Hoops Hobby

Lately I’ve been trying to filter out the parts of the basketball card hobby that I don’t enjoy and expand on the parts that bring me joy. It’s getting back to my collecting roots through trading, fun pickups while staying on a budget, sending out Through the Mail autograph requests, and enjoying the collecting with my kids.

Even though the sheer volume of cards is just insane in 2023-24 compared to when I collected in the late 90s and early 2000s, if I shrink the pool of cards and just focus on base rookies, inserts, and more ‘standard’ parallels, that volume gets much smaller and manageable and looks closer to what I’ve collected historically. Bennedict Mathurin has 2,858 licensed cards from 2022-23 as of this post. I’ve made similar comparisons before, but Jamaal Tinsley has just 112 cards from his rookie year in 2001-02. Simpler times. But if I’m looking at just base rookie cards and a parallel or two from each brand, it’s much closer. Just because all the parallels exist doesn’t mean I have to try to grab them all. And so I’ve made a point of emphasis to add recent Pacers rookie cards to my want list, where I had largely pretended they didn’t exist previously.

When it comes to popular Pacers rookies historically, from a hobby perspective, Mathurin is up high on the list. I’m finally into the double digits on his cards after picking up a few in a nice trade on TCDB and in a stack sale on X (Twitter). I’d like to add some of the Hoops inserts, but the Holo version. These take the aesthetics up a notch but are still affordable.

Rookie Stallions looks like something you might find out of a 90s baseball product. I’m a fan.

The Great X-pectations flashes me back to a Topps Xpectations release that I’m fond of, just because of the name, but this feels like a ‘filler’ rookie year insert to me.

Isaiah Jackson produces when he gets minutes. I enjoy his shot blocking and rebounding and of course, the power slams. The Pacers have a lot of quality depth, so his minutes can be inconsistent. Like Mathurin and other Pacers rookies recently, I’ve got around 10 low-end cards of Jackson, several of them from Chronicles, which is underrated as a brand in my opinion. I’d appreciate seeing more veterans in the Chronicles set, but it being a rookie focused low end brand probably works from a marketing perspective.

I also just added an autograph of Jackson for my Pacers autograph collection.

2013-14 Pinnacle is one of my favorite Panini era products. I opened a box back before prices exploded and with the Museum parallels, Clear Vision inserts, and Essence of the Game autographs, I look back on the product with some nostalgia. I was happy to see it show up in 2022-23 Chronicles, so I grabbed Nembhard and Mathurin, again as part of a stack sale on Twitter.

Speaking of lower end products, the Panini Sticker and Card set is one that I find to be underrated. The cards end up being super cheap and to my knowledge there’s still only one card per sticker pack, making getting any particular player pretty rare. And adding parallels (Silver and most standard color) on top of that, it reminds me of an Upper Deck MVP type product. My boys would absolutely love this and I would be pumped to open a box with them.

Seriously, this Jarace Walker rookie card from the Sticker and Card set is probably my favorite Jarace I’ve picked up yet. Now let’s just see this guy get some more time on the court!

This is the first Revolution card I’ve picked up for a recent Pacers rookie. I’m a fan of the product in general. I do have a difficult time differentiating between all the parallels, but overall it’s a visually pleasing set.

And anytime I can pick up a ‘standard’ Pacers rookie parallel, and what I mean by that is a silver parallel or similar, I’m happy to grab it for cheap. In general I like the Select product more than Prizm, especially in more recent years. This one is a blue Prizm, typically a nice parallel for the Pacers.

Lastly, a rare Pacers insert from the early 2010s. Not rare because the insert itself is rare, but rare in the sense that I don’t pick up too many Pacers inserts from that era of cards. The Blue Collar Gold Swagger shirt flashed me back to those deep 2010s playoff teams. First Paul George card I’ve picked up in awhile.

Stack sales and small TCDB trades are allowing me to enjoy products from recent years, while allowing me to get similar cards of other players into collectors that will appreciate them. Definitely a win-win and satisfying collecting activity that takes me back to my earlier days of collecting.

What are you enjoying about the hobby lately?