Looking at some random Hockey cards

Remember the other day when I posted "See (no) more Butts" I mentioned that I had gotten out some non-NBA to scan. Well, more than half of what I pulled out was hockey. I scanned 29 hockey cards, and while I am not going to post them all, I thought I would hit one from each set that I scanned out of. Every single one of these was given to me on January 31st, 2015, when I was given over 2000 hockey cards in one day.

I have really been enjoying reading the various hockey posts lately so I thought I would contribute one as well.

1989-90 O-Pee-Chee. This was the first set I got a bunch of that day, and it ranks #3 in my collection with 148 cards. Although I live in New York, I more associate with New England and Connecticut than I do NYC. In fact, my "local" card shop that I get my mixed boxes from is in Connecticut. Unfortunately the franchise is no longer there. This is one of my favorite hockey sets in my collection, along with 1990-91 Pro Set, which I didn't scan any of this round.

1991-92 Bowman. For some reason this set doesn't work as well for me as the previous Bowman sets, which do appear in my collection but not this post. Also, why did it take until 2003-04 for the Bowman brand proper to return to the NBA?

 1993-94 Leaf. My friend who gave me all the cards is a huge Lightning supporter, he is enough of a supporter of the team that Vincent Lecavalier remembers his name. Naturally he sent me a lot of Lightning cards and they rank #1 on my team rank. This design was really popular in this time frame. The same basic design also appears in baseball and NASCAR. The back of this set is more well-known but everybody posts them, I'll post the front.

1993-94 Upper Deck. Nice design. Good photography in the set, if not the most flattering photo of Andreychuk.

1994-95 Pinnacle. I believe this is a subset, but I am also pretty sure it's my only card from the set- it's certainly my only base card, I might have an insert too. Interesting design that I didn't fully appreciate until I scanned it.

1997-98 Leaf is the second largest set in my collection, with 150 cards present. The names are a little tough to read, this is Mats Sundin. For someone like me who is not too familiar with the sport, it wasn't always easy to figure out the player's names because they use the same cursive on the back, and even though it's on a white backdrop some of the letters look very similar.

2000-01 Revolution. A very busy border, but somehow, it works. I am sure this is the only card from this set in my collection. Being in the NYC news region, I was familiar with him before getting the cards.

2002-03 SP Authentic. I have only two cards from this set and scanned them both (the other being Mike Modano). Like most SP Authentic sets, I find it rather bland and boring. But at least it's not just the player in front of a white digital backdrop and nothing else, like so many SP Authentic sets are.

2006-07 Ultra. Ultra has always been my favorite brand in the NBA, and the NHL version is just as nice! This card has a small crease in it at the top left corner, but it doesn't show up in the scan. I don't really mind, I'd rather have a damaged card than no card. I have no idea what the wall ad is for, but it's nice and bright.

2006-07 Upper Deck Rookie Class. I think this may have been a box set, but I'm not 100% sure on that. I got a bunch of them, but not the whole set. I was able to do a full 9-card scan of the set and could- and eventually will- do another. They scan nicely.

 2011-12 SPx. The aforementioned Lecavalier makes an appearance and it's no coincidence that this is the third Lightning card in the post. I an pretty sure this is my only card from the set. It's unusual in that it's an SPx card that's not mirror foil, but I'm very glad of that fact!

2012-13 Score. This is a nice, large set, with a lot of different people getting cards. I like that about sets. This is card #499, for example. My preferred sport has not gotten a set that large since...hmm...1993-94! (disgraceful) But this post is about hockey, and this is a good set. It ranks 8th in my hockey collection with 75 cards in my collection.

All stats come from the Trading Card Database's Stats feature, I don't have my hockey collection documented anywhere else, yet. (someday, maybe I will create a paper listing, but ohh, my hand will not thank me!)

One more I nearly forgot to post, and am clearly editing in here before I hit publish: 1992-93 Ultra!

