Hoops Hobby

I’ve been collecting basketball cards on and off (mostly on) since the mid-90s, so around 30 years. In that time, a lot about the basketball card landscape has changed.

My first collecting experiences were opening packs of cards with my dad that we found at local grocery stores and specialty sports stores. I traded with a few of my friends from school and started to figure out what types of cards were important to me and which I felt like I could let go of.

At some point the internet came into play and I made some of my first online trades with people I didn’t know on places like yahoo groups and messenger, and then many many more trades on online forums like The Bench, Sports Card Forum, and Hobby Insider. I also started making the occasional small eBay purchase.

Speaking of eBay purchases, these are a few of my most recent. The Al Harrington is a 1998-99 Ultra Gold Medallion rookie. I already had the base rookie, which is a short print at 1:4 packs itself, but the rookie Gold Medallions are 1:35 and have a gold foil stamp on the back (looks black in this scan).

Even though the image is the same on the front and backs of the card, the back does at least have other design elements like a writeup and a gold foil stamp to make it look different from the front.

The Bender is a Victory Collection parallel from 1999-00 Upper Deck Ultimate Victory. The rookies here are 1:24 packs. This completes my Bender trio, and goes with the base rookie and the Ultimate Collection parallel /100.

I will be thrilled if Fanatics brings the Pristine brand back for basketball once it has the NBA license as these early Pristine sets from the 2000s are still some of my favorite products today. Each rookie has three levels of rookie cards: Common, Uncommon, and Rare, along with refractor and gold refractor versions of each. After adding this Rare Refractor /99, I’m just an Uncommon refractor away from having all the base rookies and Refractor rookies. The Golds remain on my want list but are pricier.

You can see the text above Fred Jones on the front of the card that indicates this is a ‘Rare’ rookie, while the shine and the ‘Refractor’ text on the back indicates its refractor status.

These rookie year cards are all going in a dedicated binder which I really need to share in a video sometime. These are incremental gains for my collection that when viewed as part of the whole, they really are something special.

Social media such as Instagram coming into favor as the primary means for sharing cards with forums falling out of favor makes trades less prevalent. While this is a huge shift from how I used to invest my time related to basketball cards in the late 90s and 2000s, it doesn’t mean my approach to collecting has changed.

Over time, these small acquisitions build up to a collection I’m very pleased with today. When I look back at the collection I’ve put together over the years, I enjoy going through the cards, remembering how and when I acquired the cards. I think about watching those players in big moments, or at games I attended. I appreciate the designs of the cards as well as the hunt of picking up new cards to fill a spot in a binder page.

And another change, for the better, is the emergence of local card shops and card shows in my area. Less than two years ago, the closest card shop was about 40 minutes from me, and it wasn’t easy to get to, especially having a family with young children. Now there are at least three card shops under a half hour from me, and one is within walking distance. And now it’s rare when there aren’t card shows at least twice a month within 45 minutes driving.

I’ll browse the showcases, but I can’t remember a time when I bought a card under glass at a card show. I’m mostly looking in the value boxes with cards $10 or less. And with most of the cards at shows being from the Ultra-Modern era, it’s rare that I leave with much more than a few cards. It’s about the hunt for the era of cards that I enjoy.

I attended a card show recently, coming away with 2 cards that were in a $2 per card box. These type of finds are why I enjoy going to card shows, and in addition to enjoying the show with my three kids, it made attending the show worth it. You don’t come across insert sets like these in value boxes often, and even though this is probably somewhere between a $5 to $10 card, it was very satisfying to come away with.

The 2000-01 Topps Gallery, Gallery of Heroes insert set, with 1:24 pack odds, is affordable and beautifully designed. I just wish a Pacer was represented in either the 1999-00 of 2000-01 set. I do have the Duncan from 1999-00 and it was a huge card for me to add to my collection over a year ago now. Maybe I can pass this Abdur-Rahim off to a fellow collector who will appreciate it, but for now I’ll enjoy it in my collection.

This was the other card in the $2 box. This might have been in a $2 box in the 2000s, but to get it there now was pretty lucky. This is a 2000-01 Topps Gold Label Premium parallel /1000. The veterans are out of 1000 while the rookies are out of 100. You can see the Premium text in the gold ‘semi-circle’ in the bottom left of the card. The Gold Label brand has always felt very ‘premium’ to me since it’s release. And finding any Reggie parallel isn’t the easiest these days.

Here you can see the premium label right above the serial numbering on the right of the back of the card.

Glad to have local card shows and shops as part of my current day hobby experience.

I continue to make incremental gains as I add to my Pacers autograph collection. One of my recent adds in this department is German national team star Daniel Theis. He’s featured as a Pacer in 2023-24 Optic, and I’ve been on the lookout for his Optic Holo autograph at the right price since the set was released. I finally landed on a copy recently and the Theis is now in it’s spot in the autograph binder.

I’m glad Theis has a certified Pacers autograph, so I’ll ignore the mediocre/poor card back with the same image as the front, and in the Z-Folio I’m using, I only see the front anyway.

While means to acquire cards has exploded, I’m collecting the same way, by adding reasonably priced cards to build a collection I continue to enjoy.