The Origins Of A Cardboard Addict: Ladies And Gentlemen,These Are Cards From '95

It was 1999, I was a sophomore in high school and spent most of my days outside shooting hoops, playing football and baseball against friends or myself trying to stay in shape for the following high school football season. Just like in the NFL which at that point in my life I had dreams of playing in, the football season never ends.

In my downtime, I played Madden NFL on my PS1 or spent time sorting cards. But, that was when it was really dark or the weather was unbearable to be out in. I spent my childhood outside and miss those days of being able to. I still try to get out as much as I can today, but having the health issues I have doesn't make it very easy especially the torn ACL.

On other occasions, I would go and run errands with my father. It wasn't the most fun in the world, but it got me out of the house which sometimes you just have to do. At that point in 1999 I didn't even have my drivers permit so the only way I could leave was riding with others. I think the main point I would go for was the chance we would run an "extra" errand to one of the retail locations that sold sport cards. What am I saying chance for, we would ALWAYS go.

I say "extra" errand because we could never talk about the hobby to my mother who was the one who assigned the errands. She despised the hobby and card collecting with no reason to other than spending money. She would rip our heads off, probably like a T-Rex I would guess, if we brought new cards into the house or she found out we had bought some. Instead, we had a method of sneaking cards into the house. We would hide them in our inside coat pockets, in-between the mail, sometimes tucked into the side of  our underwear. If we wanted to enjoy the hobby, you sometimes had to make the odd sacrifices.

When we would run the main errands, I would never partake in that part of the trip unless it was the extra stop. Instead, I always sat in the car while he ran into the many locations such as the Post Office, grocery store, hardware store, etc and jammed to some tunes. You see, back then we didn't have electronic devices to play on such as kids have today with phones and iPads, well besides handheld video games but I was from a poor family and we didn't have those. So music was what I had to waste time away while he was running errands and I soothed and enjoyed every part of it.

One day while we were out in 1999, I remember listening to the local radio station do their weekly countdown, one of the hottest songs came on and you know what you do when that happens, you turn that up! You want to make sure everyone around you can hear it. It's THE tune!!!!

So there I was in the parking lot of the grocery store jamming to Lou Bega's Mambo No. 5 as loud as I could and maybe even doing a jig that many shouldn't have ever seen or your eyes may have burst or rolled back into your head. You know that catchy tune back in 1999 that was #3 on the Top 100 Billboard charts for quite some time.

🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶A little bit of Monica in my life
A little bit of Erica by my side
A little bit of Rita is all I need🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶

At that point in my life, I would have been happy to have any girl by my side no matter the name. Having been a sophomore in high school without ever having an actual girlfriend was a sad story. But, at the same time okay because I had plenty of other things to keep me occupied such as collecting sport cards. Once a girl gets into your life at those ages, your fun "toys" go away. Believe me from experience, I went through that a year later and that's a story for another day.

As I sat there jamming with the music, I had wondered what packs of cards we would discover when we made our infamous stop which I assumed was the next one. Would there be some Fleer? Pinnacle? Pacific? Baseball? Football? Maybe even some basketball? With a small budget but a wide open selection, it wouldn't be easy to narrow the search down. Unlike today's times.

As I continued to jam and think, the two things intertwined and I began to rewrite some of the words to the song using the card selections. Fortunately, my father always had a pen and some junk paper in the car so I jotted them down like I did when I had any great idea. I did a lot of writing back then at school (it's what I did in graded school for inside recess and study halls in high school) and even some today besides this blog, but definitely not even close to how much I used to. It's called adult hood now. Time slots must be split up evenly for every day life.

Here were the tunes I had written down that day. I found that small piece of paper when I was digging for new content on here just the other day which is what helped revive this memory,

🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶

One

Two

Three

Four, Five

Everybody in the car, so come on, let's ride
To the card shop around the corner
I say want to buy some cards
But I really don't wanna
Have a bust like I had last week
I must stay focused because cards aren't cheap

I like Topps, Upper Deck, Pacific and Fleer-er
And as I continue you know they getting sweeter
So what can I do? I really beg you, my Lord
To me busting it's just like sport, anything fly
It's all good, let me continue to sort it,

A little bit of Topps in my life
A little bit of Upper Deck by my side
A little bit of Pacific is all I need
A little bit of Pinnacle is what I see
A little bit of Scoreboard in the sun
A little bit of Press Pass all night long
A little bit of Sage Hit, here I am
A little bit of Fleer Ultra makes me the man

🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶

Pretty catchy, don't you think? It was just the kick off to my re-writing songs career. Well, I wouldn't call it a career but more of a fun side hobby that I share with family members. You see, my humor is more than I lead on here. I think I am pretty funny. You need humor and laughs in life especially in today's day and age.

As I continued to sit and wait, I began to wonder if Fleer Ultra makes or made me "The Man" of cards as opposed to women from the song. Especially since I collected so much of it for multiple sports. It was always a beautiful product with great photography on it's base cards and stunning inserts, but out of all of the options out there at the time in the hobby, would that make me The Man to collect it?

Hmmm...(sparks coming out of my ears grinding from trying to process it)

Maybe back in 1995 it may have.

1995 Fleer Ultra was my first dive into the product and it took my breath away *insert Berlin's big hit from the 80's Take My Breath Away*. One of the most amazing parts was probably the Gold Medallion parallels that fell one-per-pack. They took the base cards, covered it in gold foil added some embossing and made the player burst off from it just simply made the card jump out at you.

There were 550 cards in the base set, split up into two series with 350 in Fleer Ultra Series 1 and 200 in Fleer Ultra Extra which mainly was built of subsets. That also meant there were 550 cards of Gold Medallions as well to chase. I guess you can say that Ultra was "worth it's weight in gold."

Here is a small sampling of what the cards look like if you haven't seen them before.

 

 

 

You think these make me The Man? Okay, they do. They definitely do. Just look at them!!

Back then I never would have considered collecting a parallel set, but 24 years later, things have changed and here I am trying to chase down all 550 cards. 550 WHOPPING CARDS. A big thanks to @CardpocalypseNC as I was able to knock off 6 more from my needs above. The rest of you can find my other needs for this big set chase HERE among others.

But, I still have a long ways to go. That's just the fun of the chase.

As for my love of Mambo No. 5, like most things I enjoyed from the 90's it carried over to today just like the Fleer Ultra Gold Medallions from 1995. I tend to even enjoy things like Mambo No.5 even more today because of the nostalgic memories it brings me such as that fond day in the car jamming to the tune. Which I forgot to mention, the pain with only being able to jam to a tune when it came on the radio, is the hope that you got to finish the entire song before someone caught you dancing to it. Sorry dad you had to witness that.

Now that I am technologically advanced compared to my 90's self, I have a CD player and still listen to CD's which I know many don't do anymore but I am still a little old fashioned. I was able to land Lou Bega's A Little Bit Of Mambo CD from a buddy as a gift who also enjoyed this CD.

 

 

Of course Mambo No. 5 wasn't the only great song on here. I enjoyed Tricky Tricky and 1+1=2 which is from the first Stuart Little movie made in 1999. Looking at the back of the case, I remember lots of decent tracks but none more so than the catchy Mambo No. 5.

So I guess it's time to give it another listen while I dug this CD out and wait and sing the line, "A little bit of Jessica here I am" and look over at my wife to see her reaction...again. Wonder if it will be a shrug? A Smile? A shake of the head? Time will tell. I never know what to expect from her.

If nothing else, the song will once again make me time travel to the front seat of my father's car reminiscing of those fun times and bringing back some card Mambo in my life.