Episode 40: Hoops Then to Now

All right, what's up, everybody? We're here for another hoops hobby hangout. Unlike Joey, I don't keep track of the numbers. Last time I actually made an educated guess that we might have been on like episode 21. And then I got corrected that it was like 33. So I'm not even gonna guess where we are. We've done it a bunch. Glad to be here with everybody. We are short Joey tonight, but we've got both. Ryan's here and tonight's. Tonight's hangout's gonna be talking about. About hoops. And we don't always do, you know, a real focus topic like this. But tops Natics just dropped their version of NBA hoops. And there's some commentary on the Internet that I think some of us are questioning about what would come over, not over, why was it coming over from Panini? And we just thought we'd kind of talk about the history of it a little bit, share some of our favorite cards. It is actually a. The one card property that's licensed by the NBA. Like it falls under NBA property licensure. I don't even know the correct legal terms. So, like, it goes from vendor to vendor and they have the rights to it, but the NBA controls it. So we're gonna jump in there. But before we do that, going around the horn. Anybody have any hobby updates? And I'll share mine because it's reminiscent. Looking at Adam reminds me a funny part of it. I've got nothing in this week, but I spent the time to do an MC consignment submission. Really love their site. We can talk about at some point in detail. Spent a couple hours, was really happy. Have a pretty decent amount of money that I anticipate coming through. Not a ton of, but I was really happy with myself. I opened up some funds going into the summer. And then the next morning I wake up and Adam's impulsively doing a story sale where he probably just pulled stuff out of random boxes. And several of his cards, individual cards, were worth more than the entire submission that I sent over to mc. So it was a little. A little humbling. But yeah, like I said, we can talk about in depth about consignment stuff now that I know a couple of us have had some more experience with it recently. But not for tonight. But let's go around the hill. I'm going to start with you, Adam. Any updates and we'll bounce over the Ryan to see what's. What's going on in the hobby world of all of Us. Not much for me. I haven't picked up anything basketball oriented. I did sell a few cards from that story sale you brought up, but nothing too crazy. The only one that you would probably like that I got rid of just it's a cool car, but it was just worth more money than it was worth to me is the Russell Irving chronology, dual autograph number to 6. I like that card, but someone else liked it more than I did, so I moved it. But I'm actually going up to Columbus tomorrow and dropping him off. Like six or seven cards he bought from me. Nice. Do you have any. Any specific? I mean, I know you're not like a type guy to set goals in the hobby, but anything that you hope to. You're looking to save up for like one big card or stashed away for the national or just thought you'd clear out some space. Just kind of was looking at stuff and seeing some comps of certain things and seeing that the kind of the value of them versus what I value them was different. So I just threw some random stuff up and a few duplicates just to see what would kind of be able to be garnered and ended up working out. I sold a few cards from the story and a few DMS came in and I sold cards from just that were on my page, like that duel that I mentioned that I really liked. But like I said, it was just. It was worth more money to someone else than it was worth to me, so it made sense to get rid of it. Yeah, Sean nails it. Yeah, you gotta definitely check out Adam's IG if you have any. I mean, he only posts a fraction of what he owns, but it's. It's a fun take and it's a very diverse collection. Non glasses. Ryan, any. Anything going on your world, hobby or otherwise? Yeah, yeah. I've got an homage to Tim. Since he's not here. I figure somebody's got to talk about it. There he is right there. There he is right there. So it's one of the. One of the bounce house. Really? Really. Nothing fancy or special or crazy awesome about it, except it is a rookie, so. And it's in line with the hoops. With the hoops line of conversation today. And that was a homage to you, Tim. I found that when I came across it and threw it into the collection. Love it. That's the Cooper, right? Yep. Love it. Looks great. And when you lean forward like that, the light behind you is quite the majestic aura. It's like shooting out like a very religious. Yeah. Or Yeah, I guess I'm here. I'm here to talk about hoops. I love it. We're gonna need you, but we're gonna need you at some point for a little different take on it, I think for sure. Colorado. Ryan, what's going on your world? Any updates? Yeah, I got a card in that I kind of didn't know I needed, but it's this chauncey billups from 2001. It's the platinum medallion. Yeah, Clear alter platinum medallion. Now on the card you can see it says if. I don't know if you can read this, but it says traded to the Timberwolves. But it does feature him in a Nuggets jersey. So kind of have to put that one in the binder. I feel like even though it's not representing the team, it's like it's enough to want to throw it in the binder, you know, so didn't really know I needed that one and then saw it popping up, up and I like, you know, that'll fit. I'll throw a little snip bit on it. What's that one numbered out of a hundred? These are out of 50 actually this year. Let's see. I don't know, probably. Those are nice. I did a run of the Pierce Gold medallions. They look really good. The platinums pop a lot better though. They're pretty nice. I go after those for most of the years except for some of the 2000s get kind of murky. So. Yeah, I'm not a fan of the upper deck ones that those two years. That upper