Outbreak

The definition of Outbreak is "the sudden or violent start of something unwelcome, such as war, disease, etc."

It's something that is going on now and something that happened in the 1995 hit movie, Outbreak. In that movie, a dangerous airborne virus threatens civilization-hmm think on that-and it spreads through a small Californian town and not the world like we are experiencing today.  The movie stars Dustin Hoffman, whatever happened to him by the way, who is a contagious disease expert along with his ex-wife (Rene Russo) that the town brings in to help stop the spread of the disease. The movie also has Morgan Freeman, Kevin Spacey and Donald Sutherland.

To me, not all outbreaks can be taken negatively as you can turn the word into something positive with the right wording. Between 1996-1999, the hobby experienced an outbreak of creativity like no other. We had acetate autographs, cards that made players move for seconds of time, cards in cans, cards in tins, one card high end packs and coins and cards together as one hobby just to name some.

It was a great time to be alive as a card collector watching the hobby boom.

One of my outbreaks at the time was an addiction to cards and coins. They weren't worth much then and really aren't now, but I just loved it. I wasn't even a coin collector but occasionally you could see me adding a wheat penny here and there when I found one.

I actually even spent the time to put the coins in the card slots if I had the right player and coin that matched up. A lot of the time that wasn't the case as there was two cards per pack, one with a slot and one not and one coin for retail which is what I bought. Hobby had two coins and three cards per pack so your odds was better that way.

With all of my recently found extra time, I have been scouring eBay for some packs in the last few months when a bumped into a listing of a completed 1996 30 bronze football coin set in a special Pinnacle Coin binder. The set was listed for $3.99 starting bid and $6.99 shipping. It also had a make offer option which I always take the option on. So I offered the starting bid and the seller immediately accepted. One would guess that they either needed money or wanted to make sure this was gone.

You know, I buy junk.

Here is the front of the binder and the backside of the first half of coins.

Open it up and you find an outbreak of the 30 coin set that spreads across two pages

Some pretty big names mixed in including Troy Aikman, Jim Kelly, John Elway, Brett Favre (and for me Kerry Collins and Mark Brunell)

And Emmitt Smith, Steve Young and Jerry Rice just to name a few. The names alone made the purchase worthwhile to me.

Here is the final side.

I think this is a pretty unique item for my 90's PC and not something I ever see pop up. And really I haven't ever seen this item. It may not be packs to open to take me down memory lane like I had hoped, but I was still very happy with my purchase.

Outbreak was a great movie for it's time and may have to give it another watch since it has been awhile and I don't fully remember it that well. I know the timing of that isn't great with everything going on, but I just gotta remember the good guys win in the end. I foresee that at some point for us as well.

Before I close, I must point out there really hasn't ever been a creative outbreak in the hobby like that since 1999, but there has been a outbreak of positivity in the hobby as of recent. Whether its on Twitter with all of the giveaways, pay it forwards or Panini simply giving away boxes and packs or it's also bloggers helping each other out and doing free card threads almost every day for some. As the saying goes, we are all in this together and it's great to see in this hobby community that we all have each others backs when we are down.