Pages from my Binder--rolling thread of dime box treasures

[MyckKabongo]

About this Thread

For several months, I’ve thought it would be fun to start a basketball card blog, where no card would be too low end to merit discussion. It would be a place where I could appreciate the little things and fine details that make this hobby so fun. I got the idea from the wonderful baseball card blogging community that revels in the joy of low end cards. However, there’s not such a thing for us basketball collectors. When I raised the idea of starting a blog on here about a year ago, many suggested that I just post on blowout. So, that’s what this is: my thread where I can post pages from my binder of dime and quarter box treasures. Feel free to post a comment.

About Me

I’ve got a pretty typical collecting story. I used to collect cards back in the early 90s as a kid, mostly baseball, but some basketball and a little non-sports. When the baseball strike happened, I moved on through stages of collecting comics, pogs (lol) and finally tcgs before eventually dropping all of my collecting hobbies when I went to college. Around the time I reached age 30, my beloved KC Royals made a stunning run to the World Series, which prompted me to think “It sure would be cool to own a team set of these guys’ cards.” One thing led to another and here I am again an avid collector of baseball and basketball cards. My collecting is pretty multi-faceted, but if there’s one thing I really love its going to a card show and digging a whole bunch of treasures out dime and quarter boxes.

[MyckKabongo]

http://i.imgur.com/cgTi0sqh.jpg (http://imgur.com/cgTi0sq)
http://i.imgur.com/3V4VdI7h.jpg (http://imgur.com/3V4VdI7)

And away we go! When I buy a great big bagful of dime box gems, I like to put them in pages by themes. This is one of my photography-oriented pages. As always, let’s go right to left, then down.

1990-91 Fleer Update #U-69 – Manute Bol

The 1990s were a weird and wonderful time when 3 of the 5 tallest players ever played in the NBA: Manute Bol, Gheorge Muresan and Shawn Bradley. Not the most athletic group of players. I doubt either of the latter two would get a sniff in today’s NBA. Bol could ball a little bit, at least in the realm of shot-blocking. For his career he averaged 3.3 blocks/game in only 18 mpg, good for second all time in blocks per game and first all-time in blocks/48.

What I like about this card is it shows just how incredibly long Bol’s legs and arms were. Truly a sight to see. I doubt we’ll ever see someone like him in the league again. Interestingly, Bol found a home in my hometown Kansas City area among the Sudanese community there. He was a tremendous humanitarian for his native land, a true hero off the court. Sadly, he passed in 2010. One of his sons, Bol Bol, is one of the top HS sophomores in the country, recently picking up an offer from my Kansas Jayhawks.

1995-96 Upper Deck Collector's Choice #398 - Grant Hill

This photo gallery subset is nothing to write home about, but I give them credit for trying. It’s got a black & white action photo and the little caption describing the action on the front. ’98-99 Vintage ’61 did it better though.

Grant Hill is the dime box king. My theory is that the prospectors of yesterday used to hoard his cards during that stretch in the late ‘90s when he was dubbed “the Next Jordan” only to see his cards become worth less and less as his career faltered due to injuries. When you dig through as many dime boxes as I do, you can see the thought processes of collectors and shop owners back in the day in what they chose to buy. You see these huge stacks of base Joe Smith, Ron Mercer and Erick Dampier rookie cards and you ponder about just how many 4,000 count box there are somewhere out there littered with the broken dreams of prospectors. At least Grant Hill actually was a hell of a player at his peak. That’s all I’ll say about Grant for now, we’ll surely be talking about his cards quite a bit.

1995-96 Topps Stadium Club #355 - John Stockton

Gotta think Topps was influenced by Emotion with this Stadium Club subset. I do enjoy photos of guys emoting out there and we don’t see those enough nowadays (big shout to the Court Kings Expressionists and Swagger insert sets, though). Still not the strongest of efforts. The slow zoom on his face looks like a modern day twitter meme and what’s up with the distorted photo on the back right? Topps kinda mailed it in, but still an alright card of an underrated all-time great.

1998-99 Skybox Premium #31 - Allen Iverson

Now this right here is what I’m talking about. The triple threat: great photo, great design, great player. A true dime box gem. Most of the cards I see from this set are usually scrubs, so you can be sure it was a great day when I unearthed the Answer here.

1998-99 SPx Finite Radiance #59 - Dikembe Mutombo /5000

Ohhh ohhhhh ooooohhhhhhhhhh, get that ish outta here son! When some young punk asks why Kanye rap about “middle finger longer than Mutoumbo,” just show them this card. After you’ve taken a second to recover from the ferocity of the block depicted, please direct yourself to the serial number on the back. 4…3…2…1, hey that’s a recognizable sequence of numbers so you know what that mean. Ebay 1 of 1 my friend. Prepare to pay up if you want this 1/1 4321 Mutombo, dawg.

