Happy New Year

Happy New Year

I hope the upcoming year brings health and happiness for you and your family.

I will end the year with a card that I got during the COMC Spring Cleaning sale. It is my third laundry tag, but first one from basketball. The X-Man has always been one of my favorites, playing for both the Suns and the Sonics, so I was excited to pick this one up.

Merry Christmas To All And Happy Hanukah

Merry Christmas to all and Happy Hanukah 

Here are the goodies that came in my 2019 Attic Krampus Part 2 pack. Three metal cards; #1 Jaime Hitchcock, #2 Lindsey Greyling and #3 Kevin P West.

The sketch card is from Jaime Hitchcock, I love this one.

I had actually forgotten, but I did have a Christmas card I could have posted, this Cameron Johnson Christmas sweater that I picked up shortly after 2019-20 Hoops Holiday was released.

DeAndre Ayton Front And Center

Last year there was a once in a lifetime event for me with the 2018 NBA Draft. The Phoenix Suns, my favorite pro team, had the #1 pick and selected DeAndre Ayton from the University of Arizona, my favorite college team. 

The Suns are still rebuilding, and Ayton was just hit with a 25-game suspension, but being a fan means good seasons and bad seasons. I do want to point out that Ayton’s follow up test showed no trace of a banned substance, so I expect an appeal.

This is from one of Panini’s National releases and is a player worn material, serial #13/15. The piece is silver/gray and Arizona does have an alternate jersey that has silver but with this being a player worn piece I am leaning more towards a workout shirt.

Suns Autotastic

A trifecta of Phoenix Suns autographs was part of my COMC order. Believe it or not, I do not have a lot of Suns autographs, so I looked to rectify that with a group of my favorite Suns players, all on-card autos too. 

2013-14 Panini Preferred Cedric Ceballos

2014-15 Panini Gala Larry Nance

2014-15 Panini Luxe Xavier McDaniel. The X-Man played for both the Suns and the Sonics during his career, so I am the lucky collector that has his cards with my two favorite teams.  

Black Bender Base (Plate)

I picked up this 2016-17 Panini Noir Dragan Bender printing plate for my Suns collection and I was expecting a standard printing plate but it turns out that Panini used the same thickness as the base cards, roughly about 100 pt.

I am confused as to why these printing plates were packed out in boxes of 2017-18 Panini National Treasure Basketball. I didn’t know this until I went looking in to why the Noir checklist didn’t include printing plates.

The Hall Of Fame Will Be Bathed In Sun Light

At least we, Suns fans, can say greatness is part of franchise even though this year is another "Trust the process" rebuilding season.

Trade Completed IV(b)

Today I am going to cover the Seahawks, Sonics and Suns that Bo sent me in the package that I started covering yesterday.

 The selection of Seattle Seahawks runs from the early 1980s through the 2000s and included some of the best to ever wear the navy and green. Included in the bundle are players like Sherman Smith, the first Seahawks RB (and current RB coach), Rickey Watters, Joey Galloway, Walter Jones and Lofa Tatupu (not one of the greatest but one of my favorites).

Here are some of my favorite cards:

Anything with Steve Largent is a win

Believe it or not I did not have a Boz rookie until this one got in to my hands. He was a bust as a professional football player but he was a complete success as the personality “Boz”. I wouldn’t say that I idealized him, far from it, but I did respect his play. When he wasn’t injured he was a dominant linebacker and as a high school linebacker I wanted to play that way. I even changed my jersey number to 55 when I switched positions to linebacker during my sophomore year (1987) after he was drafted by the Seahawks. Even now I still like him and have a small Boz collection.

The Seahawks have had some lethal running backs but I would rate Shaun Alexander as one of my favorites, tied with Lynch. And once again Bo hits a need for me and included a Madden 07 Shaun Alexander card. I have always wanted to pick up the Alexander Madden 07 & Madden 08 cards but I just never bought one, now I can scratch this one off of my “Want List” 

I got a little over 100 basketball cards, a mix of Seattle Supersonics and Phoenix Suns and one Steve Kerr that I needed for my collection.

