I knew it was coming but I didn't know when it would be. It was a long journey to get to this point, starting all the way back in February 1996. I knew I would hit it when I got my mail on November 8th, 2024, but I couldn't do it right away....the milestone? 100,000 unique NBA cards! 

Although NBA doesn't play as large a role in my life as it once did, it's still a big part. I'm still very actively collecting the NBA and I really wanted to get some of the Haunted Hoops set Panini made for this Halloween. I've been very critical of Panini over the years, but they did a great job with this. The cards are cheap, bright and fun, everything cards should be! I had to resort to Ebay to get my hands on a "box", which is actually just a really big pack with 40 more packs inside. They arrived to me on November 8th, but I had to scan them large pack before I could open the regular packs- and I had stuff on my scanner while I finished my monthly upload. I finally finished that on the 9th, and then scanned and opened the cards and entered them into my Excel collection chart, where I determined which card was #100,000. It turned out to be #40, Jusuf Nurkic. Of the 100,000 NBA cards I have, it is the 23rd of Nurkic. 

There were a LOT of new people to my collection in this box. NBA cards have gotten very hard to get locally, and almost all the players that have entered the league since 2020? About 60% of them were not yet present in my collection. This one box went a big way towards fixing that. Considering one of my main collecting projects ever is getting at least one card of every NBA player to get one, it was a big boost. This set also has photography from after the trade deadline of the 2023-24 season, so all of the players who got traded at the deadline or changed teams before the 2023-24 season appear with their new teams for the first time in my collection here too. I don't know how many people joined my collection for the first time yet, but I will soon, since I've pulled out all the new people to scan first. That will be revealed to me in full when I do my monthly upload starting on December 1st. I estimate it's more than 30 people in only 117 cards. I have enough cards now- and so many people, closing in on 20 thousand, that I can't remember who is actually in my collection 100% anymore, especially if I only have 1 card of them and it's not scanned yet. 

It's funny...back in 1996, my Mom gave me a pack of basketball cards as a gift for Valentine's Day, knowing that in my school, where she volunteered more than 10,000 hours, a lot of kids collected cards and I did as well, but I was collecting NASCAR and Non-Sport only...everyone else was collecting NBA. She got me those cards so I could have something with my friends to trade with. Later that night, I found a game on TV- Knicks and Hornets. I was hooked, and basketball cards became the biggest deal for me for the longest time, until I burned myself out in 2006. I returned in 2012, now considering the break I took one of the bigger mistakes of my life, but I am wise enough to now know that I will never fully walk away from something I love ever again, a lesson that needed to be learned the hard way. 

Of my friends who were collecting and trading back in 5th grade, I'm still in contact with most of them, at least loosely via Facebook...not a single one stayed in the hobby. I am the only one. 

My extreme, obsessive documentation started after I hit 25,000 cards...or at least when I thought I did. I didn't have the collection totals fully proofed and accurate until I finished typing everything in to my Excel charts earlier in 2024, but I'm counting it as accurate. 

A timeline of major milestones:

• 1st NBA Card- February 14th, 1996. 1995-96 Fleer #220 Sam Cassell
• 50,000th NBA Card - April 5th, 2003. 2002-03 UD Glass #75 Hedo Turkoglu
• 75000th NBA Card- February 14th, 2014. 2012-13 Panini Brilliance #175 John Salmons
• 100000th NBA Card - November 9th, 2024. 2023-24 Haunted Hoops #40 Jusuf Nurkic

This isn't something that happens too often, but I actually won a card related contest! I am a fringe member of the Collector's Universe forum, which is owned and run by a grading company. My thoughts on that concept are not really a secret so I am not on the forum all that often...I try from time to time but there's way, way too much worrying about nothing and not a lot of real collecting. So, I get annoyed and take months off. However, there are still enough posts that make it worth reading, and I've been trying to work myself back into the message board scene...I used to spend hours on message boards every day. When you aren't able to do things, due to health issues, you have to find something to do, and for many years for me that was message boards. That kind of went by the wayside when I began scanning my collection in 2009, to the point where I didn't visit any of them at all. But I did enjoy them, so I'm slowly working my way back in.

That's kind of a long pre-amble, sorry about that.

In August, I won a contest on there. The game was to predict which driver was going to finish second in a particular Cup race. I don't even remember which race at this point, but I know I didn't get it for the first race after I posted. I didn't track the thread. A few weeks later, I see the thread is still getting new posts, so I clicked on it to see what the deal was...and as it turned out, I missed the part of the original post that if there was no winner, it would roll over...eventually, when Martin Truex Jr. finished second at Michigan...I won! The contest runner posted a bunch of stacks of cards and the winner was going to pick five of them. Since I was the winner, I picked the one that showed as Star Wars, the one that showed as hockey and the rest were NBA. The cards arrived and I was pleasantly surprised to discover that some of the cards were from sets I have very few of, but also a little disappointed because I thought I needed a lot more of the Return of the Jedi cards than I actually did...so there were more duplicates than I expected. For some reason I can never remember that I bought a big lot of series 2 (blue border) cards a couple of years ago, and this is actually the second time I've gotten a "lot" of them expecting to add a whole bunch of new cards, only to find out I had them already. Maybe this time it will stick and I won't do it again...but knowing me, probably not.

Now, here are some highlights. I ended up getting 85 new cards and I am not going to post them all, LOL.
This was one of the bigger highlights for me, as it's only my second card from 2006-07 SP Game Used, and only my third of Denham Brown...but the first that shows him in NBA action. Plus, Serially Numbered cards are an addiction of mine.