2002-03 Topps Stadium Club #2 - Pau Gasol

Remember young Pau? Hard to tell it’s even the same guy as the shaggy-grizzly bearded man we know as Pau today. Nice Matrix cameo here—I love a good cameo. It just adds to the sense of time and place. It makes you think about how these guys were contemporaries as 2 young stars on the rise. Pau wasn’t battling anonymous chumps, he was going toe to toe with great players like Shawn Marion. I like how a card can make you ponder a matchup like that for a second.

1998-99 SPx Finite Radiance #84 - Steve Smith /5000

What can I say? I’m a sucker for SPx Finite. I will never, ever pass one of these up for a dime. I mean, we’d all have a good laugh if Panini numbered cards to 5,000 to 10,000 (hell, I’m still laughing at those Absolute RCs #ed to 999), but hey, it’s numbered and the photos are usually pretty good. Not much else to say about this card other than to wonder why Atlanta stuck with this terrible logo and uniforms for so many years. FUGLY. No one is ever going to demand a throwbacks night for these jerseys, ever.

2004-05 Fleer Authentix #29 - Yao Ming

Look at that. Yao barely even jumping just throwing it down all hard like it’s nothing. It really sucks how much injuries robbed us of what could have been for Yao. Somewhere in an alternate universe where Yao could’ve stayed healthy, the T-Mac/Yao rockets won a title or at least made the finals.

2007-08 Topps Chrome #15 - Carmelo Anthony

Far from my favorite year or Chrome, design-wise but hey, it’s a great player and a cool photo. 2 out of three ain’t bad.

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And there we have it. Takes me a while to write one of these so I’m not sure how often I’ll be able to do it, but it was kinda therapeutic to just enjoy some cards for a bit. I hope you enjoyed. Thanks for reading.

[amazinhdgaming]

I love people who can appreciate a card's beauty like you do. Keep em coming.

[TheTimeIsNow]

I love this!!! I also love digging through dime boxes and put together binders of star players and hall of famers. I always pick cards I like aesthetically pleasing and I enjoy flipping through my binders. Very unique cards!

[dizzy4111]

Very cool thread idea. I'll be following this for sure.

[IronMonkey415]

These are amazing. I WANT MORE

[88horsepower]

Awesome idea for a thread. Looking forward to more of these!

[90sbasketballin]

^^^^ Agreed. Such a great idea

[MyckKabongo]

http://i.imgur.com/LGo0hd3h.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/YQgrSjah.jpg

Thanks to everyone for the positive feedback. In return, I’ve written up another page. The theme of this page, like many others will be, is the crazy and colorful, wild and wonderful designs of the 90. These are some of the earliest basketball cards that I picked up after my return to the hobby. I hope the scan suffices, I'm going to try to step up my scan quality game next time around.

1994-95 Topps Embossed #103 - Grant Hill (RC)

This card must’ve looked really cool at the time of its release. This was only a season after the first year of Finest when chrome cards first became a thing, so I can’t imagine people had seen many cards like this at that point. That said, the rectangular pattern doesn’t do much for me, but the photo is decent and it’s always nice to see Hill in the classic Blue and Red Pistons unis.

1997 SPx #SPX2 - Antoine Walker

When I first saw this in a box, I had never seen one of these before and I thought I was making a monster steal. Die-cut and a hologram? Whoa. It certainly stood out amongst the early ‘90s hoops and fleer junk base it was hiding out amongst. While it turns out you can find it for a dollar on COMC, it’s still a steal to me. I’ve only found one other card from this set in the card show wilds from this set, and it’s not for lack of looking.

Let’s look past the totally sweet Michael Jordan defensive cameo here to talk about Antoine Walker for a bit. Every time I see Antoine Walker, I always think of either “Employee number 8 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0w1kylcPFo)” or “Cybertoine (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CANKp_r9B1).” If you watched as much late 90s NBA as I did I’m sure both of these will ring a bell. It’s kind of strange he was able to secure such prominent endorsement deals, because he was not a very popular player. I can distinctly recall he had a very bad reputation as the consummate volume scorer, selfish and inefficient. That reputation was well founded. Check out his basketball reference page (http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/w/walkean02.html). Those shooting percentages are seriously ugly. 5 seasons > 20 ppg and had only 5.7 offensive win shares for his career!

2000-01 Topps Gallery Gallery of Heroes #GH9 - Antonio McDyess

Now this was an honest steal. This set is not easy to find and you’ll usually have to pay at least a couple dollars. I’d love to complete the set one day, though, because these stained glass acetate cards are beautiful, especially in the sunlight. Stained glass is just always lovely, which is why it’s in so many older churches. Unfortunately, it’s become a bit of a lost art form, as the trend has been for churches to have more austere facilities in recent decades. Likewise, with basketball cards Panini hasn’t given us a stained glass set for the past couple of years after having some well received insert sets in Innovation. Bring back the stained glass, Panini!

