Deadshot
01-31-2021, 03:22 PM
Happy Sunday...I hope everyone is doing well. Here's some recent mail I've been wanting to share.
The first package I want to talk about was a gift. A week or two ago, someone sent me a picture of a Ron Artest 2003-04 Topps Chrome X-Fractor and asked if I needed it. I have the majority of the Artest stuff from 03 Chrome, but I didn’t have that one, and he was nice enough to send it my way free of charge.
For those of you that are maybe newer to collecting, the X-Fractor pattern is the equivalent of the checkerboard pattern that you’ll find in Optic, and for a short while they had it in Prizm as well. The naming is going to be different because the phrase “Refractor” is trademarked from Topps and X-Fractor is obviously a variation of that.
Topps had been using the phrase X-Fractor since their Bowman Chrome set in 2001, even though the pattern was a little different then. It didn’t come to basketball until 2003 and the Topps Chrome version was numbered to 220 and came in a magnetic like case with a Topps seal over the top. You might hear people use the term “uncirculated” to describe them, too – in fact, I’m pretty sure Topps used that terminology on the pack, because they were inserted 1 per box as a box-topper in their own special pack.
Anyway, I had the Jermaine O’Neal, I had the Jamal Tinsley, I had the James Jones…but I didn’t have the Ron Artest. So thanks again to LB for sending that my way.
https://i.ibb.co/R66vdg0/20210116-135534.jpg
Ok, let’s get into some eBay purchases. We all love eBay right?
The first eBay purchase that I’m going to talk about is a 2009-10 Topps Chrome Gold refractor of Danny Granger numbered to 50. There's not much of a story behind it, but it's a tough card to track down these days, and it allows me to complete my run of Topps Chrome gold ref for Danny Granger.
He has 4 of them:
2005-06, which is his rookie year. I actually have the jersey numbered copy of that one. 2006-07 - the rarest of them all, numbered to just 25. Those pop a lot and I don't feel like they get talked about much at all.
There were no golds in 2007-08 and actually no Granger either for some reason. In the entire 2007-08 set, the Pacers only had one player - Jermaine O'Neal. Just to put that into perspective, the Syracuse Nationals and the St. Louis Hawks had cards in that set. I appreciate a good heritage set, but that's infuriating. I don't know what Topps was thinking there.
2008-09 Is a great looking horizontal picture of Danny that was shot from the backboard looking toward the court. I hear a lot of chatter about the LeBron and the Kobe from that set, but yes, there were other players in there, too.
And then finally, this 2009-10, which was limited to 50 copies and released as part of the regular Topps release, because, as I've talked about on this show before, Topps was losing their license and they had to get any cards out before the beginning of January 2010.
https://i.ibb.co/hMhv6rq/20210116-135813.jpg
https://i.ibb.co/VxtWLTd/20210117-124040.jpg
Next, I got a 2014-15 Immaculate jumbo tag of Roy Hibbert numbered 2 out of 2. And while this isn't an official game-dated set - it doesn't mention the date of use anywhere on the card itself, the jumbo piece of tag has most of a game date written on it. Quite frankly, you just don't see Panini doing a lot of this with their veteran relic cards anymore. We get a lot of big tags for the rookies, because they have piles and piles of Photoshoot jerseys to take them from. But the veteran tags usually get cut up into a bunch of little pieces now, if they even use them at all. But this is numbered to 2 because it's literally an entire half of a laundry tag.
I haven't been able to find a picture of the other copy yet, but if I could, it would let me know for sure what game this was from. You guys know I like hunting for that kind of information. I *think* I know what game this tag is from, but I can't tell if one of the lines is a 1 or a slash. So I don't know for sure. What do you think?
https://i.ibb.co/wp6h1rB/20210116-135754.jpg
Moving on from one Pacers big man to another. The next card I received in the mail was a 2019-20 Immaculate RPA /50 of Goga Bitadze. You know, the guy that haunts all of your breaks. The 7 footer that's throwing a behind-the-back pass on his Prizm rookie. The guy that was sitting by himself pre-draft week while Zion was getting swarmed. That guy.
This card has a nice patch. It has an acetate surface. I like the horizontal orientation way better for RPAs. Overall, it's just a really good looking card. And it's rarer and way cheaper than a National Treasures RPA. I think I got this one for under $40 shipped.
https://i.ibb.co/B3kZWc6/20210116-135909.jpg
Alright, my next piece of mail looks like a 2016-17 Optic base card of Jeff Teague, but many of you know better. This is one of the Optic Preview cards that was packed out in 2016-17 Donruss hobby boxes.
