KFC = Kentucky Fried Cards?

 Now a couple of months ago, my brother and I drove out to KFC to get some lunch. KFC is always good, but the parking lot was packed- they are in a strip mall and it was full on a Saturday afternoon. We had to park along the outer edge, facing towards the street. On the other side of the street, my brother spotted a card shop! So of course we had to check it out. 

It's not a large shop but he has some display cases and discount boxes and of course I went for them, naturally. 

These two came out of the display case, of course I was going to go for these, right? 

Everything else came from the discount box. 

These were my first cards from 2023-24 Prizm. 

These two sets, 2022-23 Elite and 2021-22 Crown Royale, were also new.

There were a lot of the color prizm Parallels from various chrome based sets. I don't really buy them, I don't like the base cards, but I do like the parallels. He had more, I want to get back and get more but I've spent my money elsewhere so I haven't yet.

These two are clear plastic.

Musa's autograph in the discount box too, he's no longer in the league due to abusing his wife or girlfriend (I don't remember). But for a set collector who dreams of completing every set, it doesn't really matter what you think of the person.

Numbered Hall of Fame RC from a Fleer set? For $1? Yes please! 

I wasn't sure if I had this card...the Rookies were short printed in 1997-98 Ultra Series 1, and the Gold Medallions even more so. I knew I had seen the picture, and recently, but I took the chance. It turns out it was the right choice- I remembered the photo because I had the base card and scanned it last year, but I needed the Gold Medallion! 

Numbered 90s cards for a dollar? Yes! 

I don't remember the last time I added one of the lenticular cards from 1996 Fleer USA. It was in 2006 or earlier I do know for sure. I made my paper listing for this set in 2011 and I didn't add any since then. I had been out of the NBA from 2006-11, so I know it had to be before 2006...but probably longer ago than that. It may have been the 1990s. 

Rookie season Beam Team! Can't go wrong there! 

I didn't remember if I had this one either, but an insert from the first year of my favorite brand for a dollar? I'm going to take that chance. As it turns out, I needed it! 

He had a stack of these cards from Panini Instant, like 5 or 6 of them. I had to get one of course. 

Even had a couple of Panini Stickers, rare to find loose. 

Where there were no NASCAR cards in the store, there were two packs of Sport Kings- an unlicensed multi-sport set that features high quality drawings of athletes which happened to have NASCAR people on the outside of the clear pack. There were other packs too, but they didn't have people from sports I collect. I like the set and wish I had gotten them too. 

Mario and Richard were on the outsides of the clear packs. Below are the other base cards from the packs:

The Lin Dan card is my favorite non-NASCAR card, because when was the last time I got a badminton card? I don't even know. 

There is a "mini" parallel one per pack, that's really about 3/4ths the size of the base cards, not really truly mini at all, more like the size of the original Sport Kings cards from the 1930s. I was lucky enough to pull a NASCAR card which was nice. 

Overall, it was a very successful trip, and after we left the shop, we went and got the KFC, which was incredibly delicious as it always is. I actually spent more money in KFC than on the cards, too.

Even though this was back in February I have not gotten back or had KFC since then. I need to change both of those at some point....just always saving money. 

New People scanned in March 2024

 It was a light month for scanning. I just didn't feel like doing it to be honest. I only scanned two pages, both from the brand new Indy Car card set from Parkside. Of course, since Indycar hasn't had a traditional card set since 2007, most of the people in the set are brand new to my collection. 

There were actually more, but I also have a hobby box which I pre-ordered and I would rather use a photo of the person rather than of the car so I saved them, knowing I likely have a card of the person waiting to be scanned. 

I hope I will find more motivation shortly. Ever since I got sick the most recent time, in February, I have just not felt like doing anything...it's led me to not accomplishing a whole lot, but at least I was able to meet my goal of getting at least something scanned each month, even if the grand total for the month was only 17 and a half cards. (I have to rescan the front of one because it slipped behind another card on the scan, but I haven't gotten to it yet)

New People scanned in February 2024

 I only did a handful of scans in January, and not a single one of them was anyone I had never scanned before. February would be different. I scanned 332 cards and of them, 42 were new cards...kind of. Sometimes I will hold back a scan instead of using it as the official first scan of that person- usually for one of two reasons. #1 is if the person's name is spelled wrong or shows the wrong person. (For instance, I've had a card scanned of Klim Kostin for almost three years now but won't use it as his sample card because they spelled his name "Klostin". The other main reason I will hold off is if the card is a minor league card and I know they will be getting a top level card. For instance I won't use a college basketball card when I know the player will be getting NBA cards in a few months to a year. 

