Hoops and Yanks from Cards on Cards

My pal Kerry over at Cards on Cards is always looking out for me. Not only does he send great Yanks, but usually a stack of Knicks accompany his packages as well. I always appreciate that since the Knicks are my favorite basketball team. Plus, I don’t usually buy basketball cards, so I use Kerry’s packages as a way to get a glimpse of products over the last couple of years.

I’m not sure why I don’t buy basketball cards anymore. Growing up, I probably collected NBA more than MLB. I was much more into sports seasons then. Baseball cards during the summer, basketball during the winter. It’s just how it went. Maybe with baseball products pretty much year round now, that curbed my basketball buying? I’m still a big NBA fan, so it’s odd that when I got back into collecting, I just focused on baseball. I just don’t have a great reason.

Here’s an example of an NBA Hoops card from this year’s product. The design is ok. It probably would annoy most baseball collectors. Hoops was a low-end, affordable product when I was growing up. Packs were usually a buck or less, but I’m not sure if that’s still the case. I did get a box of them one year for my birthday, I believe it was for the 1995-96 release. Those ones came with a Block Party or Number Crunchers insert in every pack. Either way, I like this Melo card with LeBron guarding him. 

Here’s a Panini from 13-14. Look how big PANINI is with relation to the player name and team. This would cause blogger outrage if Topps did this for a baseball release.

There were also a few older Patrick Ewing cards, including this 1993-94 Upper Deck Skylights card. The Jordan from this set is still one of my favorite cards of all time. I like this Ewing since you can see part of the Twin Towers. I was 10 or 11 years old at this time, so to a kid, these looked super cool.

Moving on to baseball, my favorite card of the bunch that Kerry sent was Don Mattingly rookie patch manu-relic. It is the first of its kind for me. I had thought that the whole card within the card was this cloth-fabric, but it’s actually just the player image. The rest of the card is part of the cardboard design.

Speaking of cloth, here’s a pretty cool A-Rod from 2011 Lineage.

Here are some minis from 1986 Fleer. I admit that I didn’t know this set came in miniature form.

A couple sweet parallels. The Andrew Miller is low-numbered, and CC pink is very striking. Side note – I could not be more impressed with Andrew Miller’s tenure as a Yankee so far. He’s handled everything with complete class. Last year, he didn’t get into a back-and-forth about being the closer, a job he ultimately won and excelled in. This year, he battled not only constant trade rumors, but lost his closer role to Aroldis Chapman. I’m sure he didn’t love that, but he still said he just wants to win and will pitch wherever he is needed. He’s been great. He's an easy guy to root for, despite his Red Sox ties.

Lastly, some nice Topps Archives. I wish Archives wasn’t a yearly product. I am very confused as to which designs have been featured which years now.

Kerry, I owe you some cards. Or Cards. Or both. Thanks again!