I don't think we've ever figured out an official print run for these. I've heard some people project it could be as few as 10. There are at least 3-4 people out there that are attempting this set. One of them is tjforce, who posts here. He ended up with an extra Teague in a lot - him and I had talked about that card before, so he knew I was very interested. He gave me a fair price, and it was easy as that. He also threw in a couple small stacks of Pacers cards, so thanks again Tom.
One thing I really like about Optic Preview is that the photos are different than the photos that eventually ended up in the 16-17 Optic set. Jeff Teague's card is a press conference photo of him holding up a jersey - Nate McMillan is on one side and Larry Bird is on the other. I really like press conference cards...the earliest one I can remember was Larry Johnson from 1996-97 Upper Deck. I'm sure there were others before that, but I started collecting in 1995. When I saw that card, it gave me the impression that it was "hot off the press," and it felt like I had something special.
Jeff Teague holding his jersey is also reminiscent of the hope I felt heading into the 2016 season. There were some rumblings of Paul George leaving - the Pacers traded for Jeff Teague. They signed Monta Ellis. Once they took the floor, I realized how much I actually hated those moves. But it felt a little promising at the time.
And then, as I mentioned, standing next to Teague on the card, are Larry Bird and Nate McMillan. Two guys that were largely responsible for those moves and trying to make them work.
https://i.ibb.co/QKFYv0K/20210116-135615.jpg
Believe it or not, that Optic Preview wasn't even the nicest Nate McMillan coaching card I got in this week. I picked up a 2017-18 Prizm Black Disco 1/1 parallel of Nate McMillan. It also happened to be in a PSA 9 holder, but that doesn't mean much of anything to me.
I was showing this card to someone earlier this week and I said, "You know, there are some things that I really don't like about this card. But at the same time, there are some qualities I really like." I guess the good outweighed the bad, because I'm the new owner. Let's start out with the things I don't like.
The big one would be Nate McMillan. Obviously, I don't know him personally. I've heard a lot from him or read a lot about him over the last 4 years. I actually have a friend that has worked for him in a very small role. He seems like a really good guy. So this is nothing personal.
I am not a fan of Nate McMillan the coach. This is a guy who refused to develop young talent. He refused to evolve with the league. Several yrs ago, teams started relying on playing zone with more frequency, and he was adamant that they wouldn't do that. The players didn't seem to like him all that much. He had 7-8 pretty good 3 pt shooters last yr and yet the Pacers attempted the fewest in the league. They weren't getting to the line. That definitely wasn't a priority. I could go on and on, but I'll stop there. And I know there are people out there that say, well maybe it was the players and not the coach. Well, the Pacers essentially ran it back this year. There were no free agent signings, no first round picks. It's pretty much the same group. We're like 15 or 16 games in and the difference is night and day.
The second thing I don't like about this card is the disco pattern on the surface. I suppose it's a little more tolerable because the card is black and not fluorescent pink or lime green. We're to the point with these Prizm rainbows where it looks like half of them were designed by Lisa Frank. Still, I don't like the disco effect. I'm more of a Chrome traditionalist. Give me the traditional patterns. The cracked ice, the checkerboard...those kinds of things. I know those are only two things, but you can probably tell, I've thought about them a lot.
So what things do I actually like about this card? Well, first off, it's a card of a coach. We got a lot of coach cards during the junk wax era. That kind of tapered off after 95-96 Hoops. In fact, I don't think we saw coaches as part of a mainstream base set again until 2004 Topps Total. They came back for the 2005 release and then we didn't see them again until 2012-13 Hoops. And then we didn't see them again until 2017-18 Prizm. A lot of people at the time didn't like it - imagine if you only get one silver in your blaster and it's a Luke Walton coach card. Now, if you're my friend Ty, who collects Luke Walton, you'd be thrilled. If you're anyone else, you would hate that. But I loved it and I think it would be a great way for Panini to up production of their Prizm set without printing it to the moon. I have several ideas on how they could do that, and I laid them all out in Episode 38. Anyway, the gist of all of that was to say, coach cards are few and far between.
The second thing that I like about it is that it's a coach 1/1. There aren't a lot of coach cards out there. There certainly aren't a lot of coach 1/1s. Topps Total had 8 printing plates for each coach, but there wasn't a true 1/1 base parallel.
