Rockets from Sport Card Collectors

A while ago, Sport Card Collectors asked about a card I posted on my blog. I don't really like to trade, but I sent him some cards and he sent me some cards.

Most of the package centered around my favorite basketball team, the Houston Rockets. First up are some shiny parallels and inserts of Houston players, including three of my all-time favorite player, Hakeem Olajuwon. I don't collect basketball cards as much as I used to, so there are a lot of card designs here that are new to me.

There were a couple of UFC cards in the package, both from the 2017 Topps UFC Museum Collection product. On the left is a Copper parallel of Germaine de Randamie, and on the right is a Blue Sapphire parallel of Jose Aldo.

Last up are the hits. Shane Battier was one of my favorite Rockets while he was on the team. He was kind of the figurehead of Daryl Morey's analysis-heavy approach to team-building. Battier didn't put up huge conventional stats, but his positioning, shot selection, and cerebral approach to the game increased the team's win probability while he was on the floor. The Prestigious Pros relic from 2010-11 Panini Prestige is numbered # 121 / 499.

The Jason Terry die-cut autograph comes from 2014-15 Panini Donruss is numbered # 12 / 99. I don't know a lot about Terry, but he's been in the NBA for a long time and spent a couple years on the Rockets. He's also 3rd in all-time 3-pointers made, behind Ray Allen and Reggie Miller. I think maybe Steph Curry, Kyle Korver, and Klay Thompson have a chance at passing him if they play long enough, though.

The highlight of the package was this Apprentice Signatures autograph of Patrick Beverley from 2013-14 Panini Crusade. It is numbered # 05 / 10. I liked Beverley as a Rocket, although I thought at times he showboated a little too much. It wouldn't be a problem, but it felt like every so often he would have an unnecessary turnover or miss a shot because he was showing off. He's a good defender, though, and was overall a solid player for the team.

This was a pretty cool package from Sport Card Collectors. It was especially nice to add so many cards to my oft-neglected basketball collection. Thank you!

Olajuwon Sole of the Game

One piece of memorabilia I've been wanting for a long time is a trading card featuring an embedded piece of shoe in it. There have been a number of products produced with chunks of game-worn shoe relics, but I haven't ever been able to find the right one at the right price.

I finally tracked one down late last month. I actually didn't win the auction for this one, but the seller sent me a Second-Chance Offer because the high bidder had won another card from him and couldn't afford to pay for both. It's a Sole of the Game insert featuring Hakeem Olajuwon from 2014-15 Panini Immaculate Collection Basketball. This is the base version of his card, and it's numbered # 07 / 30. The card was shipped from Australia, and I thought it might be lost for good in the mail. The tracking number showed it leaving a processing center in California on April 29th, and there were no updated in the status until it arrived in Boise yesterday. About a week ago I submitted a search request on USPS.com to see if they could find it, but I never heard anything from them. I don't know how it spent nearly three weeks getting from there to here, but I am glad it made it safely. The card is extremely thick, probably because it has a piece of Olajuwon's sole in it.

The Rockets managed to tie their Conference Finals series with Golden State at 1-1 the other day, and I'm hoping they can advance to the NBA Finals. I think whichever team comes out of the West will have a pretty good shot at winning the title over the Celtics or the Cavaliers.

Blog Bat-Around: What I Collect

I don't think I've ever participated in a Blog Bat-Around before. I tend to do things on my own schedule, and by the time I am ready to participate in something like this, everyone else has moved on. I think most people have already moved on from this one, too, but I'm posting about it anyway. I think credit goes to Night Owl for starting/inspiring this one, entitled 'What I Collect.' It's basically an excuse to list your various projects and collecting interests. Some people listed theirs in order of preference, but my collecting habits are too random for me to do that.