deck had the. The ones from when they brought back flare altar for I think it was 0708 type time range. I'm not. And one of them super short printed like out of 25. And they just don't. They don't have the in game background. They have like the. That watermark background almost. Yeah. Tim, what's going on your hobby world? Well, sorry for the. The weird setup here. I. I stayed. I met my in laws longer than I expected and we're busy doing something. So I'm over here on my phone and I had plenty of cars to show and I had sent Joey them since I couldn't physically show you them. I don't have them right now, but very excited to talk about hoops today. You know, getting in terms of my hobby lately, getting a bunch of hoops, bounce house, little cosmic sill, you know, a little bit of everything and. But nothing too big coming in. I'm really liking the scan and Slams lately from tops, the regular tops. I'm getting a bunch of those lately. But nothing, nothing too serious, nothing too new. Oh, let's see. All right, to see. Now, we're all going to be missing Joey because the ebay. I did just win the ebay pickup. It was. It's a 101 black laser from WNBA donors, and Joey's the laser fan. So we're all. We're all missing Joey a little bit right now. Yeah, that was some multitasking. No, it's an ebay auction talking. It was perfect timing. So Ryan was like, oh, Tim's not here. Then Tim joins, and he pads just long enough for me to throw in my snipe bits. So appreciate. I appreciate you being here. All right, so, you know, we are not, you know, content creators, like the Wax Museum Podcast or anything that do deep dives and things and a lot of research. And we were talking, you know, know, behind the scenes about how none of us even really have a lot of time. So this is definitely meant to be more of a hangout. But I do want to give a little bit of context to why NBA hoops and what sort of brought this specific interest up for us. And I said it as we're getting started that Hoops is the 1 basketball card brand that's actually an NBA property. So if you look at. On the back of them since they came out, and Ryan, if you want to be zooming in out, you can, but you don't have to. So 89.90. I. I would say that this is one of the most iconic rookies. I was actually, I joined Kyle and Wax Museum Podcast several years ago to do the most iconic rookies from each NBA team. And we really talked about how this card, before Larry Johnson, before Shaquille o', Neal, really took what was happening in baseball for. For cards and brought it to the basketball worlds and really chasing these cards. So this is the 89.90 David Robinson, number 130. I think it's 6, 138. I forget. Rookie card, him holding his jersey. So back then, all it was just NBA prop. Yeah, I mean, NBA properties. And for a couple years, I think NBA just produced them themselves. And if you. I know David Stern is not the most loved commissioner by fans. He was a relentless businessman, like, leave no, you know, stones unturned. So even though I was eight back then and I didn't live, like, I wasn't reading business journals or anything, I guarantee you David Stern saw and his team saw what was happening Baseball Cards and was like, we're getting in on this. We're going to find a way to make it money for the league and. And promote the league through basketball Cards. And I'm sure that was the impetus for starting, you know, their own. Developing their own set. Eventually, you know, a few years later, went to Skybox, and Skybox held it until, you know, Flare bought out Skybox. And then when Flare went bankrupt, Upper Deck bought out Flare. I don't think Upper Deck ever had hoops, so I think hoops ended around 04.05 until Panini took it back up in. In 2010. We can talk about. Talk about that. But really cool stuff. Super junk wax era. Sneakily, if people are looking for value with the early hoop stuff, they did a very short print promo set only of broadcasters. Like, if I ever found the Mike Gorman broadcast card, it would be. It's one of the few cards that is, like, saved my eBay searches three or four different ways. And I think it was. What are the gray ones, Ryan? I know you guys were talking about the gray ones. Is that 90? 91 with the gray background? Yeah, that's 90. So. So they were from that year. And what they did to promote the set was they sent the broadcasters, like, a team set or base set, and it had, like, a slack number of their own cards in there. So, yes, they had coach, rookies and stuff, but the broadcast cards were never sent out, you know, in hobby or retail products. They were promo cards only sent to, like, the broadcast team. So super cool stuff to chase there. Yeah. I'll stop there before we jump into more of, like, the Panini stuff and everything. And I don't know if anybody wants to talk about some of their favorite sets or share some cards from those 90s 2000 years. I know, Ryan, you dug up a couple. Yeah. We could go through them real quick. I. I didn't go into too much depth with all these, but again, like the 89 that you showed Steve, I was actually looking for the David Robinson, but there's the Jordan. And then I always like these. So this is the All Star. I wish I wouldn't flip it on the camera here, but you get the gist of it. That's good on our end. Exactly. For next time. Oh, can you see it? Okay. All right. To me, it looks like backwards lettering. As long as you can see it. And then obviously, the 90 that you're talking about with the gray background, those are super iconic to me. That's kind of like my childhood right there. And then you Got the all Stars from that season. These are all Jordan, by the way, as I was picking stuff out, except for this one. You guys probably remember this Gary Payton rookie. That was such a cheese card. That's a classic. Oh, man, this is, yeah, this is like the definition of like 1990, right? Get the Gary Payton with them and talking on the phone. I think they had other