I begin with the set that brought me back in to collecting sports cards, the 1992-93 Stadium Club set and my favorite basketball player ever Steve Kerr. He took the Arizona Wildcats to the 1988 Final Four, he holds the NBA record for highest career 3-Pt Field Goal Percent, won five NBA Championships with the Bulls and Spurs, built a dominant Phoenix Suns team while the team’s GM and as a rookie coach brought the Golden State Warriors to the NBA Finals.

Next up is my second favorite NBA team, the Seattle Supersonics.

When I saw this card I thought it was so cool. I have some neat Payton cards like the GP Scorers Club autograph I pulled from last year’s 2013-14 Immaculate Collection Basketball, but this card shows the epitome of GP’s ball handling skills as he flies through the air with a burning ball.

Then there is the ever-fertile Shawn Kemp (7 kids with 6 women). His high-flying aerial acrobatics were amazing to watch. As an added bonus the 93-94 Stadium Club includes Kemp flying in for a layup over Steve Kerr.

A couple of fan favorites: Detlef Schrempf and Xavier McDaniel, the X-Man also played for the Suns.

 

Going from the Pacific Northwest to the Southwest desert it is time to take a look at the Phoenix Suns, my favorite team. Any conversation about Top Suns will always include Kevin Johnson. KJ, now the Sacramento mayor and main reason the Kings are not in Seattle, was the skilled ball handler that led the team before the likes of Steve Nash. Like the Gary Payton 1995-96 Skybox I got a KJ version too and again it is a perfect example of how he controlled the game with the flaming ball.

Dan Majerle was a shutdown guy and could slam a ball with power, hence the Thunder Dan nickname.

A card with both KJ and Thunder Dan? Oh Snap!

There were three cards that are among the more unique cards in the package, three 1996 Collector’s Edge Key Kraze cards featuring Steve Nash, Ben Davis and Reggie Geary. Two Arizona Wildcats drafted by the Suns in 1996 (though neither played a game for the team) and one of the greatest NBA Point Guards.

 

This was such an amazing package that I am going to have to dig deep in to my collection and come up with some special for Bo.

Enjoy Your Retirement Steve

This past weekend Steve Nash announced his retirement after 18.5 seasons in the NBA. He spent 10 years in Phoenix, 6 in Dallas and 2.5 abysmal years in Los Angeles. It was after another injury plagued season that he decided to hang up his shoes having played in only 65 games over the last 3 seasons.

During his career he played with some of the greats over the past two decades like Kevin Nash, Dirk Nowitzki, Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant. He isn’t an opposing player, standing 6’3” and weighing 180 lbs. but his speed was blinding and he sure knew how to control a game earning 2 MVP Awards and being selected for 8 All-Star Games. Unfortunately he never made it to the BIG GAME, falling short in the Western Conference Finals twice.

His last couple of season in Los Angeles he was just a fraction of his former self and it was depressing to watch him try to push through his back problems on a team that was also just a fraction of their former selves.

Nash is loved here in Phoenix, even though he did move on to the Lakers he is still beloved in the Valley. He is one of those guys that is so easy to like and so easy to collect. Here are a couple of my favorite Nash cards that I have picked up over the years.

His 1996-97 UD3 Rookie Card. Not even close to being one of his more expensive RCs but I have loved this card since I pulled it from a pack, the wood texture and image in the shape of the key is so cool of a design.

 A couple of 2005-06 SPx Winning Materials warm ups. I picked these up for a couple of bucks each. I liked the different colors so I got two.

A 2007-08 Stadium Club Beam Team relic. I love the Stadium Club sets and was so happy when Topps re-released the product in 2007. I pulled his Nash Beam Team relic and an Allen Iverson relic out of the same box.

 This last one I pulled from a tin of 2009-10 SP Game Used Basketball. It includes six swatches and is #/99 and as ecstatic as I was there was a bit of a let down too. The COA on the secondary card was stuck just above Nash’s relic and tore the paper a bit. Also the Nash, Billups and Iverson relics are not fit properly inside the die-cut and are hanging out. I pulled the card like this in 2010 but decided not to get an exchange when I heard horror stories about what some companies consider “Fair value trade”. I wasn’t looking forward to getting a Hasheem Thabeet rookie card #/750 or a Danny Green sticker autograph as a replacement.

