Receiving autographs and responses to letters through the mail is the most rewarding part of my collecting today. This post recaps my recent returns, which includes a custom card ..read more

Mike from the WaxPackHero podcast and web site kindly answers questions on building a collection in a self-sustaining way, gives other collectors advice on how to do the same, and shares what he collects in the basketball card space ..read more

A package from an Ebay auction win contained more than I expected ..read more

Recapping my most recent additions to my Tim Duncan collection, all fairly rare parallels ..read more

Stepping through the first half of my Pacers autograph collection, with players with a last name starting with 'J ..read more

Back on January 4th I requested a shipment from COMC. I generally wait a good bit of time between shipments to save on shipping costs, so COMC shipments are fairly rare for me. I’m sure this is a common practice. I was pretty excited about this batch of cards, since it had a few fairly rare Pacers rookie year cards and parallels for that binder project. Nothing too expensive, but those tough to find Pacers parallels were the highlight of this shipment. I didn’t expedite the shipment at all, and I was prepared to wait several months for delivery. Fast forward to March 21st, and my bubble mailer ..read more

I’ve made an effort over the last several months to send out more through the mail (TTM) autograph requests, even involving my oldest son (7) in the process. Even though the returns are nearly almost all from retired players, it’s fun for him to see responses to questions in some cases, and to know that these former athletes took time to read and response to our letters. And with each request, I end up learning more about the history of the game, even when I don’t get a response. Over the last few weeks we’ve been lucky enough to have four returns, with players who played for the Pacers during ..read more

Having multiple binder projects keeps the hobby fresh. Always lots of options for cards to track down. Many are rare, but just as many at this point in my collection building are easily found. One of those easily found was a rookie year Jamaal Tinsley from 2001-02 Upper Deck. I always put off picking this one up because it wasn’t labeled a ‘rookie card’, since it’s from Upper Deck Series 2. The Series 1 Star Rookie, picturing Tinsley in his Iowa State jersey, was always the ‘true’ rookie. But this card is sweet, a classic Tinsley finger roll with defenders helplessly looking on. I have to ass ..read more

Lately I’ve been trying to filter out the parts of the basketball card hobby that I don’t enjoy and expand on the parts that bring me joy. It’s getting back to my collecting roots through trading, fun pickups while staying on a budget, sending out Through the Mail autograph requests, and enjoying the collecting with my kids. Even though the sheer volume of cards is just insane in 2023-24 compared to when I collected in the late 90s and early 2000s, if I shrink the pool of cards and just focus on base rookies, inserts, and more ‘standard’ parallels, that volume gets much smaller and manageable ..read more

I’d thought about splitting this into two posts due to the number of players here, but I’m just going to let it be a longer post than normal. Autographs of Pacers with Last Name starting with ‘H’ – 13 of 26, 50% Complete Autographs In My Collection Ben Hansbrough Ben Hansbrough, not a player I would expect to have more than one autograph for necessarily, but I bought the one on the left from Panini Innovation quite some time ago to fill that spot in my collection. More recently, I’ve wanted to grab these film cards from 2012-13 Panini Signatures, and Ben Hansbrough was a cheap option tha ..read more