So all things considered, it makes for a great card for a team collector like myself.
https://i.ibb.co/j3rXs7Z/20210122-120413.jpg
***
E3uj4p880D0
Yes, you heard that right, the last piece of mail I'm going to talk about today was actually part of a trade. I don't do a lot of trading. It's difficult, it's time-consuming. Everyone wants the same 5 superstars in return. I'd rather just buy cards outright.
So, about 3 or 4 weeks ago, I'm scrolling my Instagram feed and I saw a post that stopped me dead in my tracks. You might remember that a lot of people were posting Christmas trees made up of cards from their PC. Well, this particular tree was made by a user with the Instagram handle sky_btc. He collects a lot of Hall of Fame stuff, he collects Karl Malone, among other things. But the trunk of this tree was a 2005-06 Topps Big Game Nameplate letter for Fred Jones.
https://i.ibb.co/PYNstzZ/20210116-135943.jpg
https://i.ibb.co/tq8DwkV/20210116-140004.jpg
And I was thinking, "You gotta be kidding me. I've scoured the Internet looking for these Pacers letters for years now. It's hard to even find pictures of them, let alone people that actually own them."
So I messaged him and said something to the effect of, "I realize this card is probably PC, but if there's any chance you'd be willing to let go of it, I really want it."
And he let me know that he was interested in some vintage rookies to fill out his vintage HOF collection. I had actually just posted a Rick Barry rookie that I was very happy to own. Even though I liked that card, it's very replaceable to me, so I was ok with letting go of it. So after a little back and forth, we agreed on a deal where I sent him an 86 Fleer Hakeem rookie, the 71 Topps Barry rookie, and a Robert Parish rookie.
Along the way, we got to talking about one another's collections, and overall it was just a lot of fun. He was sending from France, so there was a couple weeks of waiting, but the whole transaction was just incredibly smooth.
I've definitely had my hesitations about trading in the past, but I'm glad I acquired the card this way. It was just so much more enjoyable and fulfilling than buying a card outright. And I feel like I got to know another collector a lot better in the process.
So Julien, thanks again! I hope you enjoy those Hall of Fame rookie cards. It was a pleasure dealing with you and maybe we'll deal again some day in the future. In fact, Julien included a really nice note with the card and requested that I take a picture of all of my Topps Big Game Pacers letters together. I think that's a great idea, and I definitely don't mind showing this card off twice.
https://i.ibb.co/PtyjgJb/20210117-140806.jpg
Thanks to everyone that made it this far...you are the real MVPs of the Blowout forums!
The first package I want to talk about was a gift. A week or two ago, someone sent me a picture of a Ron Artest 2003-04 Topps Chrome X-Fractor and asked if I needed it. I have the majority of the Artest stuff from 03 Chrome, but I didn’t have that one, and he was nice enough to send it my way free of charge.
For those of you that are maybe newer to collecting, the X-Fractor pattern is the equivalent of the checkerboard pattern that you’ll find in Optic, and for a short while they had it in Prizm as well. The naming is going to be different because the phrase “Refractor” is trademarked from Topps and X-Fractor is obviously a variation of that.
Topps had been using the phrase X-Fractor since their Bowman Chrome set in 2001, even though the pattern was a little different then. It didn’t come to basketball until 2003 and the Topps Chrome version was numbered to 220 and came in a magnetic like case with a Topps seal over the top. You might hear people use the term “uncirculated” to describe them, too – in fact, I’m pretty sure Topps used that terminology on the pack, because they were inserted 1 per box as a box-topper in their own special pack.
Anyway, I had the Jermaine O’Neal, I had the Jamal Tinsley, I had the James Jones…but I didn’t have the Ron Artest. So thanks again to LB for sending that my way.
https://i.ibb.co/R66vdg0/20210116-135534.jpg
Ok, let’s get into some eBay purchases. We all love eBay right?
The first eBay purchase that I’m going to talk about is a 2009-10 Topps Chrome Gold refractor of Danny Granger numbered to 50. There's not much of a story behind it, but it's a tough card to track down these days, and it allows me to complete my run of Topps Chrome gold ref for Danny Granger.
He has 4 of them:
2005-06, which is his rookie year. I actually have the jersey numbered copy of that one. 2006-07 - the rarest of them all, numbered to just 25. Those pop a lot and I don't feel like they get talked about much at all.
There were no golds in 2007-08 and actually no Granger either for some reason. In the entire 2007-08 set, the Pacers only had one player - Jermaine O'Neal. Just to put that into perspective, the Syracuse Nationals and the St. Louis Hawks had cards in that set. I appreciate a good heritage set, but that's infuriating. I don't know what Topps was thinking there.