A Suns Redemption

My final step from my box break of 2013-14 Immaculate Basketball that I won last year is the Alex Len Rookie Patch Autograph redemption, which I received from Panini today. The card, #/99, is pretty cool. A nice image of Len along with a multi-colored patch, which appears to be part of the “N” from his nameplate on the back of the jersey, and a legible on-card autograph.

Len is an integral part of a young Suns team that is on the way up, a team that missed the playoffs last year by one game and are currently sitting at the #8 seed in the West at the halfway point of the season. This is a nice addition to my Suns collection.

In all it took 4 months and ten days to receive the redemption card.

Come To Me My Pretties

 

In 1992 when I came back to collecting I got caught up in the Shaq phenomenon, my cards of choice? 1992-93 Stadium Club basketball, I loved the full-bleed photograph.

I opened pack after pack looking for Beam Team inserts. Everyone wanted the Jordan or Shaq Beam Team cards but in all honesty I would have been happy to pull any Beam Team card. I just loved the design so much. It wasn’t until the 1993-94 Stadium Club release when I would finally pull a Beam Team insert (Calbert Cheaney), but these just weren’t as cool as the 1992-93 release.

 

Over the years I have considered picking up a Jordan, Barkley or KJ 92-93 Beam Team but always ended up putting them on the back burner. I have since decided that I can survive without adding the Jordan Beam Team to my collection but I fully intended on adding two of my favorite Phoenix Suns eventually.

This past week I finally was able to come across a nice deal that got both Charles Barkley and Kevin Johnson 1992-93 Stadium Club Beam Teams cards shipped for $5.49 total. I consider this one of my more exciting pickups for the year. It isn’t that the cards are anything major but just that I connect these cards to my return to collecting so I have a sentimental connection with the cards.

Box Break: 2013-14 Panini Immaculate Basketball

First I would like to thank Tracy Hackler and Panini for holding the contest, otherwise I would have never had the opportunity to open such a top-end box of cards. The box comes in a cool tin, with sleeve, and inside is a velvet-like inner pack which holds the gold colored box.

Each box contains one numbered base card and 5 numbered hits made up of autographs, patches and relics. Some of the top hits are 1/1 Logoman autograph patches, booklet cards, Insignia patches and Game-used Nameplate Nobility patches but the top of the heap, be all-get all hits are the Sneak Peek shoe relics. These Sneak Peek relics contain a large sneaker swatch  of star players like Kyrie Irving, Shaq, LeBron James and Kobe with the cards all numbered to either 1/1 or #/2 and even the cheapest cards are running a couple of hundred with most selling well over $1,000.

One thing to remember though is that these boxes are high-risk/high-reward. If you are lucky you can make out big but if you don’t have a four-leaf clover growing out of your butt you will have buyer’s remorse. Don’t get me wrong I don’t want to seem ungrateful, this was a unique experience, and I pulled cards from my two favorite teams but if I paid for the box I would have been disappointed.

 

First up is the Joakim Noah base card Gold Parallel #/10

 

A Kendrick Perkins jumbo relic #/75 from my least favorite team, the OKC Stolen Sonics

 

A Bill Sharman autograph #/99

The card has chipping along the green bottom

 

A Michael Kidd-Gilchrist Sole Of The Game shoe relic #/35

 

A Gary Payton Scorers Club autograph #/49

This card is very cool with the gold auto on black paper

 

Finally, an Alex Len Rookie Patch Autograph redemption

 

I collect Suns and Sonics so I got two cards for my collection, including the amazing Payton autograph. I also got a shoe card, just not the kind I was hoping to pull. So there you go…

So Long Amar'e

The first “shot” has been fired by the New York Knicks in the 2010 NBA Free Agency period. With the largest prize, LeBron James, announcing that he plans on staying mum for a few more days the Knicks kick start the activity by coming to an agreement with Amare Stoudamire for a 5-year $100 million contract. While the contract cannot actually be signed until Thursday this is basically a done deal.

As a Suns fan this is saddening news, it is always tough to see a major star leave the team but it is even worse when they are lost to free agency with nothing in return. Hopefully something good can come from free agency for the Suns, maybe in the shape of a guard via Miami or a forward from Toronto? I wonder if Phoenix will now jump in to the action or just sit around?

It Slips Away So Easily

With my birthday looming over me, I was hoping to get a nice present from the Phoenix Suns a day early. Unfortunately, I find myself crying tears of purple and orange.