Random Cardboard:2020 Illusions Clear Shots Eli Manning

Eli's Clear Shot

 

Sometimes you never know when a chase will start. 

I was window shopping on eBay, something I do often, and found this 2020 Panini Illusions Clear Shots insert card. What caught my attention first was the fact it was a picture from Super Bowl 46 and I believe the play where Eli threw a short slant TD pass to Victor Cruz for the first touchdown of the game and this was his reaction afterwards.

Anything with the Giants Super Bowl wins I try to snag up.

So I grabbed the base insert above.

That's until I found out there were parallels to this card and then I went a little crazy. Good thing I got a eBay gift card for Christmas.

I grabbed all of the parallels available for this card that were listed and left myself with only 2 more to get before I would complete the rainbow. Of course one of those two is the 1/1 which may or may not ever pop up.

Here is the gallery of what I did grab,

Emerald

Orange

 

Blue Sapphire

Pink /399

Red /149

Black /50

Green /10

The Light Blue is also on its way but the seller sent the card to the wrong person so I am waiting for it to head my way still.

Here is the group all together. I think by far the color parallels stand out more than the base insert does.

I am hoping I can find the Purple 1/1.

One Down, One To Go

I have been working really hard on my 90's sets and trying to complete them. I have been seeking out some minor trades just to fill in some spots.

My recent trade with @jmswyo landed me another key piece to a set.

 

Steve Young was one of the two cards left I needed for my Broadways' Review set from 1996 Topps football. This brought me down to one card, which was card #1 ironically enough, which was Kerry Collins. But, I may or may not have made a move to fill this set.....

Anyways, thanks to @jmswyo for the trade and set help!

I was also only two short of my 1995 Pinnacle Clear Shots set but with some work of magic, I was able to find the last two cards cheap and grabbed them while I could.

 

Troy Aikman was a guy I never liked but that was because of the star on the side of his helmet. But this is a pretty sharp card.

 

Dan Marino is a guy I always rooted for to win a ring, but sadly he never did. But, still was one of the NFL's greats no matter. This card was the most expensive card I had to buy in the set and most of them go for double what I did for it. Like I said, found a deal.

So now my Pinnacle Clear Shots set is complete! I will show it off on here some day. Now I just need to get the final piece for the Brodway's Review in hand and then my focus turns on trying to complete the gigantic 1995 Summit Ground Zero parallel set.

Filling In Some Gaps

The only problem with getting an eBay gift card for Christmas is, it runs out at some point. That's what today's finale mail day is all about.

I spread this eBay gift card out long enough that it was able to crossover with my eBay bucks which was like beautiful music. What was remaining for my gift card and what I had for eBay bucks wasn't much, but it was just enough to fill in some gaps. Not to mention, the seller had free shipping and 20% off two or more items so timing couldn't have been any better on my part.

I was able to add three more Hamptons bringing my total to 14 with the gift card and a couple of set help cards. Let's check it out.

 

This is a 1995 Images Limited Icons insert. Nothing to flashy, but it does have these weird somewhat embossed lines that I hadn't seen in the scans. It was an added bonus. This was the final piece to my 1995 Images needs and was a card I hadn't seen listed ever til I got the gift card.

 

This 1992 Wild Card is one of many, many Wild Cards that I need for both 1992 and 1993. There are so many variations and brands that run off from it that I don't think I will ever finish that part of his PC. I never see any of them listed except this one which has been in my watch list for some time now.

 

Speaking of cards I never see listed, I have been needing both parallels for Rodney in 1997 Pinnacle Inside. Finally, the Silver Lining did. I put this card in my Watch List back in the middle of summer and fortunately no one grabbed it. Now I just need to find the Gridiron Gold parallel.

With those three I also have a nice round number of 580 total Rodney Hampton cards out of his 825 roughly out there. I am closing the gap, but it is also a sad thing because it's getting tougher to find cards I actually need out there.

 

Set help here. I have always wanted the Kerry Collins from the 1995 Summit Rookie Summit insert set. Now I have it and it gets crossed off of my set needs for this set. I still have plenty of them to chase however as I only have 7,8,13,14,15,16 out of the 18 in the set. I don't know if it's the photography or the foil design, but these cards are appealing to me.

And a Hall of Fame running back for my 1995 Pinnacle Clear Shot set? Yes please. This brought my set needs down to two! Card was also in mint condition with no scratches like some do and no staining.

Well, that does it for my gift card. I think it was money well spent and well spread out. All I can hope now is that I get another one for my Birthday coming up in March.

In the meantime, if any of you have any of my set help under my Set Needs HERE, please contact me via email or Twitter. I will be adding to these lists as well soon. Thanks!

I Have A Clear Shot At This Set!

So I sat by my desktop staring at eBay trying to figure out how I would best use my remaining gift card hoping that some inspiration would hit. I checked out pretty much everything Looked at every deal, tried to find the best combo card price/shipping. I wasn't simply going to let this gift card go to complete waste.

At the same time, I was compiling my Hobby Resolutions for the blog and realized, "hey, don't I want to finally finish up some of those 90's sets I was building?" The answer was yes and I narrowed the list down to four insert sets I wanted to complete first.

1995 Pinnacle Clear Shots football
1995 Sportflix Man2Man
1996 Topps Turf Warriors
1996 Topps Broadway Review

Along with two parallel sets I wanted to do as well with 1995 Summit Ground Zero football and 1995 Score Red Siege football.

These are my goals for the year. This is what I am attacking. Will it take a miracle? Yes. Will it take lots of help from fellow collectors? Yes. So here's my early plea for my trade partners to keep an eye out for these six items when you go to shows, etc.