2008-09 Is a great looking horizontal picture of Danny that was shot from the backboard looking toward the court. I hear a lot of chatter about the LeBron and the Kobe from that set, but yes, there were other players in there, too.
And then finally, this 2009-10, which was limited to 50 copies and released as part of the regular Topps release, because, as I've talked about on this show before, Topps was losing their license and they had to get any cards out before the beginning of January 2010.
https://i.ibb.co/hMhv6rq/20210116-135813.jpg
https://i.ibb.co/VxtWLTd/20210117-124040.jpg
Next, I got a 2014-15 Immaculate jumbo tag of Roy Hibbert numbered 2 out of 2. And while this isn't an official game-dated set - it doesn't mention the date of use anywhere on the card itself, the jumbo piece of tag has most of a game date written on it. Quite frankly, you just don't see Panini doing a lot of this with their veteran relic cards anymore. We get a lot of big tags for the rookies, because they have piles and piles of Photoshoot jerseys to take them from. But the veteran tags usually get cut up into a bunch of little pieces now, if they even use them at all. But this is numbered to 2 because it's literally an entire half of a laundry tag.
I haven't been able to find a picture of the other copy yet, but if I could, it would let me know for sure what game this was from. You guys know I like hunting for that kind of information. I *think* I know what game this tag is from, but I can't tell if one of the lines is a 1 or a slash. So I don't know for sure. What do you think?
https://i.ibb.co/wp6h1rB/20210116-135754.jpg
Moving on from one Pacers big man to another. The next card I received in the mail was a 2019-20 Immaculate RPA /50 of Goga Bitadze. You know, the guy that haunts all of your breaks. The 7 footer that's throwing a behind-the-back pass on his Prizm rookie. The guy that was sitting by himself pre-draft week while Zion was getting swarmed. That guy.
This card has a nice patch. It has an acetate surface. I like the horizontal orientation way better for RPAs. Overall, it's just a really good looking card. And it's rarer and way cheaper than a National Treasures RPA. I think I got this one for under $40 shipped.
https://i.ibb.co/B3kZWc6/20210116-135909.jpg
Alright, my next piece of mail looks like a 2016-17 Optic base card of Jeff Teague, but many of you know better. This is one of the Optic Preview cards that was packed out in 2016-17 Donruss hobby boxes.
I don't think we've ever figured out an official print run for these. I've heard some people project it could be as few as 10. There are at least 3-4 people out there that are attempting this set. One of them is tjforce, who posts here. He ended up with an extra Teague in a lot - him and I had talked about that card before, so he knew I was very interested. He gave me a fair price, and it was easy as that. He also threw in a couple small stacks of Pacers cards, so thanks again Tom.
One thing I really like about Optic Preview is that the photos are different than the photos that eventually ended up in the 16-17 Optic set. Jeff Teague's card is a press conference photo of him holding up a jersey - Nate McMillan is on one side and Larry Bird is on the other. I really like press conference cards...the earliest one I can remember was Larry Johnson from 1996-97 Upper Deck. I'm sure there were others before that, but I started collecting in 1995. When I saw that card, it gave me the impression that it was "hot off the press," and it felt like I had something special.
Jeff Teague holding his jersey is also reminiscent of the hope I felt heading into the 2016 season. There were some rumblings of Paul George leaving - the Pacers traded for Jeff Teague. They signed Monta Ellis. Once they took the floor, I realized how much I actually hated those moves. But it felt a little promising at the time.
And then, as I mentioned, standing next to Teague on the card, are Larry Bird and Nate McMillan. Two guys that were largely responsible for those moves and trying to make them work.
https://i.ibb.co/QKFYv0K/20210116-135615.jpg
Believe it or not, that Optic Preview wasn't even the nicest Nate McMillan coaching card I got in this week. I picked up a 2017-18 Prizm Black Disco 1/1 parallel of Nate McMillan. It also happened to be in a PSA 9 holder, but that doesn't mean much of anything to me.
I was showing this card to someone earlier this week and I said, "You know, there are some things that I really don't like about this card. But at the same time, there are some qualities I really like." I guess the good outweighed the bad, because I'm the new owner. Let's start out with the things I don't like.
The big one would be Nate McMillan. Obviously, I don't know him personally. I've heard a lot from him or read a lot about him over the last 4 years. I actually have a friend that has worked for him in a very small role. He seems like a really good guy. So this is nothing personal.
