The Hobby Boards

Putting together team sets has always been a passion of mine. The chase is fun, then completing the set and throwing everything into a binder is a pastime that goes back to when I first got into collecting as a kid.

I started posting my Nuggets refractor teams sets on IG but have recently gotten burnt out on that platform in general. I figure i'll post up to where I got to (99/00 season I think), then pick up from there later in this thread.

I'll start off with 93 - 95 Finest Nuggets refractors.







Strangely, Topps left rookies refractors out of 95 Finest. However, you may have noticed the McDyess (a rookie that year) in the above pic which is indeed a refractor. It's a Rack Pack test refractor that didn't make it into packs, but of course I had to include it in my team set as it's just too awesome of a card not too.

Feel free to post your own team sets, I'd love to see them!

So nice and a great collecting theme. I like it. Very expensive nowadays but If I look at your finest cards, I am speechless. I love the finest set 94/95 in general. If they would green, I would make the set. But beside that, I am looking forward to see more of your sets and I hope you return to instagram. I still follow you of course.

Duncancollector wrote: ↑Sat Oct 14, 2023 11:49 am So nice and a great collecting theme. I like it. Very expensive nowadays but If I look at your finest cards, I am speechless. I love the finest set 94/95 in general. If they would green, I would make the set. But beside that, I am looking forward to see more of your sets and I hope you return to instagram. I still follow you of course.

Thanks! It’s definitely a long term game. Finding stuff on COMC, lots and/or decent deals on eBay, and the occasional dollar bin find at a show. My 90’s/2000’s Nuggets refractor binder is a 10+ year endeavor at this point lol.

I’ll eventually get back to IG I’m sure. I still pop in on occasion to chat with hobby friends but not much else. I wish I could hand select like 100 or so accounts on there that I would see consistently, but as of right now it’s like a flood of random stuff, half of which I don’t care about and ends up makes me depressed about the current state of the hobby as it’s all about $$$ now. I got back into collecting as an adult in a slower paced more true hobby focused environment browsing all the forums at the time, BO, Beckett forums, the last year or two of HK. It’s good for my mental health to take a step back to that every once in a while.

Anyway, thanks for reading my rant.. I’ll post some more cards tomorrow!

I used to collect Bulls team sets growing up. It was affordable and fun back then to collect that way. The hobby was also more focused on team collecting as well. You could go to your card shop and buy those UD Collectors Choice team sets for $10 I believe. I never got back into team collecting except for trying to finish my mini Bulls team TC Mirror set from 2014. I guess playing basketball allowed me to enjoy and collect other players as I got older.

The Bulls haven't been very fun to watch even though I go to games every year, but as a fairly diehard fan it's a cycle that will probably never go away.

Well.. "tomorrow" turned into a week.. but i'm back with another team set!



The inaugural 96 Topps Chrome release. All refractors with the exception of the McDyess YouthQuake. My goal over the years has been to find the least hulked up version of each player. Looking back at this photo I think i've done pretty well besides the Mark Jackson and Laphonso Ellis. Those might have actually been non-green when I first bought them, who knows lol.

Binder eyecandy is always a good time.

Wish they made Youthquake refractors.

I started a refractors set for my Lakers but realised how expensive Kobe was going to be and being the completionist that I am, I have kinda taken the foot off that side of my PC. I have been able to sell the Kobe's I did have and put that money towards many Pau cards that I needed. I have thought of potentially collecting everyone else other than Kobe, or just collecting the base copy of his cards, but am still undecided.

I really like this idea and would love to do something like this, but I'm not loyal to any particular team so I'd have to figure out a different plan. I loved watching Kyle's Pacers binder videos too. Right now I have my 2 refractor shoeboxes that are all sorted by year and card number. Doing them in a binder is more fun and better to display. I'll probably just have to leave it at a enjoy others doing it thing. Super cool though.

darz90scardz wrote: ↑Mon Oct 23, 2023 7:14 am Binder eyecandy is always a good time.