They used the exact same design in the NBA, only with green under the foil bar, while hockey had more blueish tint. I love the design either way. I would not be too surprised to learn that they used the same design in baseball and football as well, but I don't have any of them. The NBA set, as you may recall, made my Top 20 Favorite sets countdown of early 2016. This set ranks 4th largest in my NHL collection with 122 cards representing it. Only five sets crack the triple digits and three of them appear in this post.

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.

See (no) more Butts

The other day I filled my cases of NBA cards but it was too late in the day to start sorting them for this round of updating my Excel files. So that meant it was time to dig into my boxes of other assorted cards that were already posted to the Trading Card Database. In those boxes it's about 50% NBA and 50% everything else...just like the breakdown of my collection overall, actually. I went through to find some non-NBA to scan and came across this card.

Naturally it made me laugh...I may get older but if there was ever a time when someone named Butts didn't make me laugh then that's not a life worth living.

According to the same Database mentioned above, it is my only card of him, which means I have no more to show... thus the post title.

Wishing I had named my blog Hugh Jass Cards or some such, I need to work more Simpsons quotes into my posts.

I actually feel kind of bad for making fun of this guy's name but come on, his name is Butts. I can't help myself. 

Total Blaster 4

4 NASCAR posts in a row, after a long string of mostly NBA posts. Not really planned it out that way, but that's the way it turned out. I've actually got a rare football post in the pipeline but I've been too busy to write it, even if it is going to be a one card post...

The 4th blaster was a bit of a letdown- 5 cards, 3 of which were duplicates...all of them duplicating a previous blaster. That's Press Pass for you.

The Almirola base, Vickers parallel and Baker insert are all exactly the same as blaster #1. The Danica insert was new, and shows a special paint scheme so that's cool at least. The highlight is the relic, again a tire but this time with some of the lettering from the sidewall. sorry for the crappy picture.

It's got what looks like standard Scotch tape on it, but it doesn't hide the fact that you are getting a large chunk of yellow and some blue border to go along with the standard black rubber from tire pieces. It's probably not tape- but I can't think of what it might be. Perhaps a piece of window tear off that he ran over and it stuck itself to the tire? Doesn't really feel like that so I am just speculating. Yes, I do have a piece of window tear off in my collection.

I'm happy with it, no matter what it is!

I'm also a big fan of both Dillon brothers, they have a lot of talent, which is not really being shown by the sub-par equipment they are getting- but they will never go elsewhere, most likely, as they race for the family team. This is, I believe, only my third or fourth tire relic from the Truck series, also. I also like the low serial number. 

Hopefully the next box will give me more new cards!

A card I've wanted for 15 years

As you might know, I discovered NASCAR through the Racing Champions diecast cars, and became a fan on 12/26/1992. I've always favored Racing Champions and spent much of my life in an effort to collect every single one of them that I could. I estimate that I came up about 100 short, counting the rare Canadian only issues, although I no longer actively chase the cars I missed.

For some reason, I have not really talked about them too much on Cardboard History. It's actually somewhat surprising even to me, and I write the darn thing! (LOL)

In 1996, Racing Champions introduced the concept of chase cars when they began issuing chrome cars that were pretty rare; I have a couple of those, and I even found one on the shelves at my local Wal-Mart once. They produced the Chrome chase cars from 1996-2004, perhaps 2005, I don't remember.

In 2001, they changed things up a little bit by coming up with chase cards to go along with the cars. They came out with tire cards, autographs and sheet metal, all of which are fairly rare- a print run of 500 is the largest of any year, I believe. I never got any of them. Believe me, I looked, but they just didn't show up in any of my then-weekly trips to the stores. I've wanted one ever since.

A few days ago, one of my friends from the NUTS forum- that's NASCAR Underground Trading Society- which is THE site for trading NASCAR cards, posted up on Facebook that he had one available. I mentioned that I really wanted it, so he sent it to me. The generosity on that forum is top-notch, and not only did he send me the one I really wanted- he filled the bubble mailer with other cool stuff too, including my very first relic of a shifter boot! That'll have to wait for a future post, though, because I wanted to just dedicate this to the one card I've been after all these years.

I still can't believe I finally have one...it's a dream come true!