rookies too. This is the lottery. Pick one there. But yeah, that one, I remember pulling that back in the day. And you're like, man, I'm gonna retire on that card. He's gonna be great. I feel like any baseball or basketball card of a player, good or not, holding some kind of chunky old phone is always, yeah. And then I did pull out a Larry Bird for you, Steve. So that's. It almost looks like, like a painting or something. You know, this was like a, I think a subset of, of this is 90 hoops and they had a number of players in this one. I think this is all the players listed on the back there. Yep. Checklist. Yep. And then we got 91 classic Jordan photo there. And I believe this is the, this is like a milestones one that's from, from 91 as well. And then I just will skip a couple years and go into 96. So there's Jordan from 96, but also you got Jacoby rookie there around 96 hoops. That's kind of a little overview of the first, I don't know, half dozen years or something like that. It's funny, Ryan, that you said that nine, like the 90 and 91 sets were quote, unquote, Your child's good for me. When I think back of hoops, as much as I was like chasing those icon, what we were calling iconic rookies back then, even as kids they were. It was that 93, 94 set, the 5th year anniversary set that probably part of it was. That's when I was like, I was like 12, right. So I was old enough to hop on my BA bike and go down the, you know, the center of town to the card shop and stuff. So that's when I was like buying cards on my own. But I. In those packs, you got 1 5th anniversary card, which was just a base card with a gold embossed 5th anniversary logo on it. And it's the first time I ever was like pulling parallels. And I loved them. And the inserts were as cheesy as they come. They really laid into the David Robinson stuff. But 93.94, I, I probably up my, my closet. I, I bet I still have a master set that I went after. And then I'm. I'm slowly transitioning over the base cards to the 5th anniversary foil versions. But I got like all the, all the inserts, everything like that. And then of course, that was the year that they did. I'm. I'm going to pull a T and show Bible page because we talk about these, but that was the year that they did the autograph redemption. So the, the Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, David Robinson. So that was I. And one thing we can talk about is I think Hoops has always done a nice job with like history of the brand. Like they, they will go back to like retro designs. They'll have anniversary releases. I, I think, I don't know if the NBA has had any oversight over throughout the years, but I do think they do a nice job. And Adam, I don't know if you want to pull up your. I mean, this is a panini era one, but Adam was showing something and it uses the 90 hoops design. And so even Panini was doing, you know, throwback designs that were beautiful. And Adam's showing a Bill Russell out of 10 auto, a hoops premium product from Panini. So I think Hoops has done a nice job recognizing the heritage of their set throughout the years. Yep. I agree. Yeah, those 94, I was thinking about that. I was trying to quickly get together a bunch of like early 90s stuff. And you just reminded me of those. And I definitely have them. It's just. Yeah. Surgeon, three 190s binders just at the last minute. So as, as a young collector, those David's bests inserts, which were literally just a whiteboarded cut or the highlight of David Robinson. And then it just said big block letters, David's best and the cheesiest hollow foil you could imagine. Love that stuff. Again, we all thought we're going to retire off of it. And he was. But like it was. Yeah, I mean, back then it was massively overproduced but really iconic. You know, especially those, those 90 hoops. Like again though, for me, that's just the classic hoops design. I mean, if you look at them too. So 89 and 90 kind of look similar. I know. Tim, you actually have an hour English you're showing me the other day From I think 89, where we determined it was the. Oh, what was it though? The Walmart set or something? The Sears said it was Sears. A Sears set? Yeah, it was the Sears set. So they. Instead of the white background, they were yellow. Yeah. And then yeah, it was like kind of like is it decaying? Is it or is that the real color? Yeah, no, it was like it was actually a factory set. So instead of the white, they had yellow. I, I always hated those because I thought they, they looked kind of like that baseball set from FLIR that was all yellow and I thought those are ugly too. But yeah, like the first few years they had kind of like the court cut out, I guess you'd call it maybe 89 and 90. That's kind of like classic hoops to me. So I'm, I'm going through while you guys. So I'm just kind of going through Instagram. For anybody that listens after the factors live with us. If you guys send something to our Instagram and we don't mention I bring it, I do apologize. Especially was in a story. I will admit that I'm not as active on our Instagram page. Joey does a little bit more of that kind of organizing that stuff and he's out unexpectedly today. So apologize. We miss anything. It doesn't mean we don't see it and appreciate it. I do. So only Wolves Cards brings up a good point that and he, you know, sent a very thoughtful response to some of the soup stuff. Wasn't Hoops the manufacturer that did the artist autos where the photographer of the design team would actually sign the cards? I believe that was Hoops because he brings up some of the rarer concepts and we. So back in you guys, these guys that know more about the set are going to just blow up our DMS. But I believe it was the mid 2000s, so it would have been a flare. Under the flare umbrella, they had artist proof autos where whoever was like designed the card and or the photographer would be the autograph on the car. They're all on card autos and it was to