Wish they made Youthquake refractors.

Same! Those would have been killer IMO.

better_call_gasol wrote: ↑Sun Oct 29, 2023 7:33 am I started a refractors set for my Lakers but realised how expensive Kobe was going to be and being the completionist that I am, I have kinda taken the foot off that side of my PC. I have been able to sell the Kobe's I did have and put that money towards many Pau cards that I needed. I have thought of potentially collecting everyone else other than Kobe, or just collecting the base copy of his cards, but am still undecided.

Yeah tough call and I definitely hear ya about how expensive those can get! I used to put Prizm gold sets together for the Nuggets but with Jokic blowing up it's just gotten too expensive. Maybe i'll pick up back up someday but for now I put all that on hold. It's been a similar situation with my Topps Chrome gold team sets with Carmelo (and Iverson for the two years he was with us), but i'm really close on those actually. Just took a looong time for a few of those gold sets, lol.

FrankAZHP wrote: ↑Sun Oct 29, 2023 1:29 pm I really like this idea and would love to do something like this, but I'm not loyal to any particular team so I'd have to figure out a different plan. I loved watching Kyle's Pacers binder videos too. Right now I have my 2 refractor shoeboxes that are all sorted by year and card number. Doing them in a binder is more fun and better to display. I'll probably just have to leave it at a enjoy others doing it thing. Super cool though.

Thanks man! Might be a new fun chase to pick up if you choose a team and have enough cards to put together a team set. Maybe just for a single year you watched/rooted for that team, something like that.

So I guess i'm doing these weekly.. Might try to go faster if I can find more time but for now i'll just do my best to stick to that, lol

Here's the Topps Chrome 97-98 Nugget refractor team set. Rookies that season are all in row 2. Bobby Jackson, Tony Battie, Danny Fortson.

This was the same draft class as Tim Duncan and Tracy McGrady so the Nuggets rookies who came out of that one seem to be largely forgotten. However, each one of them had pretty decent careers.

give me more pics of your collection @mindcycle. Love your cards.

Thanks Duncancollector!

Bonus post for today since I accidentally skipped these. 96-97 Bowmans Best atomic refractors. These were quite awesome. Non numbered but really nice looking in hand and won’t break the bank unless you want an MJ or Kobe..

Keeping it going is 97-98 Bowmans Best Atomic Refractors. A lot of these are actually the preview cards that came out of Stadium Club packs. I’ll have to confirm but I believe they have BBP-XXX numbering.



EDIT: The BPP numbering is correct for the previews. First pic Bobby Jackson (U have 2) is numbered BPP17. Likewise the Tony Battie in the last row is BPP

I love seeing these posts. I guess one benefit of the Nuggets team sets for you is they can't be that expensive. Imagine if you had been trying to put these together with the Lakers, or Bulls.

FrankAZHP wrote: ↑Tue Nov 07, 2023 1:24 am I love seeing these posts. I guess one benefit of the Nuggets team sets for you is they can't be that expensive. Imagine if you had been trying to put these together with the Lakers, or Bulls.

Yeah very true. The main exception would be te mid-to late 2000's with Carmelo and AI (AI especially) where prices can start to get up there for Chrome golds and the like. However, nowadays I think you'd run up against even locating some of these cards. Once I get to the serial numbered stuff there are a few that i've literally only seen pop up once in my 10+ years of putting these team sets together. Even a few of the non-serial #'d cards can take awhile locate just because the cards don't change hands often do to low desire or just not being that common for someone to actually want to own.

Next up are 97-98 Finest refractors, and oh boy.. It's a confusing mess.

Not only do all of these card looks like they should be inserts, or sub-sets at least, they also have different levels of "rarity" to confuse you even more. Base (non-refactor), Common (non #'d refractors, "Debut" cards are examples), Uncommon (#'d cards, "Arrivals" Battie and "Creators" Jackson are examples) Rare (#'d refractors - Force and graded Embossed Refractor McDyess cards are examples).