Random aside, but if you’re ever in London, check out the glass collection at the Victoria and Albert museum.

1996-97 Fleer Metal Cyber-Metal #20 - Chris Webber

In an era of wild card designs, Fleer Metal produced some of the most bonkers stuff. I mean, look at this card. It’s got Chris Webber playing basketball against some crazy looking robots. Then on the back, there’s nothing to address this fact. What the heck,fleer?

1994-95 Flair Rejector #3 - Dikembe Mutombo

I couldn’t decide if I like this card or not. On the one hand, it’s got a cool photo and some pretty intricate textures. On the other, it’s really busy and the colors used are random and clash with the photo. One thing you can’t say is that it’s boring, and that’s what swings my vote. This card is dope.

1992-93 Upper Deck Award Winners #AW2 - John Stockton

Steals aren’t the first stat that I think of when I think of Stockton, but the man is in fact the all-time steals leader. He led the league in steals in ‘91-92, and this card stands as a testament to that fact. I encourage you to check out his Basketball Reference page (http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/s/stockjo01.html) if you haven’t in a while. With the advanced stats we have now, it’s clear that Stockton should have been even more appreciated than he was back in the day. I could go on and on about Stockton, but I’ll just make one more point. Check out how good this guy was in his late 30s all the way up to age 40 in the most athletically demanding position in the league. What a beast—I’m going to have to start a Stockton PC.

As for the card, I gotta say, I miss holograms. You never see them anymore, which makes me sad because back in the early 90s, holograms were THE hit in a lot of products.

1995-96 SP #159 - Kevin Garnett

First time I saw this, I wasn’t 100% sure they photographed the right guy for the card. Rookie KG had hair, was rail thin and even had a little mustache going. Neither of those first 2 would be accurate descriptors for the remainder of career, so it’s nice to have a card to remember those days.

Can’t help but think the Wolves should bring back these unis or at least the color scheme for their emerging dynasty. The washed out blue and grey with no green is just so blah.

1997-98 Flair Showcase Row 2 #19 - Marcus Camby

There’s not much to say about Flair Showcase that hasn’t been said on these boards. Easily one of the most popular 90s sets among today’s collectors. As for Camby, I’m sure he’s considered a disappointment considering how high we has drafted, but he did ultimately have a long and very solid career.

1990-91 Skybox #11 - Dominique Wilkins

90-91 Skybox, with it’s oh so early 90s computer graphics backgrounds, might just be the quintessential basketball junk wax set. I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if it were the best-selling basketball set of all time. Hence, why I won’t spend a dime for these joints anymore. I’m sure I could piece together a complete set for <$5 with minimal effort.

Until next time!

[8collector34]

I say you got good taste. It is a bummer that we do not have card shops over here in Hungary anymore. I would rather spend $15 a month on cards from a dime or quarter box. For me however it is more remunerative to buy cards from $15 to $150 on eBay if I am going to pay $12 for shipping. The downside to that is I have to save up. Come to think of it, it is kind of funny that both low end cards and high and cards are out of reach for me. So please keep posting, because there is no shortage of high end on forums and I need a break.

[MyckKabongo]

I say you got good taste. It is a bummer that we do not have card shops over here in Hungary anymore. I would rather spend $15 a month on cards from a dime or quarter box. For me however it is more remunerative to buy cards from $15 to $150 on eBay if I am going to pay $12 for shipping. The downside to that is I have to save up. Come to think of it, it is kind of funny that both low end cards and high and cards are out of reach for me. So please keep posting, because there is no shortage of high end on forums and I need a break.

Thanks for the kind words. I am very grateful to live in an area with a regular bimonthly card show, even if it is small. Even for the US it's very rare to have that so I try to make it a point to support it as much as I can.

[duron]

We need more threads like this.
A+, great work this semester.

actually A-, that Grant Hill topps embossed is a classic AND gorgeous. :D

[MyckKabongo]

What’s poppin’ guys! It’s been a couple months since I added anything to this thread, but I promise I haven’t abandoned it. The fact is it’s been a busy and difficult summer for me so I haven’t been able to find the time to write one of these.