highlight the sort of artistry behind the. The design of the card, which I thought was a really cool I, I believe wax museum. Kyle actually got one in recently, so I'll have to hit up his Instagram page and see if I can re share that out. Yeah, I know what you're talking about. I can't remember if they're Hoops or not, but yeah, it was something around that time period. Anything about the. The 90s 2000s that we want to hit on before we can kind of fast forward to the Panini era? I was going to touch on the artist thing. The only ones of those that I can recall are the gallery set like on the canvasy material. They did an artist auto. I can't recall it hoops, but it could definitely have. Like I said before we went live, I'm ignorant to most things hoops, so I could be wrong on that one too. Yeah, you know what we, we learned from our mistakes. So if we're wrong, we're wrong. And if I'm misinterpreting while I try to multitask, you know, only wolves cards, then I'm the idiot, not him. So blame me. Oh, good. All right. So like I said, opera, you know. Oh, sorry, go ahead. No, just saying that I will blame you easily. It's no problem. Yeah, no, I mean absolutely, please do. I'm fine with that. All right, so like I said, you know, Operdack bought out Skybox and Flair in, in the bankruptcy and I don't believe Upper Deck ever did anything with with hoops. They brought back flare alter and stuff for a couple years but they pretty much stayed with the, the UD stuff. But Panini, when they got full licensure in 2010 brought back hoops. It was actually an insert set in 2010, 2011 classic. So there's a set called Panini Classics 09 10. Obviously there was like a split licensure where tops was ending and then Panini was taken over. But starting in 2010, they took it and they ran with it all the way to the end. So we got and I brought out a couple of Panini. Panini was very consistent with their hoops designs throughout the year. So you know we got and these are just basic cards but they show the design. So throughout the years, I mean they basically had a border. So this is 1314, I believe. These were Walmart and Target retail exclusives. But a border highlighting the NBA hoops logo. Generally a good in game photo. And I actually think the photography of hoops for the lower end sets was a lot better than a lot of the other sets. And when they were early on, they didn't have a lot of parallels. By the time we got towards the end of it, we did second, a lot more parallels. So this is like an artist proof gold I believe 2017, 18 or 2018-19. And then we get into the junk Panini era. I really think more than any other set. 20 in 2019, 20 you really see the overproduction with hoops. That was the year they did hoops. And then at the end of the year they were like, hey, by the way, here's a brand new hoops product called Hoops Premium that has a million parallels. That was the Year that I think breaking hoops, either hobby or retail really became just not enjoyable because there was just so much production of base cards that the ratio of like not even like these cards. You weren't looking for like high end cards with hoops with their hits. Sorry, Ryan, it was too fast. But the ratio of getting some parallels or getting some sticker autos was much higher prior to that 2019 overproduction. Then in 2019 they started doing or even 2017, I think they started doing like the holiday hoops and the winter hoops and you started getting like, you know, rookie cards with chunks of holiday sweaters in it and, and stuff. So I really think hoops more than any other brand unfortunately was. You can really see the overproduction that was the last few years of Panini. Not that they didn't over parallel stuff in every other brand, but I really think hoops was where they sort of jumped to shock with production and then they ended up with a bang. I think the final hoops product, which as explained to Adam, yeah, they had some premium boxes and stuff. But for the most part you can think of it as like tops and tops chrome. You bought hoops and there was hoops premium cards which would have been a foil, almost like a refractor version of hoops within the hoops retail and hobby stuff. So I thought they ended up in a good spot with it, but there was some real junk years in between there. Yeah, I think you're right. 1920 or so with, you know, Zion's rookie year, they really started to overprint pretty much everything. But yeah, definitely hoops all the holiday, you know, like stockings of players and stuff like that. And Panini hoops, Halloween hoops. It was just a little much for sure. Haunted hoops. Haunted hoops, yeah. But I will say two good things about those, you know, overproduced hoop sets. Premium stock, while not necessarily needed for a collector like me, I found that they kind of used it a little bit as like an update set and they added a couple of players in there that are. That had different jerseys that you don't see in other sets. Not necessarily the stars, but they had like 15, 20 of them for a couple years in a row where I'm like, oh wow, they actually made it a card in of that guy in that uniform. So I was waiting for premium stock every year just for those guys. But other than that, the design generally wasn't that great. But I also noticed something recently about oops, Halloween. I have been finding that there are some players like that Like a Kelly Olenek, for instance. His only pelicans card, I believe it is, is in haunted hoops. They didn't make one anywhere else. And so I, I noticed they have a couple of haunted hoops cards that at least for me are worth, are worth searching for. So I did appreciate those from that respect. But the designs are not good. I liked the haunted hoop concept because it was the first time for really to put like sports cards out there in a, in a trick or treat bag. And it was cool because at the time I was actually like not wanting my kids to eat candy. So it was like, oh, this