I'll start off with baseball. I mainly focus on player collections, although there are some other things I chase. I would say the primary player I collect is R.A. Dickey, but Jon Singleton is up there and I also have tried to put together a decent Josh Reddick collection. Evan Gattis is a guy I've tried to start an accumulation for, but I get distracted from that one too easily. He's probably one of my favorite players to watch, though, outside of Jose Altuve. Singleton's available cardboard seems to be drying up, as it doesn't look like he's going to pan out anytime soon. Maybe I'll change my focus to Gattis or someone else once I feel like I'm done getting Singleton cards. I also pick up Munenori Kawasaki cards when I can, but I think he announced his retirement in the last few days, and he doesn't really have a lot of cardboard out there anyhow.

Because I can't reasonably expect to get all of the cards of any given player, I just try to get the ones I like best, and the ones that are available at a reasonable price. I will grab random hits and cards featuring other players I like, such as Max Scherzer, but when it comes to single cards I am usually pretty focused on a handful of guys. I did pick up a whole lot of Topps Now cards from last season, mostly the ones featuring Astros. I also like to get some of the oddball cards that Topps prints for the Now program, like the card that talked about the Royals' Rally Mantis. I will generally grab any that include a donation to charity. A couple that come to mind are one Topps did for Hurricane Harvey relief and another donating to veteran's charities for Memorial Day.

I usually buy a factory set of Topps and a set of Update from eBay. In most years I collect the blue foil parallel set out of Opening Day. Sometimes I buy a set of Heritage after busting enough of it to realize that I can't possibly build a set without spending a whole lot of money on packs full of doubles. I typically buy a box of Allen & Ginter for Gint-a-Cuffs. Usually I find one other product that I buy a bunch of. Last year it was Bowman Platinum. There are other collections that I sometimes add to, like Wally Moon, Rollie Fingers, Nolan Ryan, Randy Johnson, vintage sets, Fan Favorites autographs from Topps Archives, and oddball releases.

One big focus of mine has been sketch cards and full-size artwork. I have a few main character collections. The primary ones are DC Comics' Power Girl and Leia from Star Wars. I also have small collections of Marvel characters She-Hulk, Squirrel Girl, and Scarlet Witch. I've accumulated quite a few Captain America sketches, as well as a small number of M.O.D.O.K. sketch cards. I will pick up sketches of other subjects, too, if they catch my eye.

I also collect Star Wars cards, but not all that obsessively. I just get what interests me. Topps puts out a lot of Star Wars products, and keeping up with them all would be a full-time collection. I don't have that kind of focus. I gather cards featuring Leia, interesting relics, and autographs from other characters that I like.

I like wrestling cards. They are a lot of fun. Again, I collect just about anything that catches my eye. I don't try to get all of the Topps Now WWE cards, but I get one or two every few months if a wrestler I like is featured. I like autographs of classic guys like Sergeant Slaughter. I also have collections for Nia Jax and Bayley. I started a Charlotte Flair collection after I met her last year at a book signing, but I don't have an autographed card from her yet. John Cena is too popular for me to collect, but I should really track down an autograph of his.

I've gathered a couple of Iron Sheik hits over time, and I went out and got that Trish Stratus autograph recently. Most of my collections are grab bags of single cards that I pick up on eBay, with the occasional box break or group break thrown in.

I also collect trading cards of Japanese women wrestlers. BBM puts out an annual set that covers a wide range of promotions, and the Stardom promotion puts out their own card set every so often. The Stardom packs are really hard to get, so usually I am limited to whatever singles pop up on eBay. I have a pretty good source for unopened BBM True Heart cards, though, and between eBay and Yahoo! Auctions in Japan I am able to get most of the cards I want. I have a full run of Command Bolshoi (the masked wrestler up top) autographs dating back to 2003. That's my best Japanese wrestler collection, but there are several other wrestlers that I collect. I am currently waiting on a large shipment out of Japan, which includes the complete 2004 set, which almost never comes up for sale. A couple of high-level Japanese wrestlers have transferred to the WWE recently, and that has driven up interest a little bit in these cards. 

