Hoops Hobby

I was watching an episode of Bluey the other day with my 3 year old son (great show, by the way- as a parent of young children I laugh at just about every episode), when an interaction between the mom and Bluey’s sister, Bingo, really stood out to me. Bingo wanted to help her mom make an omelet for her dad, and she started to help, and made a mess in the process. They had to start over completely multiple times, and ultimately the mom ended up sending Bingo away to play by herself while the mom made a new omelet. The mom ended up feeling bad and brought Bingo back in eventually, letting the child make the omelet her own messy way.

This scenario hit home in multiple ways. First, I’m a father of two young kids, and even though letting them be involved in tasks like making omelets isn’t always the most convenient or easy, it’s usually what’s best if they’re excited and showing interest. Second, a hobby example came to mind, actually involving my two kids.

While visiting my family over father’s day weekend, my uncle brought my two sons a hanger pack each of 2023 Topps baseball series 2. They were excited to open the packs and see all the teams of the players. That’s their main focus at this time when it comes to cards, the team logos, and not at all on the players. Of course, being 6 and 3, they aren’t concerned about condition at all, and so they were shuffling through the cards, dropping cards on the ground, doing what you’d expect young kids to do with pieces of cardboard, play with them. My initial instinct was to reach for them, look at the inserts, see if anything exciting happened to be there that might need protecting. Without realizing it, I was thinking about how these cards should be stored and saved from the looming destruction headed their way. I had to stop myself and just let the kids do what they wanted with these cards they had been gifted, actually enjoy them. I had to let them collect their own way.

My 6 year old does have a binder with a few pages for his favorite players (Giannis, Khris Middleton, and Jrue Holiday, other Bucks players), but collectively it’s a random assortment of teams, sets, and players thrown together. My instinct is to suggest how the cards should be organized, but ultimately I want him to enjoy the collecting experience. That involves being hands off and letting him enjoy his way of collecting, and being OK with the result.

The way I collect isn’t the way my two sons collect and it isn’t how everyone else should collect either, and I shouldn’t feel the need to pick up cards that adhere to the latest trends or cards of the ‘hot’ players and sets. I know my collecting lanes and I stick to them, because that’s what I enjoy, and I have fun sharing my collection in the form of this blog when time allows, interacting with others on social media, and occasionally in person at local card shows.

What’s my way of collecting? I’d classify myself as lower end collector, picking up cards from the 90s and 2000s, mostly, of my favorite team, mostly, with a certain level of organization which is still a good bit of chaos, and I love it all.

Keep your cards in boxes? Cool. Display them in binders for easier access? Great. Lay them out on the floor to look for your favorite teams? Enjoy.

Do you enjoy grabbing the latest rookies to try to project who will break out? That’s fun. Team collector, set collector, player collector, enjoy the hunt to find undervalued cards? You do you.

And with that, I’ll show some results of collecting my way.

I miss big sets with multiple series of cards. Topps with multiple series, Fleer with multiple series, there are plenty from the 90s and it’s fun to see different players show up on cards, and fun to see players that switch teams between series 1 and 2. What better way to forget about that gap today than to look back at a set from the 90s and work on a Pacers team set? Snagged a few of the Tiffany parallels, which feature a nice blue foil, with odds of 1:20 packs. It’ll be a long build on this one, but I don’t mind the wait. I’m also happy to add a significant Antonio Davis card. It instantly becomes my favorite AD card, along with the 1998-99 Finest No Protector Refractor I also picked up this year.

First up is the continued slow progression on a 1998-99 Upper Deck Bronze team set. The photography on this Upper Deck set continues to stand out. Not to mention this parallel is pretty affordable and it’s a large team set with pretty much all of the key Pacers from the late 90s playoff runs. Thrilled to add Dale Davis to the binder. Is there a tougher player from any era of basketball than Dale Davis?

This was a situation where I was eyeing the card on COMC, and made an offer. The seller than countered with an offer above the original asking price. When I see this type of behavior, you can be sure I’m going to avoid dealing with the seller in the future. Why allow for offers if they aren’t going to be considered? Anyway, I found the card with a similar price on eBay and now it’s in my collection.

I had been eying this one for quite some time and finally went ahead and made an offer, which was countered, and I accepted. Another key addition to the Jeff Foster rookie year collection with his 1999-00 UD Ionix Reciprocal parallel /100. I’m really enjoying adding cards to both the Pacers parallels and rookie year binders from the late 90s through mid-2000s.

Moving on to the early 2000s, I’ll take any Star Rubies parallel that comes up, even if they are considered lesser versions of their 90s predecessors. I’ve noticed it’s tough to find the Emerald and Ruby parallels from 2001-02 and 2002-03 Fleer Premium without corner and edge wear. This Austin Croshere looks great.

I’ve been on a string of nice Jonathan Bender parallels lately. I opened a lot of 2000-01 Upper Deck MVP as a kid, including a full retail box with a lot of packs, and if I remember right I opened one Gold Script /100. I can’t imagine how pumped I would have been to pull a Bender.

And while this card would fit in the low end category for some, it’s toward the higher end of what I’ve ever spent on a single card, but it’s from a year of cards I collected hard, and still do, so when it became available I didn’t hesitate. It’s before gold refractors in Topps Chrome started appearing, and this Jermaine O’Neal black refractor is #’d 1/50. It is instantly in the top 5 favorite Jermaine O’Neal cards in my collection and possibly in a top 10 favorite Pacers cards. What also makes it special is that it came from a fellow Pacers collector, @vintagepacers on Instagram. Appreciate Steve letting this card go.

The last card for this set of mail is an ‘ultra-modern’ card. I don’t pick up as many of these, but one product that stood out to me while opening a blaster was from 2020-21 Flux. In that blaster I pulled a Zion Williamson Gold Mojo Prizm /10. It was a special pull at the time, and honestly it reminded me of a reboot of a Metal set from the late 90s. Sure there are so many parallels, and that’s a problem across the board with modern products, but it doesn’t take away from how sweet this Myles Turner Gold Laser Prizm /10 looks. Myles is the guy I tend to pick up ultra-modern stuff of. Even if he gets traded tomorrow, he’s a guy I’ll still root for in other uniforms and continue to pick up Pacers stuff of.

One of these cards is not like the others, and while I mostly stick to late 90s and 2000s inserts and parallels, I do sometimes grab newer stuff that sticks out. This is collecting my way, and I encourage others to do the same, to do what brings that collector enjoyment, whether it be by providing that sense of nostalgia by flipping through a stack of cards, giving that thrill of opening packs, participating in the social aspect by talking cards with fellow collectors, or sharing their hobby with their kids.

What way is your way?