is perfect. Right around that same time, they came out with the 75th anniversary version. And I really liked the holofoil that they put on there because it used the diamond version of the, of the 75th anniversary logo. So it's pretty rare when the NBA changes their logo anytime. But they specifically did it for that 75th anniversary. There was really only a couple sets that took advantage of that and Surprise, surprise, Hoops was one of them. And because of that, because of that holiday and the Halloween hoop stuff, I started kind of packaging up cards for kids in the neighborhood and stuff like that, and hanging it on my garage door because it was the middle of COVID and I'm sure there were some adults that grabbed some cards off that garage door. Yeah, that's cool. I was just gonna go back a little bit to what you said, Steve, about photography. Unless you all had something to go off of. No, because I think you could go there and then I' take it to some of the comments in the, the chat. Okay. So I wasn't really collecting a whole ton of like the early, early hoops, but this is 1314. So that's a very beat up Will Barton 101. And I was actually really excited to find that one in particular because, I don't know, it just brought me back to the days of like, oh, you could pull 101 out and it'd be in some kid's pocket. And now it's all just all beat up. Got it for, you know, 15 bucks or something like that. But the photography on these are really great. And I got another example too. And I know, Ryan, you had showed one of these replay cards last time. So this is a replay buyback from 13:14 of Kenneth Reed, the killer auto. I mean, yeah, the auto sucks, but yeah, the photo is good. It seemed like he rushed it. That is his auto. But it looks like two lines basically. But yeah, hand numbered 101 these are actually, you know, buybacks and you can see on the top there or there you go, the little replay logo just throughout like the years of hoops, you know. This is one I've showed off before. This is The Gary Harris 101 Hoops rookie card there that I got in pretty recently. But even for rookies, you know, pretty decent photography there I thought. And one of my favorite Gary Harris cards is actually this 18 19. This is just a regular season game against OKC, but it was closer to the end of the season and he hit the winning three and you can see him, you know, super excited with Westbrook kind of looking disappointed walking off the court in the background and they just captured a lot of cool moments like that, you know. So for me hoops has always been just a cool lower end set you could call it but great photography and that's what's always attracted me to it. So not could call it Ryan. It is a lower end set. Right. And part of like yeah fanatics is I think they're charging like 400 bucks a hop box. Like it should be even. I think Panini, you know, from most of their time we had it at, I mean 250 is stupid for hoops but I can't imagine they ever, if they ever got that high, I'd be surprised. Like it is. It's a lower end set. You get a lot of cards, it's fun and it's collectible for someone that wants to like have some memories of their team or fill a binder. So just I wanted to hit on a few comments in the chat and I, I don't have access to highlight them Ryan, so if you want to throw any up, feel free to. But Sean brought up the hoops magic cell rookie team. If I had to pick a top five cards that I thought the young me was going to retire on in the top five would easily be the Jason kidding Magic solid rookie team. I had the foil version guys. The foil version that got like a, a 2 or 3x in the Beckett magazine that was like I, I traded like who knows what I traded for today. I'm sure it's in my house somewhere. And then Sean also brings up that definitely a highlight that I didn't hit on when just sort of giving a general overview of the panini era of hoops because they, they crushed it with some of their inserts. Right. And, and part of the transition into the tops world, I mean yeah, the tops world that people are hoping for is something similar to the road to the Finals. Right. So those road to the Finals cards are highlights from playoff runs for teams that did or didn't make it to the play to the finals. But they become sequentially harder to pull as the player go deeper in the playoffs. And then they've had cards that have highlighted playoff wins. They have Finals MVP specific cards. The Jalen Brown out of 99 Finals MVP card goes for insane money, as does. It's like a. The road to the finals, like the actual final championship. I think those are all out of 99 for the Celtics. Those go for silly money too. So people love them. Courtside, lights, camera, action. There were some, like, fun, different Panini inserts that looked great, had good. You know, if they did have parallels, they were pretty limited. So good calling you, Sean of highlighting some of those. Those inserts for sure. Depp says he felt like Kyle should have jumped on this episode. I agree he probably would have schooled us all, but I feel like we're recovering it pretty well. You know, I. I don't know if you guys had any thoughts before we move into, like, current hoops. Yeah. And one thing I'll just say in advance before we kind of go into it. And Tim, I'll bring up your page on Instagram because I think you got some good examples. Thank you. I sent all my stuff to Joey. I was hoping you can bring it up. Yeah, we'll definitely do that. I will say we'll go ahead and. And get it going here, but I do appreciate the photography. Seems to me to be a bit better than some of the more recent stuff, like even Flagship or Chrome or stuff like that. So we'll go ahead and pull up your page here if you want to highlight any of them and kind of talk about them. But, you know, just looking at this one here, your concept card, it looks nice. It's got an action shot. He's dunking like. It's sorely missed in a lot of sets. And