I collect UFC cards, too. I have a couple of fighter collections. Neil Magny is one of the primary ones, and Randa Markos is one of the others. I really just like to collect a little of everything, though. I will usually grab just about any relic or autograph if it is cheap enough, and especially if I don't already have something featuring that fighter. I gather up low-numbered parallels if I can, from just about any product. It seems like every year I go pretty hard on at least one product. Last year it was Museum Collection and Chrome. This year I might go after those same products.

I chase NASCAR cards, mostly focusing on a handful of drivers. Most of my favorite drivers have retired, so I am looking for new people to collect. I haven't settled on anyone yet. In reality most of my racing card money goes to Danica Patrick cards and the occasional box break. I am thinking about starting a Darrell 'Bubba' Wallace collection, or maybe collecting one of the Busch brothers. Other racers I collect are Tony Stewart, Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt Jr., and Josh Wise. I also have a small collection of drag racing stuff, with the main focus of that collection being the Force family (John, Courtney, and Brittany). 

I guess this scan represents pop culture celebrities and other sports. I gather autographs, relics, and other cards featuring people that I've heard of from outside of mainstream sports. Goodwin Champions is a good source for those, as are Panini's various celebrity offerings. I've got a fair number of cards featuring Olympic gymnasts, a decent Felicia Day collection, some singers, some authors, and some people who are mostly famous for being famous or being related to someone famous.

Basketball cards were the main thing I collected during my teen years in the 90's. It is mostly a fringe collection now, but I still gather cards for my main player collections (Hakeem Olajuwon, Gheorghe Muresan, Manute Bol). I will also pick up any Houston Rockets cards I can find, but I don't often go out of my way to track them down. 

Football cards are pretty far down my list, but I still have a couple of NFL collections. Most of the cards I add picture former Broncos' tight end Shannon Sharpe. I like getting Terrell Davis and John Elway cards. I will collect just about anything with Tim Tebow on it. I also recently started a Jake Butt collection, because how often does someone named Butt play for your favorite team? I've picked up one or two Von Miller cards over the last couple of years, too, but I have a hard time focusing on football. The careers are so short, and the sport just hasn't been as exciting for me as it was previously.

That's a quick rundown of my collecting world. I am not a very focused guy, so I bounce around from thing to thing as new products release and my interests change.

Many Thanks are Due!

I have fallen way behind on posts, to the point where I am still blogging about things from early 2017. In the meantime, cards have piled up ever-higher on my desk, and I have lost track of a great many things in the rubble. Unfortunately, some of those lost things are maildays from other bloggers, which should really be acknowledged and blogged as soon as they come in. I'll try to catch up as I dig my way through the stacks, but I know that the identities of some senders may be lost to me. The cards I am posting about today were stuffed in an envelope with someone else's return address on it, but the note accompanying them was from Jon over at A Penny Sleeve for Your Thoughts. Why did I put them in that other envelope? I don't know.

This first card of Astros hurler Doug Drabek comes from 1995 Studio, a set that was designed to resemble credit cards. Between this and Fleer's acid trip, 1995 was a weird year for cardboard. The back of the card even features a printed magnetic strip and a facsimile signature. 

Speaking of 1995 and weird things, how weird is it to see Goose Gossage in a Mariners uniform on this 1995 Score card. He played the last year of his career for Seattle in 1994, making this a sunset card for him. Jon also included some other sports in this mailing, with this serially-numbered Hakeem Olajuwon Scoring Kings Stat Line card from Donruss.

I really like the way Denver Broncos look on cardboard, but I haven't put much effort into that collection, outside of the occasional group break spot or Shannon Sharpe card. It was pretty neat to get a trio of Broncos here, including a couple of nice John Elway cards. I liked the look of Topps Magic, but never bought much of it. There is always too much other stuff to chase. The coating on that Willie Green card is just asking me to peel it off, but I am often reluctant to 'alter' a card in that way. Also, I've heard horror stories of people trying it after a number of years and having the face of the actual card peel off with the coating.

Thank you for the cards, Jon! I always appreciate maildays, and I'm sorry it's taken me a while to get this written. Again, I apologize to anyone who has sent me cards without an acknowledgment on my part. I will try to identify the sources of as many mailings as I can, and give proper thanks here on my page.