However, a great day of card show shopping today (posted in the poverty thread) has me feeling like writing a page, so here we go with a photo-oriented page.

http://i692.photobucket.com/albums/vv286/StiflingKansasDefense/CCI05092016_0000.jpg (http://s692.photobucket.com/user/StiflingKansasDefense/media/CCI05092016_0000.jpg.html)
http://i692.photobucket.com/albums/vv286/StiflingKansasDefense/CCI05092016_0001.jpg (http://s692.photobucket.com/user/StiflingKansasDefense/media/CCI05092016_0001.jpg.html)

1997-98 Z-Force #198 - Ray Allen

Gotta be honest, I’m not much of a fan of most designs in Z Force. These cards prove there is such a thing as “too 90’s,” just too busy and cluttered for my taste. Still this is dope action shot of young Ray Allen back in the Jesus Shuttlesworth days. Just saw he’s still thinking of coming back—when are we going to have a definitive answer on when this guy’s career is over? At this point he’s the Brett Favre of the NBA.

1996-97 NBA Hoops Hipnotized #H15 - Charles Barkley

Here we have Chuck emerging from a wormhole that somehow opened up spontaneously on the court. These hypnotized inserts are right up there with the weirdest designs from the “try anything” era of designs. What I really like about this card, though, is the nice action shot of Barkley dribble driving to the hoop. We tend to remember Barkley as an interior player, but in his younger years he absolutely could drive it all way in from the 3 point line and finish with a nasty dunk.

1991-92 Upper Deck #29 - Magic Johnson

Back in 1991, painting cards were some of the visually creative cards in the business. Between Donruss Diamond Kings and the Upper Deck painted cards like this one, the era featured the forerunners to the wonderful Court Kings brand of today. It’s one of many great contributions Upper Deck made to our hobby.

2009-10 Upper Deck Masterpieces #MA-DW - Dwyane Wade

Nearly 20 years later, Upper Deck was still putting out dope painting cards. This Wade isn’t the best example, but this insert set has some real gems. The Jordan, Wilkins, Kobe, Dr. J, KG and others are striking with triumphant images. With a nice canvas texture and a touch of gold foil, these aren’t just cards, they’re classy art pieces.

1991-92 Upper Deck #255 - Dominique Wilkins

Wilkins had one of the most photogenic games in the history of the game, so it’s only fitting that he has some of the nicest base cards of the 90s. This might be the best of all. The images, both front and back, are just so perfect. From the Pac-Man ATL logo on the shorts, to the crowd with jaws agape to the simple poetry in motion that is ‘Nique in flight, this card is sick.

1995-96 Flair #37 - Grant Hill

I really love the second year of Flair. The ultra-glossy finish, metallic backgrounds and thickness combine to make these stand out as very early example of “high end” cards. I’ve heard these were some of the very earliest thick cards, and it sounds right to me. These are so nice, I feel compelled to rescue them from gathering dust in dime boxes. I suppose this is how I end up with Dana Barros and Dina Radja cards, but I just have to tell myself that these were quite pricey back in the day.

2000-01 Fleer Ultra Gold Medallion #38G - Dirk Nowitzki

Fleer Ultra’s design had gone downhill by 2000, but the photo selection was as great as ever. This photo just really captures the essence of Dirk as a player. Look at him fading away on one leg using every bit of his 7 foot stature to launch an unblockable shot, no doubt from one of his favorite spots on the floor. Lebron James said this move was the second most unstoppable in league history after only Kareem’s skyhook.

1994 Flair USA Basketball #100 - Isiah Thomas

These Flair USA cards are nice, but man, the backs are off center on so many of these. Ah well, at least we’ve got a cool picture of Zeke wearing those swagtastic early 90’s All Star jerseys with the metallic lettering.

1995-96 Fleer #213 - Dennis Rodman

Widely considered one of the ugliest sets ever, 95-96 Fleer is a set I don’t own much of. Still, when your goal is to pull interesting cards out of dime boxes, it’s hard to ever pass on any Dennis Rodman card. It’s nearly impossible to make a dull Rodman card. Here, we've got Rodman doing some crazy unneccesary kicks to clear space after pulling down a rebound--like the Dirk and 'Nique cards on this page it's an image that gets to the essence of who Rodman was on the court.

[8collector34]

I just loved HIPnotized. Seeing again some of the sets I collected back in the days makes me think that there is in fact a recognizable difference between cards, not just based on personal preferences, but quality. I mean it cannot be just coincidence that two person picks the same card, for the same reason.

[rdleifriaf]

1995-96 Topps Stadium Club #355 - John Stockton[/B]

Gotta think Topps was influenced by Emotion with this Stadium Club subset. I do enjoy photos of guys emoting out there and we don’t see those enough nowadays (big shout to the Court Kings Expressionists and Swagger insert sets, though). Still not the strongest of efforts. The slow zoom on his face looks like a modern day twitter meme and what’s up with the distorted photo on the back right? Topps kinda mailed it in, but still an alright card of an underrated all-time great.

That's EXACTLY what I thought when I saw the card before reading your write-up. Loved the Niques too. :)