I don't know, you want to talk a little bit about that stuff, so I guess we'll start. These are the base and we mentioned it in the last couple shows, but there's kind of a gloss to them. It looks like they're all shiny, so to speak, or foils, which I think is nice for, you know, the base card in a set. I think that's a little bit of a treat that you didn't expect. But, you know, there certainly is in this set and in Panini and previous tops, that's, you know, some duplicated photos and, you know, no one wants that. And we see that and it's lazy. You know, I want everything to be always brand new photos for sure. But at the same time, I think that the cards that aren't duplicated, you know, I think a lot of the photos are really nice. Like Ryan said, the dunking photos are great. Why don't you go to the Quickly there? Like a photo like this of Quickly, I just think it just shows a lot of emotion. You know, it's a different kind of, you know, stance that he has. And you can see the smile on his face. Cards like that or the Rui Hachimura right below it I think are just really fun. You don't really see zoomed in shots like that. Zoomed in action shots. There's a Rui right, but two below it to left. There you go, the left. Nope, I'm doing a bad job. Rui Hachimura, he's next to the left of the Derozan. Got it. Got it. There we go. Yeah. So, like, I'm liking these. These shots where you see a lot of emotion in their face. You know, I just think that a lot of the ones that haven't been repeated are. They look really nice. And, you know, if there's some that, you know, I've seen in other sets before, you know, I'm just gonna ignore it and be like, all right, not gonna get that. And then just find others like this Rui that I thought were really cool looking. And this is the. I think it's the Pixel Burst. There was some confusion initially after the release what was Light Burst and what was Pixel Burst. And people on ebay were kind of naming them the same thing. But I'm pretty sure that this is Pixel Burst and it's kind of like their pulsar, I suppose. And I think it has a cool like, you know, lights, camera, action kind of feel to it. I've always liked the Pulsar in the past, so I do, I do like these Pixel Bursts. They're not numbered, but I do think they're a very affordable grab for anyone looking for some, you know, some nice photos. I think I'm going to lean getting Pixel Burst for pretty much all of my base cards in hoops going forward a lot that I posted this week, I just. I got one blaster and so I've been posting a couple of those. But I think Pixel Burst is the. Is the way to go for a nice affordable get. But if you want to cut out of there before you do that. Do you have any atomic Refractors term. Because that to me looks like almost like atomic refractor. Does it move a little bit when you move? Oh, yeah, it does. Oh, you're right. That. That's a. That's a perfect comparison. You're right. It does have an atomic. I haven't seen them in person, but yeah, go ahead. See, I was just gonna say before Tim goes there, he brought up the, like, the confusion, the parallels. And this isn't even to like, crap on tops, which I know do a lot of, but I think there is a lot of confusion because Tim knows Jay for some reason. Jay Crowders and hoops. And I like. I just. I. I don't know what checklist they were using. And he played nine games for the Kings in 2024, made it into their 20, 25, 26 set. But so, like, he shows up on my. I have a J. Crowder search. Obviously a lot of them. Tim. When I see the Crowder pops cards pop up, people are just calling them 25 hoops parallel because they don't know which is which yet. Right. So. And I think that's part of the learning curve. But also pixel burst, light burst. Like, those aren't, I think, intuitive names that people are used to. I wish they had, you know, maybe use some similar parallels to me. What's going on in baseball. Just to clarify for people that do want to go after this stuff, but I also do have a confession to make, because I knew eventually we didn't know when we were going to do the hoops episode. I did buy a hoops card just so I could have something in hand. I wanted to have it in hand. It was a 3.99 free shipping. So it's stuck in the, you know, the. The free envelope, whatever system that ebay has. So when you said that and you showed that card, it's a crowded gray parallel, gold parallel, and it must be a pixel burst. So there must be a gold pixel burst out of 50 that I bought for. For three bucks on eBay. I was hoping to have it in hand just so I could have something to reference when we got to this point, because I know, you know, part of stealing Ryan's thunders. These kind of look a lot better than some of the other top stuff. So I wanted something to reference. But yeah, a lot of confusion over the parallel names and what's what. So I just found that interesting when you brought that up. What do you guys think about the foil for the base? I'm kind of divided on it because hoops to Me always had like a base set and you could kind of put it together for cheap. Now it's all foil. I don't know if that. Is that a good or a bad thing? Like what. How do you feel about it, Tim, since you're actually collecting it? Well, typically, you know, I guess, yeah, the tradition is the base is not foil. But I find a lot of the base that I sift through, I sift through in hoops over the years I just throw out. So, you know, worst case scenario, if a certain card is too expensive for my budget at the moment, you know, I'll get a base that's real cheap, you know, won't necessarily be super rare, but I think I'm more likely to keep one of these base than non hollow base of a check. That's, that's how I see it. But I know it kind of waters down what a foil is, I guess a little bit in this set, you know, making the base of foil. But I, I find I'm keeping them more than, you know, like last year or the year before that. You know, I may just