterday...but that's not going to be for a few days more!