Care Package from Fuji

When I got home from New Jersey I had a veritable mountain of mail sitting on my desk. Among the mailers was a package from Fuji over at The Chronicles of Fuji. Inside I found a whole bunch of items that hit many of my different collections.

First up is a number of Hakeem Olajuwon cards. Those Upper Deck holograms were huge for me back in the day. These are the cards I coveted in the 90's. There's also a Manute Bol card hiding down there in the lower right.

I like lists, and those NBA Jam Session cards take a list and put it on cardboard. There's a lot of star power on those cards. The Trading Places insert at the bottom was new to me. I got out of collecting around the time that Olajuwon went to the Raptors, so I haven't seen most of his later cardboard.

Fuji also hit up my Nolan Ryan collection. I'm not a very good Ryan collector, but I like getting his cards when they show up. Out of this lot, I especially like the O-Pee-Chee in the upper right and the Starline card in the lower left. It's also nice to see a couple appearances by the Astros' rainbow uniforms.

There were plenty of Astros in the package, including the Killer B's, player collection guy Jon Singleton, and World Series hero George Springer.

Hologram technology makes another appearance here, with a Denny's oddball of Jeff Bagwell. I've probably eaten at Denny's three or four times in my life, so I wasn't ever exposed to these until I started reading card blogs. There's also a nice-looking Craig Biggio League Leaders card here.

My R.A. Dickey collection got a little boost, too, with a few different things, including two different Bowman Platinum parallels, a shiny foil Stadium Club card, a Little League card (from a Sports Illustrated for Kids magazine), and some Museum Collection and Ginter to round it out.

This slightly over-sized Kellogg's Raisin Bran card was one highlight of the package. I don't think I'd ever seen this one before, so it was a welcome addition to my Olajuwon hoard. It highlights his college career.

This 2017 Topps Series One Jackie Robinson Logo card of Alex Bregman is a solid chunk of cardboard. These were a one-per-blaster inclusion in the retail release of this product, so the card for a given team would be a pretty difficult find.

The last card in the package was this Jason Lane patch relic from 2002 Leaf Certified. This is the Mirror Blue parallel, numbered # 68 / 75. Lane played outfield in parts of 6 MLB seasons, with his only full season being 2005. That means he's played in four more World Series games than most of us have. He fell out of the MLB after 2007, but bounced around the minors and came back as a pitcher, throwing 10.1 innings for the Padres in 2014. I thought that was pretty wild, especially with the long gap in between. I believe he is currently a hitting coach in the Brewers organization.

Thanks for the package, Fuji! There was a lot of variety in here, and I enjoyed looking through all of the cards you sent!

Hakeem Olajuwon Court Relic

There was a pretty big NBA game tonight, with the Golden State Warriors taking on the Cleveland Cavaliers in an elimination game for the NBA Championship. From what my Facebook feed says, the Warriors were able to finish the job, handing LeBron James and the Cavs a 4-1 series defeat. I lost much of my interest in the playoffs after my Houston Rockets got eliminated in embarrassing fashion by a Spurs team that was missing their superstar, Kawhi Leonard, but I still kept an eye on the headlines.

As I often do when the Rockets are eliminated from postseason play, I turned my eyes to the Rockets of the past, specifically Hakeem Olajuwon, who led the team to two Championships in 1994 and 1995. He's not wearing a Rockets uniform on this card, though. He spent the last season of his career playing for the Toronto Raptors, as pictured in this 2001-02 Topps Heritage Basketball Articles of the Arena relic card. I think this is my first floor relic, and I always like getting a new relic type.

The back of the card certifies that it contains an authentic piece of the Boston Garden floor on which Hakeem Olajuwon played an NBA game. I guess it's something. It's not quite on the level of UFC mat relics, which can sometimes be matched to a specific sponsor logo at a specific UFC event. Then you can watch the fight in question and see if the fighter stepped on that logo or had their face dragged across it or something.

Anyway, I'm glad I was able to add a new relic type to my collection, and especially glad that the card features my favorite basketball player of all time, even though he's wearing the wrong uniform on this card.