I am not a fan of Nate McMillan the coach. This is a guy who refused to develop young talent. He refused to evolve with the league. Several yrs ago, teams started relying on playing zone with more frequency, and he was adamant that they wouldn't do that. The players didn't seem to like him all that much. He had 7-8 pretty good 3 pt shooters last yr and yet the Pacers attempted the fewest in the league. They weren't getting to the line. That definitely wasn't a priority. I could go on and on, but I'll stop there. And I know there are people out there that say, well maybe it was the players and not the coach. Well, the Pacers essentially ran it back this year. There were no free agent signings, no first round picks. It's pretty much the same group. We're like 15 or 16 games in and the difference is night and day.
The second thing I don't like about this card is the disco pattern on the surface. I suppose it's a little more tolerable because the card is black and not fluorescent pink or lime green. We're to the point with these Prizm rainbows where it looks like half of them were designed by Lisa Frank. Still, I don't like the disco effect. I'm more of a Chrome traditionalist. Give me the traditional patterns. The cracked ice, the checkerboard...those kinds of things. I know those are only two things, but you can probably tell, I've thought about them a lot.
So what things do I actually like about this card? Well, first off, it's a card of a coach. We got a lot of coach cards during the junk wax era. That kind of tapered off after 95-96 Hoops. In fact, I don't think we saw coaches as part of a mainstream base set again until 2004 Topps Total. They came back for the 2005 release and then we didn't see them again until 2012-13 Hoops. And then we didn't see them again until 2017-18 Prizm. A lot of people at the time didn't like it - imagine if you only get one silver in your blaster and it's a Luke Walton coach card. Now, if you're my friend Ty, who collects Luke Walton, you'd be thrilled. If you're anyone else, you would hate that. But I loved it and I think it would be a great way for Panini to up production of their Prizm set without printing it to the moon. I have several ideas on how they could do that, and I laid them all out in Episode 38. Anyway, the gist of all of that was to say, coach cards are few and far between.
The second thing that I like about it is that it's a coach 1/1. There aren't a lot of coach cards out there. There certainly aren't a lot of coach 1/1s. Topps Total had 8 printing plates for each coach, but there wasn't a true 1/1 base parallel.
So all things considered, it makes for a great card for a team collector like myself.
https://i.ibb.co/j3rXs7Z/20210122-120413.jpg
***
E3uj4p880D0
Yes, you heard that right, the last piece of mail I'm going to talk about today was actually part of a trade. I don't do a lot of trading. It's difficult, it's time-consuming. Everyone wants the same 5 superstars in return. I'd rather just buy cards outright.
So, about 3 or 4 weeks ago, I'm scrolling my Instagram feed and I saw a post that stopped me dead in my tracks. You might remember that a lot of people were posting Christmas trees made up of cards from their PC. Well, this particular tree was made by a user with the Instagram handle sky_btc. He collects a lot of Hall of Fame stuff, he collects Karl Malone, among other things. But the trunk of this tree was a 2005-06 Topps Big Game Nameplate letter for Fred Jones.
https://i.ibb.co/PYNstzZ/20210116-135943.jpg
https://i.ibb.co/tq8DwkV/20210116-140004.jpg
And I was thinking, "You gotta be kidding me. I've scoured the Internet looking for these Pacers letters for years now. It's hard to even find pictures of them, let alone people that actually own them."
So I messaged him and said something to the effect of, "I realize this card is probably PC, but if there's any chance you'd be willing to let go of it, I really want it."
And he let me know that he was interested in some vintage rookies to fill out his vintage HOF collection. I had actually just posted a Rick Barry rookie that I was very happy to own. Even though I liked that card, it's very replaceable to me, so I was ok with letting go of it. So after a little back and forth, we agreed on a deal where I sent him an 86 Fleer Hakeem rookie, the 71 Topps Barry rookie, and a Robert Parish rookie.
Along the way, we got to talking about one another's collections, and overall it was just a lot of fun. He was sending from France, so there was a couple weeks of waiting, but the whole transaction was just incredibly smooth.
I've definitely had my hesitations about trading in the past, but I'm glad I acquired the card this way. It was just so much more enjoyable and fulfilling than buying a card outright. And I feel like I got to know another collector a lot better in the process.
So Julien, thanks again! I hope you enjoy those Hall of Fame rookie cards. It was a pleasure dealing with you and maybe we'll deal again some day in the future. In fact, Julien included a really nice note with the card and requested that I take a picture of all of my Topps Big Game Pacers letters together. I think that's a great idea, and I definitely don't mind showing this card off twice.
https://i.ibb.co/PtyjgJb/20210117-140806.jpg
Thanks to everyone that made it this far...you are the real MVPs of the Blowout forums!