And despite the non-diecut Force McDyess card being numbered /289, it's still labeled as a "Rare Refractor" when it's actually higher numbered than both the "Arrivals" Battie and "Creators" Jackonson cards which are numbered /263 and labeled as Uncommon. Those are both embossed refrators as well, which confuses things even more when you look at the Embossed Refractor of McDyess which is numbered /74.. Makes my head spin, lol

Despite all that they are still nice looking cards. The Embossed refractors /74 used the Atomic refractor design borrowed from Bowmans Best and look really nice. If there was more consistency to the rarity labels and it made more sense that would be even better. The random numbering also confused me as well. If anyone knows the reasoning behind the numbering of these (if there is any, lol) let me know.

Love seeing your team sets laid out like this, thank you for sharing! I generally like refractors more than atomics or any other tech effect on individual cards but the atomics look amazing all together in a binder. You're right about that 97 finest, such a weird set. Took me so long to understand that those were the base cards

Man, those binders are always great to see. Love the uniformity of it all and those early Finest team sets are super. I'm jelly of that McDyess Rack Pack refractor.

Love the 96-97 BB and 97-98 Finest spreads.

Every time I see any variation of the Battie my ptsd kicks in though. They’re brutal packs in general so it’s not surprising, but in 2 boxes his standard silver ref was my best hit. At least this was when they were still cheaper at around 125-150 per.

SacKingsCards wrote: ↑Sat Nov 11, 2023 6:57 am Love seeing your team sets laid out like this, thank you for sharing! I generally like refractors more than atomics or any other tech effect on individual cards but the atomics look amazing all together in a binder. You're right about that 97 finest, such a weird set. Took me so long to understand that those were the base cards

Appreciate it! Yeah those are so odd given they all look like inserts lol.

AbraCalabro wrote: ↑Thu Nov 23, 2023 8:55 am Man, those binders are always great to see. Love the uniformity of it all and those early Finest team sets are super. I'm jelly of that McDyess Rack Pack refractor.

Thanks man!

darz90scardz wrote: ↑Wed Nov 29, 2023 7:14 am Love the 96-97 BB and 97-98 Finest spreads.

Every time I see any variation of the Battie my ptsd kicks in though. They’re brutal packs in general so it’s not surprising, but in 2 boxes his standard silver ref was my best hit. At least this was when they were still cheaper at around 125-150 per.

Oh no.. lol I used to pull a lot of Grant Hill from box rips of 90's stuff. Sold/traded most of it since I never collected him, but not a terrible guy to always pull. Battie, great player, but not a guy you really want to pull lol.

Up next is the 98-99 Topps Chrome refractor team set. I really liked the Moving On subset they did that year. For the Nuggets it featured McDyess when he went to the Suns for a year or two, and Van Excel when he was traded to the Nuggets. Sadly they would never do that subset again..

This set had Dirk and Vince Carter's rookie cards. No parallels besides the silvers.

The Movin' On subset is pretty neat.

Seeing stuff like this is always a joy. Great theme and collation of cards put together in binders like the old school days. Beautiful cards. Keep them coming.
@mindcycle, you are right about the 97-98 finest cards. They all look like subsets/inserts with their large headers all over the cards. Whenever I see cards like that I have to see which level or tier the cards are. It can get annoying.

Next up is 98-99 Bowman's Best regular and atomic refractors. The atomic design this year is what Panini ripped off for their "cracked ice" parallels, so when I started seeing 2020 flippers call these cards cracked ice on IG, FB, and the like I just had to laugh.

I believe this is the full base team set. There were a few inserts that year that I may chase at some point like the Mirror Image cards, which I think one of them features McDyess. The atomic parallel of those is /25 so i'll probably be looking for awhile, lol

1999-00 Topps Chrome refractor team set. This was the rookie season of James Posey (great player) and Chris Herren. I do have the Herren hidden behind Posey since I didn't want it to take up another binder page lol.