get like the hits in the set and then throw out the rest of the cards. That's, that's kind of how I've seen it. But people are different. Yeah. Depp says he loves. They went foilish this year. It's a crazy one. Says foil bass bricks from tradition. That's maybe my initial thought on it. But I also know that, you know, I'm a cranky old dude as well, so maybe that's, that's a good thing for most people. Gary says it looks good, but it doesn't feel like hoops. It's one of the nicer looking Topps products so far. Yeah, I would agree with that. Yeah. You know, I'm obviously not collecting it, but I can comment on, you know, the photography I think is really nice and the foil, you know, is cool. So it might be, I don't know, think about like a kid collecting it. They're pulling the cards out and they're shiny and everybody likes shiny. That gets them more into product. So that can be a good thing as well. You know, they, they treat them all like they're cool, like refractors or inserts or something like that. So there's, I can see some upsides to that as well. Yeah. And I definitely think that this is the best photography I've seen in this year's top sets, you know, the ones that aren't duplicated. I, I definitely am in love with the photography here. Like the Rudy I had above that VJ is for me. And, you know, if you guys know how I collect, that's a center. A center of the page Rudy for me. I think that's a great shot of him at the free throw line. You don't see many of those zooming in at the free throw line. I feel like they should capitalize on that and do that. More about the brick. The. The shot. Yeah, he's gonna brick it. Yeah. But it's cool, though. I think it's a great shot of him. You know, concentrate. But yeah, gonna miss it. Not. Not as much as Mitchell Robinson's gonna miss these free throws if he attempts to play. But Ryan is a sneaky, spiteful Nuggets fan. Like when the. If that wasn't a Western Conference faux card, he wouldn't have had a statement. But because it was a T. Wll's car, he's like, let me crap on this guy. Oh, guaranteed. Yeah, that's. Yeah, I've seen. I've seen too many of that matchup. A little bit salty about it. Yeah, for sure. I've been around long enough to remember when they used to put, you know, what type of parallel it was on the back of the card. We broke away from that at some point. I don't remember when, but it was so valuable to have that type of stuff printed directly on the card. I wish we could go back to that type of stuff so it would remove any sort of confusion. Yeah, I like that. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. I do remember when Panini went to. That there's a lot of their parallels in like the earlier years, maybe like mid 2000s, you'd have to kind of our 2010s rather. You'd have to almost guess. And then they just started putting what the parallel was. I feel like there's so many now, though, that maybe they just don't even know what they're putting out, regardless of how they're going to label it. I don't know. I like the idea of putting the name on the back, but as you were kind of hinting at there, if you just eliminated half the parallels, there'd be so much less confusion. Like it with the Tim collecting the set, not knowing precisely which ones. I think he said it was light burst versus whatever the other one was. Ebay was very confusing too. When it was first released, everyone was using different names. And you're not like a first day collector. You've been doing this and you're actively looking for the set and you're still not sure. Like that's a problem. You know what I mean? Like, they should. They should make it to where it's not that difficult to figure it out. And they shouldn't have parallels so similar to each other in name and maybe even look. I don't know what they look like. This is the first time I've seen this set, but I am impressed by the photos for sure. Let me say something about this Victor Wembanyama. You know, everyone's in love with Wemby now, but you know, this is one of those duplicated photo cards for sure, you know, but I. The others cards from other sets with this photo are more zoomed in, so I'm gonna ignore those ones. But I think this is a great shot of Wemby and you can. It really shows how tall he is. They got it. They do a good job of really having him fit that frame. So. I really love this one and I had to get it in pixel burst for sure. Yeah, that was a cool shot. What do we got on the game force of game seven? Spurs take it tonight. Yeah. They're up by seven at halftime. Yep. Yeah, I. I would like a game seven because right after this I'm. I'm putting the game on. And it's been an entertaining series. Whether you like spurs, okc, whatever. It's. It's been entertaining. Yeah. OKC at this point, I guess, you know, not maybe not tonight, but probably a little too much, a little too seasoned, a little too many guys on the bench going crazy for the spurs at this point. But it's been fun to watch when we attempt, you know, to go at these guys threat next. Seems like the spurs just got to keep them under 110 points. If the spurs can keep them under 110 points, then they have a pretty good shot at it. They may struggle to do that in OKC next game. I don't know. But I hope they do. I don't, you know. Yeah. Mark says he's watching two basketball games and listening to you guys talk hoops. That's. That's awesome, Mark. Glad to hear it. Tim. Do you have a sense of where the parallels are coming from? I know you don't open a lot of wax, but like, what are the. Like, are there any parallels that might be specific to hobby that might end up being more of the chase cards, even if they're not numbered versus what are the. The high print retail ones or has not enough stuff hit ebay and the YouTube channels yet to get a real sense of that, I, I wouldn't be able to give you a good enough answer. Okay, that's fine. I was just curious just because we're. I'm definitely relying on you