Sunday, July 9, 2017

This Is Really A Basketball Card Set?

I was recently cruising Ebay looking for some cardboard of one of my favorite former NC State players T.J. Warren.  I am always looking for cards featuring him in a Wolfpack uni, but I have branched out at times for some of his Phoenix Suns cards.  Since I really don't know a lot about basketball cards I mainly just set a price limit for myself and then go hunting based on the appearance of the card.  It sounds superficial, but it's truly how I collect basketball cards.

It just so happens that the day I went hunting for T.J. Warren cards, I ran into an auction that was about to end.  The card looked sweet, so I quickly placed my bid.  I didn't really pay attention to most of the details outside of the fact that the card was dirt cheap, white with two memorabilia pieces, and it was autographed.



A few days later it showed up in the mail.  I took it out of its envelope and looked at the white and grey.  The cool looking piece of basketball relic.  Then I read the name on the top "Excaliber".  Seriously?  I thought for a minute about some sort of connection between a sword and basketball, or King Arthur and basketball?  I guess King Arthur had a court and basketball is played on a court.


I'm going with the court thing.  Royal Court.


Basketball Court. 


This is surely what some designer at Panini was thinking?  Right?  Although, when I saw the Excalibur heading on the card I couldn't help, but think that perhaps someone was really sneaking in some Monty Python at work.  Maybe this could fit too, but I am at a loss for a basketball connection....



4 comments:

  1. Definitely going for the King Arthur theme. One of the inserts is called "Knights of the Round" with the round in this case referring to the ball. This year's parallels are all based on royalty as well. The year that card was issued it was a Target exclusive I believe.

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    1. That's cool that they keep the theme throughout the set. MLB had a royal court set, or something like that back in the late 1990s, but I think it was sort of a stand alone insert.

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  2. Basketballs look awesome as relics on cards. I wish baseball would have more "game-used ball" cards versus plain jerseys.

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    Replies
    1. I agree. This was my first basketball relic and I like the way it looks. I am not always a big fan of communal relics such as bases and balls, but this looks really nice. Especially with the white background on the card.

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