Tomas Jurco falls into the latter category. I scanned a card of him from the 2013-14 AHL set months and months ago- I posted it to the Set album in August 2020! - but I didn't use it because I knew he had made it to the NHL. I specifically remember him playing for the Golden Knights. When I realized I hadn't seen him in an NHL game in quite some time I looked him up...it turns out his time in Vegas was his last NHL appearances and that was back in the 2020-21 season! When I did my project where I finally figured out exactly how many cards I had of each person, I discovered that was in fact his only card in my collection. So since this was the first upload I've done since I discovered that earlier in the month, I included him in this month's upload even though, like I said, the scan was actually made back in August 2020. 

Since most of January was spent working on my Excel projects, I am just now starting to scan the cards I got for Christmas, which is where most of the NBA players came from. The others will be seen in a future post, which I was going to make reference to right here but then remembered I hadn't written it yet. Oops! Most of the hockey players scanned this month came from the Topps Now set. Benoit-Olivier Groulx is the only player from the two SP Game Used boxes I bought to be a new person scanned. I actually got another card of him on Christmas but it still awaits a scan. 

Thanks for reading. 

SPlurging on myself

 I never buy high end stuff. I want quantity of cards. But that doesn't mean I don't want to get the other sets, I just...don't. Usually. Earlier this month I was at my local card shop and decided to splurge on a box of 2022-23 SP Game Used. I always liked SPGU in the NBA, and I had never opened any in the NHL. I thought about it after the fact and I realized I last opened a pack of this brand in 2005, so it was nice to change that. 

First card out was the Red parallel of Marco Rossi. The SPGU set is weird because the base cards are lower numbered, the parallels are more common. Base cards are numbered to the player's jersey number, while the Red parallel is the player's age plus 200. Kind of strange but ok. I didn't actually get a base card from this box. 

Next was the Throwback insert of Pyotr Kochetkov. This uses the design of (I think!) 2000-01 SP Game Used, but I'm not 100% sure because I don't have any cards of the original design. This guy is a good goalie and has some great soundbites too. 

There are multiple layers of Red parallels, and this is the best one available- autographed jersey. Well at least I think it's the best one. This is a confusing set, haha. 

One of the more spectacular cards I've pulled in hockey, this dual patch is the last card in the production- 35 of 35. Although these are both Penguins players and patches, this is actually an All-Star card, since these are from the All-Star Game skills competition. At least to me it is. This is the Gold parallel of the All-Star Skills Dual insert. 

As if that wasn't good enough, I pulled a single All-Star Skills Fabrics insert as well! 

New Grooves is a different insert, and this is the Red Jersey Parallel of it. I have no idea what the basic version looks like, but reading the insert odds told me that's what this is. 

Finally, we end on a Purity insert of Marc-Andre Fleury, one of the most likable guys in the sport, and my Mom's all time favorite player. That's seven cards, even though the box advertises 6. In the fine print on the back it says some boxes will contain seven cards and I got one of them! Very cool. 

So, since I enjoyed the 2022-23 set so much, I did a little looking and found a box/pack of 2021-22 SPGU on sale, and decided to get one of them too. 

First up with the Throwback insert of Tanner Jeannot, using I believe the 2005-06 design. 

A Tanner Jeannot hot pack! Next card up was actually the only base card from either of the two boxes, SN to his #84 and also using holofoil stock. 

This Blue Autograph parallel was next, and I do believe this is my first Vegas Golden Knights autograph! To VERY briefly recap: I got into hockey because I wanted to see the Golden Knights logo, and got hooked on the sport. So naturally they are my top West team and I will always root for them- unless they are playing the Rangers. 

I really love these Banner Season inserts, and this is the first one I've ever pulled myself! Pasta is a great player too, and one of my favorite non-Rangers. He literally was late coming out for this very game because he wanted to hear the end of Aqua's "Barbie Girl" on the radio in the locker room. How can you not like that?

This is the Red Jersey parallel, medium tier between regular Red and Red Autograph/Jersey as shown in previous box. 

Finally, a Purity Gold parallel of insert of Benoit-Olivier Groulx.  Only 6 cards in this box.

Both are more than I'm usually willing to spend for 6 or 7 cards, but I really like these, and don't really regret the very rare splurge on myself.