2001 Topps Gold Label

Been a little while since I jumped into Random to help me clear out my scan folder. Every time I think about it, I see a pack has been posted that day, and I hate to add a 2nd pack on a single day. It's just me. But since we are clear today, let's have at it.

My LCS had a bunch of these blasters they scored at a cheap price. Not realizing what a sheer gem of a set they were, I kept avoiding them until there was just a single blaster left. Only three cards in a pack, being a high end release. This is also back in the day when each blaster had a hit, and not that manufactured crap they pass off nowadays. I'm going to post one pack, but I scanned a few extra cards as Gold Label has a tiered gimmick.

Foil man at the bottom, and that just scans like hell, but the cards themselves are beautiful. Full-ish bleed and all are refractor-y. I think of Topps HD when I see these, in regard to the quality of the images.

White Sox addition to my Sox box - heck yeah! You see the bottom badge will change color to match the team.

Finally, how about Alou in a bad time for Astros uniforms?

Here is the back. If you look lower left, you see Class 1 - here is the tier system of Gold Label. Three classes, with Class 3 being the rarest. Only get stats for the previous year and a short paragraph of biological and career information.

I happened to pull two Sosa cards from the box, which allows us to see the difference between Class 1 on the left and Class 2 on the right. You get a completely new image. In fact, this is a gold Class 2 card. You will see what that matters when you turn it over.

Turning them over, you cannot miss that the Gold Class 2 is serialed to 699. Otherwise, the backs are identical - exact same data. There are regular Class 2 cards with the different front image, but not numbered. The background does not have a gold tint.

My box had two Class 3 cards, one base and one gold, so here they are side by side. Class 3 adds another new image, this on a composite of two pictures of the player. You can see the gold tint on the Walker card to the left.

Gold Class 3 cards are serialed to 299. I am going to say the backs otherwise match the base Class 1 cards. I'm too lazy to verify this at COMC.

Remember that every blaster has a hit, so I may as well scan that as well.

Nomo! No brainer to send this to Night Owl. Hit wise, this is actually the better relic to pull from the '01 Gold Label blasters, as the jersey relics are seeded 1:143. Bat relics fall 1:54.

Fun box. I hope my LCS can score some more as I would build this set in a heart beat.

1995-96 Fleer NBA Jam Session

Hello everyone! Here's another one of the packs I recently purchased for the paltry sum of 25 cents. This time it is a pack of 1995-96 Fleer NBA Jam Session, these being the second (and last) year of the Jam Session line. With the cards measuring roughly 2 ½ by 5 inches, I believe Fleer was hoping to invoke memories of the tall boy cards from the 60's and early 70's (1970 -71).

Each pack contained 13 cards, which included one pop-up card (25 total) and one die-cut card (parallel set). So let's get to opening:

Christian Laettner pop-up #14

Nick Van Exel die-cut # D54

Allan Houston #31

Chris Mullin #36

Shaqille O'Neal #77

Stacey Augmon #1

Michael Jordan #13

Gary Payton #101


I guess this would be a good time to show one of the backs:

John Stockton #110: Check out Sam Cassell's handful of arm!

Hakeem Olajuwon #41

Sherman Douglas #6

Glenn Robinson #62

Patrick Ewing #71

So there you have it! This was a pretty solid pack overall (loaded with hall of famers), in fact all four that I got were. I didn't get a single duplicate in the packs, so with just four packs I was able to get over 1/3 of the 120 card base set. I don't recall ever seeing these during their run, so I really enjoyed opening these. If I can find one cheap, there may be a box in my future.


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my pack.

1997-98 NBA Hoops Series 2 Retail

It was just over three years ago that I posted a pack of Series 1 from this very set. With the NBA Playoffs currently in full swing, now is as good of a time as any to post a pack of the sequel.

287 - Allen Iverson - Pink! Fire! Otherwise, not a bad second year card of AI. I just don't know what they were thinking with this design. I'm fearful that this is the direction Topps baseball is heading these days.

281 - Charlie Ward - The Heisman guy. Almost 20 years later, we are all fully aware that per-48 min stats are complete B.S. It's not the worst thing in the world to imagine what a bench player would do with starter's minutes, but no one is ever playing close to 48 minutes per game outside of some masochistic NBA2K setup.

291 - Clarence Weatherspoon - Weatherspoon gets the same pink flame treatment as Iverson, so it's looking like the color schemes are team-specific.

9CB - Tim Duncan Chairman of the Board - Young Tim Duncan! There's more than a good chance this is going to be the only card of an active player in this pack. According to the wrapper, these were a 1:9 pack pull.

323 - George Lynch - What is missed more, teal uniforms or NBA basketball in Vancouver?

317 - Sharone Wright - Yeah, the cartoon dinosaur was a little silly, but the current Raptors logo now looks like a deflated basketball.

310 - Jerome Kersey - The late, former Blazers starter did a tour of Western Conference rosters, including the Spurs and the dreaded Lakers.

295 - Antonio McDyess

285 - Mark Price - While you're never going to improve this design, Orlando's background is at least not-so-nightmarish.

21 - Allen Iverson Great Shots - Each pack comes with a mini poster that's standard card-sized if you fold it over twice. It looks like Tim Hardaway is the actual subject of this photo, and we're just taking SkyBox at their word that this snapshot in time leads to something resembling a "Great Shot".

1993-94 Score Hockey (Canadian Edition)

Hockey playoffs in full force. Let's open packs. This is Canadian version of Score hockey featuring english and french translation on back of the card. Pack contains 14 cards and 1 bonus Pinnacle card.

371 - Dave Reid - one of books I read is Hockey Card Stories and he's one of players featured in it. When he played for Toronto he load himself boxes of hockey cards from card shop that the owner banned him. Once ran card shop, but closed it when he went to Boston which is team he's playing for in this card.

389 - Dave Taylor - for player drafted 210th overall he became one of Kings star players

391 - Shawn Chambers

6 (Pinnacle) - Mark Recchi - bonus Pinnacle card of 1993 All-Star played in Montreal which also feature player's stats from All-Star game.

467 - Gord Kruppke - his only major card release

451 - Luc Robitaille - he shoots into the record books

272 - Troy Murray

280 - Darrin Shannon

275 - Michel Petit

149 - Adam Foote

146 - Bob Sweeney

159 - Dale Hawerchuk - got a Hall of Famer

109 - Jimmy Carson

106 - Paul Coffey - another Hall of Famer. Became a Wing midway through 92-93 season

103 - Scott Lachance

Not a bad pack