We’ve recently emerged from a week or so of extremely cold weather, as has a good part of the country. Temperatures were in the single digits with wind chills in the negatives, very rare for South Carolina. We had several days of highs below freezing, and it was tough to feel good about doing anything… Read More Ice in the Veins
Shining Stars first appeared as an insert set, to my knowledge, in 1998-99 Fleer Brilliants, and what an awesome insert set it is. The Brilliants brand in general is a favorite of mine, a one-year wonder, and the Shining Stars set is a standout. The set resurfaced again in 2003-04 Fleer Mystique, another set I… Read More Shining Stars Iterations, Opening a 12-card pack of 2021-22 Illusions
Packs and boxes are, for the most part, available once again at retail stores. I’ve opened plenty of Donruss packs in several forms, mostly the 30 card ‘fat packs’ as well as a blaster. Recently I noticed sports cards for sale on the Game Stop web site. One option was the $1.00 value packs, with… Read More Yellow Flood, a Modern Parallel I Can Get Behind
This past weekend my family and I took a trip, spending the weekend in my college town. We went to a football game and I was able to share the campus with my wife and two sons. It’s not a short trip, and it’s been since before my boys were born that we’ve gone. While… Read More The Old is New Again
I’m back with the second post in a… well… 22 post series of my progress so far in collecting an autograph for every Pacer to play in a regular season game. 22 posts because the Pacers don’t have any former or current players with a last name starting with I, Q, U or X. Maybe… Read More Pacers Autographs by the Letter: B
It’s always good to start off the week with a nice mailday. Today I gladly opened two plain white envelopes with a total of 9 cards, packaged very well. One package was from a stack sale on Twitter, the other was a separate purchase. I’m in several different lanes right now collecting-wise, but that is… Read More Monday Mailday Mashup
A good part of my collection came through trading. I spent a lot of time in the 2000s trading for Pacers in online message boards like The Bench, HobbyInsider, etc… And before that I traded cards with friends in my younger days. At some point it seemed like the momentum in trading that I found… Read More Gem of a Trade, Gem of a Collecting Week
I’ve been keeping tabs on upcoming card shows in my area over the last several months, and had one in particular circled. It’s advertised as the largest show in South Carolina, with 100+ tables, in Spartanburg. Often times we have a sporting event for one or both of our sons that are late morning or… Read More For the First Time in a Decade, A Card Show Experience
What elements make a great insert set? It’s a question with many answers that come down to personal preference. My collecting focus might shift every so often as players move from team to team, new eras of cards emerge, new brands debut, etc… but my preferences in general stay the same. Let’s go through design… Read More What Elements Make a Great Insert?
The landscape in basketball card collecting looks quite different then it did when I started this blog 11 years ago, but in many ways it’s still the same for me. The card market, and basketball cards leading the way, exploded during the pandemic, to the point where it was tough to find packs of cards… Read More Statline for 11 Years on Hoops Hobby
Hoops Hobby 