The Hobby Boards

THIS IS FOR THE PLAYER COLLECTORS, WHAT MADE YOU PC YOUR PLAYER?

I’ll start. KWAME had me dying on YouTube. Instantly, I overpaid for all his rare cards (which was still cheap for the most part outside of a few cards) on eBay and scouted every marketplace for old outdated listings. He’s by far the funniest former athlete.

That would get boring fast. The collecting aspect is what makes it fun. 2001-02 was the last year I collected cards and remember how huge and unattainable some of my PC was at the time. It was also the rarest year for rookies. It seemed like 95% of the releases were numbered even the low end paper products with high print runs had rookies numbered at /2500. There was creativity in how companies would SP the top 5 prospects even further. KWAME had a lower print run than most of the rookies. Some sets featured an auto version of the first 100 or 50 cards for the top guys. It was the first year of RPA’S (ultimate gold parallel) and there were a plethora or redemptions for even non autos. The base Topps rookie was a redemption. Due to his potential, he was in some high end sets for years. It’s been a really fun chase.

Another aspect to it is that I get to have fun on my IG page @mamascookinpc. I treat it how you would expect a kwame collector in 2023 to speak and respond (all caps). Often times I’m commenting on the photo used on the card and rewriting his career. I have die hard supporters and “haters” on the page which makes it hilarious. There’s dialogue in the comments from people who understand it’s satire as well from those who have no clue. They are all apart of the KWAMUNITY.

Oh no the Kwame collector is here! At least he learned how to disable the caps lock!

lol jk good seeing you here.

I was more of a player collector when I was a kid, but don't go after EVERY card of my fave players anymore. Still do for Majerle.

My basketball order when I was a kid:

1: Dan Majerle
2: Tim Duncan
3a: Glen Rice
3b: Mitch Richmond
3c: Dominique Wilkins
4: Stephon Marbury
5: Dennis Rodman

As for an answer why? Dunno. I just latched on to each player for whatever reason. Just liked their game.

Majerle I grew up in Phoenix, and watched the Suns through their 90s playoff runs. Liked that he could dunk and shoot threes.
Duncan I watched at Wake Forest and "called" him as a PC with my group of collector friends before he was drafted.
Rice and Richmond just loved their game.
Dominique loved the dunks
Marbury loved his game, had a pair of And 1 Marbury sneakers. My best friend had Marbury as his #1 PC player, so I got the scraps.
Rodman I loved his rebounding and tried to emulate it as a 5'10" 10 year old.

When I was 16 years old, and my family moved from Indiana to Florida (Fall of 2003). I was in the middle of my high school years and the timing just wasn’t very good for me, so I needed a distraction. I had collected cards in the past and stopped around 2000. I was still watching a lot of Pacers games. I wanted to keep watching them, as that was sort of my connection back home. I had mulled over the idea of collecting again, and there was this high schooler coming to the NBA named LeBron James that pretty much sealed the deal for me. Well, it was a good time to get back in, and I’m glad I did.

Aside from Reggie, Ron Artest was my favorite Pacer. He was big, he was physical, and he was developing into a great 2-way player. And seeing as I was only 16…my hobby funds were very limited, so I decided that I was going to collect Ron instead of Reggie.

From that point on, I started accumulating Artest cards. I didn’t have anything amazing, but I had probably 200 different cards, including base, inserts, relics, autos, and a couple printing plates, and a 1/1. I was very proud of my little collection and it gave me an identity on the online forums. This was back in the day where player collecting was a bigger deal.

I kept all of my stuff through the Brawl, but when Ron asked to be traded the next season, it kind of took the wind out of my sails. I moved a few of the nicer ones, and even switched to baseball for a few years in 2007. I came back to basketball around 2010 and slowly started picking up some Ron cards again. I was fortunate to get a couple logoman cards before things really got out of hand.

If I could have one card back from my old collection, it would be this 1/1. If you ever see it, please let me know. I haven't seen it since I sold it around 2006!!!

Ok. My story is. In 98, I was bored and there was a shop really near by so I went there everyday, ripping cards, chit chat and so on. The shop keeper had a decent amount of Antoine Walker collection, so when he quit, he preached me how GOOD Walker would be. (I did not watch any games, I just enjoy ripping and collecting cards and the socializing ) Then I just bought those cards at a fair value. I think it was luck or bad luck, I did ripped quite a decent amount of Walker cards and then I bought some from the internet. When I quit in 99, everything was put into the bank vault.

Other than Walker, I guess I have always had a great love to Penny. When I briefly collected in 1993. The first good card I pulled was the Skybox Rookie of him. And like Walker, I did ripped a fair share of his card as well. I remembered I pulled the red PMG and I was told the 1/100 was in HK also. (In those days, we did not have grading, so Jersey number was a huge huge huge thing) And when I looked at my collection, almost 60% of Walker parallels come with a Hardaway parallels.

I'll be honest, compared to other people on this forum, I am a fairly young collector. I wasn't born when Francis was cooking for the Rockets but I have always had a huge appreciation for the 2000's era of the NBA, its always had a certain charm to me that is a little hard to explain, probably because I grew up playing a ton of 2K/NBA LIVE games on the PS3. Steve Francis was one of the most underrated guards of that era, co-ROY, 3x All Star (starting guard for all 3 games), and all his other accolades and highlights are things that I don't see most people talking about often. Yes, he betrayed Vancouver when they were at a terrible low but fortunately, he was able to gain some forgiveness ("The Grizzlie Truth" is a awesome documentary that came out recently talking about this) He also helped Yao Ming adapt to the NBA when a lot of people were questioning and pretty much hating on him and his play. It also helps that his cards are easy and not that expensive to collect, I got all of these cards for around the price of a Mega Box.

