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
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
Looking at cards not only brings back memories of specific seasons, games, or plays, it can also remind us of different times in our lives. Three cards made their way to my mailbox recently, each from different eras in my collecting history, and also three different eras in my life. Arena Vision is a set… Read More Three Cards, Three Eras
All-Star weekend approaching this coming weekend happened to coincide with a card purchase for my Tim Duncan collection, a memorabilia card from 2012-13 Timeless Treasures picturing Duncan in his Western Conference All-Star jersey. With that purchase, I started looking into other All-Star Duncan memorabilia cards in my collection. Turns out Duncan has a good number,… Read More Tim Duncan All-Star Relics
In the ‘ultra-modern’ collecting period we’re in now, as it’s being called, most products, even the lower end products, have a seemingly endless number of parallels, along with numerous insert sets that usually have several parallel versions of those inserts. It can be overwhelming to keep up with, at times, for the team and player,… Read More Keeping It Simple
It’s rare to scroll through hobby twitter these days and not come across cards being posted for sale. While I’m always in buying mode if I see the right card, it’s relatively rare for me to jump into a stack sale. However, certain sellers cater to my collecting interests more than others, and I did… Read More Recent ‘Stack’ Roundup
Hoops Hobby 