Speaking of serially numbered cards, this Greg Oden card from 2008-09 Topps Treasury- a mini card that might have come out of a rip card (what a terrible concept that is) but it's SN 23/25. Nice!

One of my biggest achievements in the hobby was completing 2002-03 SP Authentic, including the autographs and serially numbered cards- of a 203 card set, all but 90 were SN. I pulled Yao's autograph, the biggest card in the set,which allowed me to do that. I couldn't do it with the 2003-04 set as I didn't pull LeBron's autograph, so I didn't chase it as much. I am still missing some of the Spectaculars subset, and Yao, card #100, was one of them!






When I first opened the package, I was pretty happy to get some Mystery Finest cards from 1996-97 Topps. Then I looked a little closer- these are Super Teams redeemed cards, significantly harder to find than a standard Mystery Finest. So much so, that I didn't have a single one beforehand. The first design, with the silver border, was the prize if you had a Conference winner. The second version, which has the broken border, is the prize for Division winners. There is also a third version that I have not seen...but I think may be a Refractor for the Champion winner, which would have been the Bulls that year. I actually like the Division winner design better, so I'm glad I got more of them...although I would gladly add the others if I found them in the wild.

Another good one is this Paul Pierce rookie from 1998-99 Ovation. The 10 rookies included in the set were all redemption cards, thanks to the Lockout. They aren't particularly rare as far as redemption cards go but I only have half of them counting this card. I had previously had the SN'd Gold parallel of Pierce- who just retired in June 2017 - but I don't think I got it via redemption, I think I got it on the secondary market. I don't honestly remember. Being the #10 pick (a steal!) Pierce was the final card in the set, #80.


With these two Mournings I'm now 3 cards away from completing both 1992-93 Hoops and Stadium Club. Getting real close, hopefully I will complete them at some point soon. I thought that this was going to knock Hoops out for me but a quick check of my Wantlist on here showed me otherwise.


 I got three of the Lottery Pick redemption cards from 1994-95 Hoops! That's one of my favorite sets, and I didn't have any of the Lottery pick cards previously. Unfortunately they have some contact damage, enough that the Grant Hill card didn't get scanned.
 This one kind of threw me. This is the wrapper exhange card from 1994-95 Hoops. I would never have done that- I save my empty packs- even if I could have. I didn't start collecting the NBA until February 1996 though so it was long expired by then.



















Some more NBA highlights, including some great 1990s inserts. Anytime I can get new inserts from 1996-97 Topps is a great day, and here there are some more, in addition to the Super Teams cards. That's only my third Hobby Masters card- the previous two in my collection I pulled when the set was new. Magic gets me 1 card away from the 1989-90 Fleer sticker insert completed. 2006-07 Upper Deck is a set I have very little of...I think only two packs worth. The Rondo is my first RC from the set.





Some of the Star Wars cards I got. There were 9 new base cards, which I scanned all of but didn't show, and some of the stickers, which I needed much more of. The #49 sticker was the one they reprinted in the Abrams' book about the Topps Return of the Jedi set so I had to scan that one.

The set that saw the largest influx of new cards was 1991-92 Pro Set French. I more than doubled my collection of the set, although considering it's a 600+ card set and I now have 30 something, I still have a lot more I can add. I added a bunch here and only scanned a couple (and one of the English versions) because they were all done on the Database already.



Quite a few of the new addition are from the All-Star subset. Somebody sign Jagr already!

 Ultra was always my favorite brand, and the 2003-04 NBA set holds a special place in my memory. 

The base card is fine, of course. 

The parallels have a standard format, with the top left corner die cut with Gold Medallion foil lettering there. 

Normally, it's all good...

Oh....oh no. 

I don't think Fleer thought to take that into account when choosing photos, which leads us to the hilarious card. 

 I have mentioned it a few times over the years- when my brother gave me my current scanner I went and scanned a bunch of mirror foil and Finest style cards. I do not like editing those scans, they are not fun at all...the term I've used in the past is "soul crushing". I had set them aside to work on when I was sick and didn't want to touch any cards to make new scans, and...guess what, I'm sick again. This is the third time in 2023 I've managed to catch a cold...I'm so ready for 2024. Worse still is that I'll miss my model club Christmas party for the first time ever, since I joined the club in 2009. 

But, with all this time being spent sick, I finally got the scans finished! They have been waiting since 2019, I believe. 

After the last sickness, I had only 10 pages left- 2 of 1994 Finest baseball and 4 each of 1994-95 and 1997-98 Finest basketball. 

over the course of yesterday and today I finished off all 10 pages. I'm so glad they are done and behind me now, no longer hanging over my head like the sword of Damocles. 

Not to say I'm done with the foils and Finests, I have several hundred that require scans still, and I am still adding more to the collection, as in last post. But when you do one or two pages at a time it's a lot more tolerable than seeing over 100 pages looming ahead of you. I didn't pay attention to how many pages it was, or if I did I forgot, but I think it was actually closer to 500 scans, which would be about 250 pages. I know this round covered images 561 to 627, and I know they started in at least the 200s- maybe lower numbered. I wish I had paid more attention to that. 

The next scan I make will be #13997 so that tells you an idea of how long ago these were scanned. Like I said, I think it was 2019. It might have been late 2018. The one thing I would change about this Epson V600 if I could would be that it saves the date the scan was made, it does not. I know the scans were made BEFORE I went to the NY International Auto show in 2019. 

This was the last card cropped and edited. 1997-98 Finest #242.