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

Like always, I’m periodically browsing the list of Indiana Pacers all-time roster on Basketball Reference. Just for fun, I’ll look into a certain player to see what card options are out there, even if it’s not a part of a larger blog post I’m working on. This week I landed on Calvin Natt, a player who finished his long, successful career with a brief Pacers stint. Most of his years, including an All-Star season in 1984-85, were with the Blazers and Nuggets. Calvin doesn’t have any cards in a Pacers uniform, but has plenty of certified autograph cards showing his time with the Blazers and Nugge ..read more

Next letter in the series only has 13 players, starting with Bill Garnett and ending with Dick Grubar. My strategy, in less words that I’ve written up in previous posts, is that on-card Pacers autographed cards are preferred, but if that is not an option, or an on-card autographed card will not reasonably fit in a binder page, then a sticker certified auto, or cards of the player in another team’s uniform will work. I also prefer to get cards signed TTM or in person myself as opposed to purchasing, but often that is not an option, of course. Autographs of Pacers with Last Name starting with ‘G ..read more

Just a reminder of my priority for picking up autographs; 1a. Certified Pacers autographs 1b. Non-Certified Pacers autograph that I have personally obtained (in person or TTM) 2a. Certified Non-Pacers autographs 2b. Non-Certified Non-Pacers autographs that I have personally obtained (in person or TTM) 3. Non-Certified Pacers autographs that I have not personally obtained 4. Non-Certified Non-Pacers autographs that I have not personally obtained And as always, thanks to TCDB and Basketball Reference for the wealth of information. Autographs of Pacers with Last Name starting with ‘E’ – 4 of ..read more

I often use TCDB.com as a resource for finding cards for my Pacers collections. I’ve had some luck finding cards there that ei on eBay, COMC, or elsewhere. I’d call it one of the tools in my collecting ‘belt’. When there’s a card I’m after, I usually check there first to see if anyone has the card available for trade or sale. Sometimes I can make a quick swap and save some hobby funds, and I’ve found most of the folks I’ve interacted with to be friendly and willing to help out fellow collectors. I had a great interaction recently with BucCollector on TCDB. In my search for Pacers autograph car ..read more

Had a couple more recent autograph requests through the mail recently, and they happen to be two Pacers centers from the 2000s. The Pacers traded Brad Miller to the Sacramento Kings in 2003, and in return picked up a locker room favorite in the charismatic center Scot Pollard. #31 with other teams, he obviously couldn’t be #31 with the Pacers, so he went with 62. This makes the inscription on these two cards that much better. The second center is one of my all-time favorites. Jeff Foster played his entire career with the Pacers, starting a little under half of them (345). Ferocious on the gl ..read more