Another post with pictures- one of the rare times I don't have my scanner plugged in, and I didn't want to take the time to get it out. It's really a dark purple theme, with the Racing Champions logo being bright red. Not a great photo, but it gets the job done.

Thanks again Michael, you made my week/month!

2016 has seen me add a lot of great cards (OK, every card is great, but you know what I mean!) and this one is well in my top 10 favorite new additions on the year....probably top 5.

Total Blaster 3

Today was the day where I opened the third blaster from the 2014 Total Memorabilia 20-blaster lot I purchased. It was not that great of a blaster, to be honest, but at least it wasn't the last one! It can only get better from here, right?

The good thing is, all five cards were new. The bad thing is, my tire piece is Bowyer, one of my all-time least favorite drivers.

My favorite card here is the Truex. With Dale Jr. out and questions as to if he will ever return, Martin Truex Jr. has stepped into the role of my favorite active driver. The mirror foil aspect takes it down a little bit, but I'm still happy to have it. And even though I am not a Bowyer fan, it gets me closer to completing the set, so there's that. And it means I don't have to spend any actual money to buy a Bowyer card to complete my set. In case it wasn't obvious, that is a goal of mine now that I have these 20 blasters to work through. I thought at first the Kahne red parallel was a duplicate but I was wrong, I had the gold version of the card, which is SN175. I knew I had seen the photo but I didn't remember the foil color I had. Oops. The Elliott Sadler is one of the few non-Cup cards in the set. The Rusty Wallace Hall of Fame Placque is the holofoil parallel.

Total Blaster 1 & 2

A few days ago I came across the pre-Black Friday sales Blowout Cards was doing, and while there was a lot of nice stuff at good prices, what caught my eye was a deal on 20 Total Memorabilia Blasters from 2014. The normal price on this was $400...and they were on sale for $99.11. That's more than I like to spend at one time, but I couldn't pass that up. Each one sold for $20 when new so that's some major savings. And I had very little of the set, too, which meant that in theory most of the cards would not be duplicates. I had only two blasters worth of the set, plus a couple of multi-piece relics I purchased on the secondary market. (Retail finds are usually single piece).

Well, they arrived yesterday and I determined that I was not going to open them up all at once, and spread out the fun, with my target date to finish opening them on January 1st. That came out to 1 box every three days after I did two the first day.

Just for fun, I decided I was going to blog about each box. I have not been posting too much NASCAR stuff lately but this will give me 19 posts between now and January. If I follow through with my plans...I don't always.

I also came up with a way to take better pictures of the cards too. Press Pass was making every insert mirror foil and the depth of the relic pieces make 3 out of 5 cards per pack tough to scan...so photos it is!

Box #1:

 Each pack contains one base card, one parallel and 3 inserts, one of which is guaranteed to be either a relic or an autograph. Most of them are from this insert set, single relic pieces, most of which are tire chunks but there are also cards with firesuit pieces and maybe some other stuff. I only had three base cards going in and the Almirola was one of them.

They go up to 4 relic pieces per card and each version has a different color foil. The silver foil single relic pieces are the most common. this Biffle piece shows quite a bit of cording in the tire as well, something I like to see even if it does mean that it's from well inside the tire instead of the surface that touched the track or the sidewall.
The Acceleration and Hall of Fame placques are mirror foil.

Box #2:

 Oof, a duplicate already, pulling the same Acceleration Brad Keselowski from both boxes. With only one base card per box, I don't think I'll complete the set, even though it's typical Press Pass microscopic 50 cards. I needed the Kurt Busch card shown here.

Now that's a great tire piece! This looks like it's got burn damage from the burnout shown on the card. I love race dated relics, too. I wasn't expecting this card, I forgot this insert was in the set.

And that's box #1 and 2. Future posts in the series will have only one box per, in theory. I'm not really known for my follow through, after all. I'm hoping I pull more of the truck tires from the first Eldora dirt race. I pulled Austin Dillon's from a blaster my brother got for me when the set was new. It's a fairly small insert, I think six or 8 cards, so maybe I will be lucky enough to complete it...or, barring that, I will get closer to it and be able to pick up the missing cards on ebay or COMC or something.