Nice stories, guys - thanks for sharing.

Joe Johnson is my PC guy. Since I first started buying basketball cards (early 90's) I always knew I wanted to player collect. Some of my favorite players growing up were David Robinson, Tim Hardaway, Larry Johnson, Chris Webber, Joe Smith and later, Ray Allen and Vince Carter (I know - I was a frontrunner) I tried the hardest to PC Webber and Carter, but I was a student for most of the 90's and could not really compete for the rare cards of those popular players.

Fast forward to 2001 and I was working in Japan. I was making a little money and wanted to make an earnest effort at doing a player collection with a rookie. I was unable to watch the draft from Japan - with TV and Internet being how it was - so I asked a friend of mine in the States to watch the draft and help me pick a rookie among a shortlist of players I had (Jason Richardson, Eddie Griffin, Richard Jefferson and (gulp) Rodney White among others). She selected Joe Johnson because "he looks like a nice kid."

It turned out to be a pretty good pick from a disappointing rookie class. In the past 20 years, I've tried to watch every Joe Johnson game that I could (on TV,) or at least read the box scores. I was lucky to get to see him play in person once when my brother had Warriors season tickets and JJ was on the visiting Hawks. From picking a PC guy seemingly at random, he has become my favorite player and I have a lot of happy memories from following his career.

Great stories so far everyone! Really enjoying this thread.

For my Gary Harris PC it will always be this card.



That's the original photo uploaded to Flickr too before I realized you need to take the one touch cover off first to take halfway decent photo.. lol

Now for the story.. I joined three 14-15 NT breaks upon release. Two were for the Nuggets, one was a random team. This is back when team breaks were like $30 for the Nuggets, not the crazy prices people pay today. Random was probably $40 or $50, can't quite remember..

Anyway, during one of the cases that Harris comes out. I think I had one or two other autos as well, probably Alex English as he's in everything, lol. The breaker asked me if I PC the Nuggets, and tbh, I did, but was straying from the path a bit. Shortly after receiving that card I decided to stop chasing random rookies and get back to team collecting since I had always enjoyed that. That Harris card and the interaction with the breaker basically put me back on the team collecting path and I also proceeded to grab a bunch of Harris's nicer rookie stuff as well. He became my my first real focused player PC.

So.. you may have caught I also said I got into a random team break that night. I ended up with the Lakers and pulled a Julius Randle RPA. That card was going for around $600 to $700 at the time and I ended up trading a guy on BO for this..

Deadshot wrote: ↑Wed Jul 12, 2023 4:57 pm

When I was 16 years old, and my family moved from Indiana to Florida (Fall of 2003). I was in the middle of my high school years and the timing just wasn’t very good for me, so I needed a distraction. I had collected cards in the past and stopped around 2000. I was still watching a lot of Pacers games. I wanted to keep watching them, as that was sort of my connection back home. I had mulled over the idea of collecting again, and there was this high schooler coming to the NBA named LeBron James that pretty much sealed the deal for me. Well, it was a good time to get back in, and I’m glad I did.

Aside from Reggie, Ron Artest was my favorite Pacer. He was big, he was physical, and he was developing into a great 2-way player. And seeing as I was only 16…my hobby funds were very limited, so I decided that I was going to collect Ron instead of Reggie.

From that point on, I started accumulating Artest cards. I didn’t have anything amazing, but I had probably 200 different cards, including base, inserts, relics, autos, and a couple printing plates, and a 1/1. I was very proud of my little collection and it gave me an identity on the online forums. This was back in the day where player collecting was a bigger deal.

I kept all of my stuff through the Brawl, but when Ron asked to be traded the next season, it kind of took the wind out of my sails. I moved a few of the nicer ones, and even switched to baseball for a few years in 2007. I came back to basketball around 2010 and slowly started picking up some Ron cards again. I was fortunate to get a couple logoman cards before things really got out of hand.

If I could have one card back from my old collection, it would be this 1/1. If you ever see it, please let me know. I haven't seen it since I sold it around 2006!!!

ron artest ultimate masterpiece 1 of 1.jpg

Nice background story Kyle! Thanks for sharing!

This has been a great topic for discussion thus far and very much enjoyed, thanks for sharing.

My story like many others commenced in the late 80s early 90s opening cheap packs (topps and upper deck) with my older brothers. I don't remember how but I fell in love with the Charlotte Hornets. As I grew up in Australia Jordan brought the game to the world and games aren't easily accessible thus i distinctly remembered studying the statistics printed on the back of cards (I hope this is something that will be brought back) amd this is how I determined Larry Johnson and Alonzo Mourning were my guys!

I remained a huge basketball fan and hornets fan in general even though I was not actively following the NBA for the past 20yrs. Due to my location I only watched my first live NBA game in 2015, during that time there was a player named Kemba Walker, instantly drawn to him as the best player on the team, a player of small size that could score at will amongst the trees, had a nice looking game, a great locker room guy and loyal. This guy is my main PC!

Secondly moving back to my roots of being a 90s kid I found that LJ and Zo left the hornets in the mid 90s however I found out that Glen Rice moved to the team. I remember Rice as I had studied the backs of cards in the early 90s and knew he was also a great player. The more you dive, the more you uncover and discovering that Rice was the best player on the team during the greatest 3yrs of card releases ever produced i was thrilled! Hence Gmoney is also my main PC.

Long winded story I know, but I feel very fortunate to have two players i collect equally from different era's, Rice from the greatest era and Kemba for my modern taste. They take precedence over all else and sit atop my collector pyramid. My only displeasure was that the hornets were not around during the 2000s and hence is a era indo not collect at all.

Anyways thanks for reading and here are two of the favourites in my PC