A Dream Pick-Up

Sometimes if I am buying a couple things from an eBay seller, I will search their listings for the names of several players I collect, just to see what they've got. Usually I don't find much, but every so often I will come across something I want. That was the case with this card. The main purchase here was a couple of UFC cards (the Cat Zingano and Rafael Dos Anjos quad relics in this post), but I picked up a nice Hakeem Olajuwon to go along with them. 

This relic card of The Dream comes from 2017-17 Panini Court Kings. It's part of the Vintage Materials insert set. I believe this is the base version. I don't add to my Olajuwon collection all that often, so it was nice to come across this nice-looking relic card. I probably wouldn't have purchased it alone with the cost of shipping, but splitting the shipping three ways made it a better proposition for me.

It is serially-numbered, with this being copy # 132 / 149. The other parallels are # / 25 and # 1 / 1. I doubt I will be adding them anytime soon. I like any card that brings up the Rockets' two Championship seasons. They are one of the best teams in the NBA right now, but there are some really good teams at the very top and I don't know if James Harden + the other guys can beat any of the super teams out there across a 7-game series, let alone a couple of them in a row.

Combined Shipping Leads to Buying Stuff 10: Combined Shipping is a Powerful Drug

The first card in this post is the only card I meant to purchase, but things got a little out of hand when I saw that the seller offered free shipping with the purchase of  items. I am usually able to pass up on these offers because sellers often don't have enough cards I want. This time I did track down 10 items from the seller's inventory to purchase.

Here is the card that started me down this path. It popped up in my feed at a very low price for a low-numbered UFC card. It is the Gold parallel of Jessica Penne's 2015 Topps UFC Champions card, and it is numbered # 16 / 25. As a bonus, it features a cameo by one of my PC fighters, Randa Markos. Penne would win that fight by decision. I will pick up nearly any UFC parallel card that is # / 25 or less if the price is right.

The problem with my Randa Markos collection is that, to my knowledge, she doesn't have any relics or autographs out there. I am lucky if she gets into lower-tier products with a base card and some parallels or maybe an insert. She is absent from the checklists of most hit-driven products, so I have expanded my player collections to officially include Julianna Pena. As part of the combined shipping lot, I picked up this Fight Mat Relic Card from 2016 Topps UFC Knockout. It is numbered # 076 / 188, and you can see in tiny print under the disclaimer that this relic piece comes from the TUF 18 Finale, a tournament that Pena won.

Randa Markos' next opponent is Carla Esparza. They will fight at UFC Fight Night: Browne vs. Lewis in February. This card is Esparza's Gold parallel from 2016 Topps UFC Knockout, numbered # 44 / 99.

I also picked up this Green parallel of Leslie Smith from 2015 Topps UFC Chronicles. It is numbered # 088 / 288. Smith has had an up-and-down career in the UFC so far, last defeating Irene Aldana in December.

The last UFC card in this lot is this Silver parallel of Tecia Torres from 2016 Topps UFC Knockout. It is numbered # 022 / 227. Torres lost a fight to Rose Namajunas in April 2016, and has an upcoming fight against Bec Rawlings in February.

I closed out the order with a couple of Hakeem Olajuwon and Shannon Sharpe cards for those particular player collections. I think the top left Olajuwon is from 1999-00 Skybox E-X, and the top right Olajuwon is from 1997-98 Flair Showcase. On the bottom are a 1999 Topps Gold Label and a 1998 Flair Showcase card for Sharpe.

There are apparently only nine cards in this post. There is a 1997 Pinnacle Shannon Sharpe card that should be here, but I don't see the scan for it, and the Leslie Smith Green parallel was from another order and ought to be replaced by a Cat Zingano card that also isn't in the scans for this post. I was twisting my brain around trying to match the cards in that order to the cards in this post. That's what happens when you let cards pile up before you scan them. Either way, I originally went to buy the card at the top of the post and wound up ordering 9 more to go with it, including some of the cards pictured here.