Today, however, I am showing off how far I have come in my 1995 Pinnacle Clear Shots chase. I found a deal where the cards were cheap and combined free shipping.

1995 Pinnacle Clear Shots fell 1:60 packs and is a 10 card set. My start to this set came when I was able to land one in a pack of 1995 Pinnacle last year and it brought me back to how beautiful these cards are. Acetate with a holographic foil off to the side. They don't make them like this anymore.

 

Kijana Carter is card number 9 in the set. He was one of two rookies featured in this set as there was high expectations for the running back. It's just too bad they weren't lived up to.

 

Steve Young is card number 3 in the set and is one of my favorite left handed QB's besides the top favorite Mark Brunell.

 

Drew Bledsoe is card #4 in the set. I knew so many Patriot fans. It was nice when they didn't play so well alongside the Giants. Now it's the least amount of fun. I blame this man. He created Tom Brady by getting hurt. Thanks Drew.

Steve McNair is card number 10 in the set and is the other big rookie in the set. I was disappointed when I got this card as the "clear" portion of the card appeared to had been owned by a smoker as it was all yellow. I had already left good feedback on the card, I don't leave negative very often unless it's really hazardous, but decided to contact the seller anyways. Being a great seller, they found a better conditioned copy and put it in the mail for me and told me to keep this rough one. So glad they were able to help because it would have nagged me to no end had I completed this with a damaged card.

 

With these four additions and one more on the way, I am currently only needing card numbers 2 (Dan Marino) and 8 (Troy Aikman) from completing the set.

I think I am starting my Hobby Resolution off with a bang! Tomorrow I will feature the other set I made great progress on.

Nuttin But The HIts:1995 Pinnacle Football 36 Pack Break (NICE PULLS)

The late 90's. Is there truly any better time in the hobby?

The variety, the brands, the innovations, the value.

It's all in there.

For me there is also a bonus, the memories. This was and always will be my best time in the hobby. Nothing will ever change that.

So when I pulled off my last trade with Project Pedro blog I got the opportunity to take a trip back down memory lane with some packs/box breaks from my past. I loved every aspect of our trade, but these breaks were truly what hit me the hardest and what I enjoyed the most. With every pack I busted a smile can be seen for miles across my face and the next chance to open the next pack brought me joy like no other.

There will be multiple breaks coming up on here. So get ready to take a trip back in time!

Today. let's go back to 1995 shall we? That's the year I was currently starting to post about for Origins Of A Cardboard Addict blog. I had thought about busting these boxes over there, but instead I decided to keep them here and maybe this will be the future site of that blog as well and will continue my story of collecting here. 

Okay, I had a huge kid crush on 1995 Pinnacle football and I have mentioned that on The Origins Of A Cardboard Addict before. Now that I am older, I still have what I now call a man crush on the product. I loved the design and especially the inserts.

Today, the product is a lot more affordable than it used to be so why not take a chance on some in my trade with Project Pedro? It was definitely worth it!

Just for an example, here is the kind of photography and design it had for the base set. Which you can find my wants under the set tab. I will be soon separating some of those into a Sets Of My Childhood tab.

Joey Galloway's rookie card from the base set was my favorite card. Slam dunking a football pretty slick for those times. The football enclosing the name at the bottom was a spectacular touch.

Let's take a look at my great break of this product. Up first, the dufex of Museum Collection parallels. these fall 1:4 packs so I got the amount you would expect.

Plus one with judge Steve Young.

Showcase insert falls 1:18 packs. Unique prospective of the players in a photo shoot.

Clear Shots! Holy poop! Finally pulled one. These bad boys fall 1:60 and are in my Sets Of My Childhood chase. One down, nine more to go! These are clear acetate with a touch of silver shine. Very impressive in person so if you see any, please send them my way!!!!!!

And finally my last pull, a 1:90 Team Pinnacle find of Troy Aikman and

Dan Marino. What a find!!

 

I never had a break of Pinnacle like this in the 90's. If I had, I may not have been alive today because my heart would had stopped. Not that it didn't skip a beat or two after this incredible break.

All this did was leave me hanging and wanting more of 1995 Pinnacle. Something I may look back into down the road.

Clear Shot At Spending My eBay Bucks!

As you guys know, I am a very low budget collector so when I got my eBay bucks certificate back recently, I didn't get a triple digit return, I didn't even get a double digit return. I got $1.88. Yes, one dollar and eighty-eight cents.

Some of you may laugh and some of you may not even bother using an amount so low, but for me, $1.88 opened up some possibilities and to me, money is money. No matter the amount.

I knew I wasn't going to add to my Psych or Ghostbusters needs with that amount, but since I collect so much the windows were open to many things. First I checked for Rodney Hamptons. Nope, all the ones that cheap I have. Second, I looked at NY Giants in general, nope, got em. So lastly I checked out Sets Of My Childhood cards and knew I could score some kind of help there.

But, I didn't want to spend my big bucks on just any card randomly I needed, I wanted something unique from my needs.

That's when I discovered a 1995 Pinnacle Clear Shots card I needed for my set. These cards fell 1:60 packs and are printed acetate with a touch of silver foil.

 

So far I only had Jerry Rice for the set. Now I have Marshall. So 2 out of 10 done. This set will be featured on Sets Of My Childhood THE SERIES at some point and hopefully I can get some help to finish my set.

I was pretty happy with my choice and finding a set need under $2. Most of these in the set are over that price even for a non Hall Of Famer.