to. You've seen more of this stuff just because it's your shopping cart. More than, you know, just me seeing J crowd and stuff pop up. So just out of curiosity. No worries. Yeah. If I, I, I gotta run soon, unfortunately. I gotta go sing Happy Birthday to a dog. So give me, give me two minutes. I want to talk about the inserts, if you don't mind. Yes, please do. Yeah, go for it. So if you want to pull, that's a hardwired. I don't think those are, those are a little too cartoonish for me. I did like it in the VJ though. But if you want to go to the bounce house, we could take a quick look at those. I know I've been talking them up a lot, but I'll just briefly take a look. Maybe the VJ should be a little more down. There we go. Yeah, here's the canuple. So I just think they're great. You know, I joked on the last podcast that they, they remind me of the horror bro Alphabet gummies, you know, that we had growing up. And they just have a very 90s feel to them. It just felt very bold. I like the shine that comes on them. I haven't gotten one yet, but it's. They have the pixel burst for these as well, which is like a very sandy, very grainy looking background. I think Hoops Hobby posted a Halliburton with it today or yesterday. Those ones look super. Those ones look great. But even the regular ones like they see there with Canopol, I think they just look phenomenal. And to me, they're my favorite design subset of the year so far. I'm just. When I saw them, I fell in love right away, and I just think they're fantastic and a fun chase. The question, though, Tim, is, is you. Are you going to actually order one of the bounce houses from your searches to set up in your backyard? It's. It's enticing. It's enticing. Yeah, you kind of just. Without having a kid, you kind of just forget jumping castles exist. But then I was reminded when this came out, for sure, if I followed those, I'd probably be buying one of those for my kids. For sure. I want the IG short of Tim bouncing in a bounce house with a binder full of bounce house cards. There you go. That would be cool if I find one. There's a block party in September, I think, on my block. There we go. I'll. I'll get in on that. You said you had another example of this. Oh, yeah. Here you go. Here's the vj. There's the vg. Yeah, I think the vj, it's not quite red, white, and blue, but I think the VJ to me has the greatest shot of the set. I wanted that one first. And then the colors, I feel like somewhat kind of reflect his. His jersey. So I thought this to me, was the one I had to get right away. And so really happy about this one so far. Maybe arguably my favorite card of the year so far. We'll see. But I don't have a lot of the other inserts on me. I had sent Joey photos, but there's a couple others that I really like. I don't know if you guys have seen them. Unfortunately, we don't have photos now, but block by block, it's a rookie set. I think those look really nice. It's kind of like a brick by brick kind of thing. And I thought those look gorgeous. They have like a blue bricks in the background and stuff like that. Those are really nice hypnotized, which is we've had for a couple years. Those ones look really, really sharp as well. So I think there's a couple of subsets to work with in Hoops, you know, if you're not into the base, which I happen to love as well in this set. I just think there's a lot to work with, probably more than any other set. And while I loved Cosmic, you guys know that I think Hoops at this point is. Has. Has surpassed them this year for me, and I'm really enjoying them. Right on, man. Yeah, that's a great take. All right, guys. Unfortunately I got a split, but I'll check out the rest when it's uploaded. Buddy. Happy birthday to the pup. I will see you soon. All right. All right. Anything else you guys want to look at on Tim's page or any good? Sean in the chat says Tim had a bounce. That's good. Probably should have asked this when he was still in here. Do we have any idea if those are, like, rare at all or is that like a few of those per, like, blaster box kind of thing? I'm just curious. The base, I don't believe are very rare, but there's a lot. I believe they have parallels of them. Yeah. But, you know, I do agree with them. It does look pretty 90s. It also reminds me of those. I don't know, was it tops pristine or something? Or they had that kind of weird lettering, you know what I mean? Kind of in the background with a weird design. And then also if I can find them, again, not a refractor or anything by that means, but you guys know what I mean. Talking about like the O2, OH3 pristine. Yeah. Or maybe it was 03.04. It had like a big P in the background, I think.04.05. It also had like a. Like a mirror like glossy image on the back where it was just like a silhouette of the player. Yep. Yeah, that's what I was thinking about. Yeah. So 04 or five. Yep. So I, I just, I have to bring up a little bit of the negative though. And. And so we just showed that the picture of the balance house, which in isolation I do like. I can see why it's appealing. But we started. And this is not to like if Tim was still here. Tim, I'm not talking behind your back. It's just like to counter some of the points. So I pulled up the block by block inserts and unfortunately I don't have a picture. But Tim, the first card we showed to Tim, he said, oh yeah, that's a. That's an insert I really like. It looks a little two hundred and nineties. Then we bring up the block house, which has bubble letters in the background. A very cartoonish look to the background. The block by blocks have a bubble text to it that says block by block with a very cartoonish almost like a. Like a 1990s rap like cartoon, what have you. Some. Who. One of the 90s rappers had like a cartoon. Right. Yeah, so. Right. So what's so different from the bounce house to that? We have bubble letters in the background, a cartoonish background and a picture of the player. Right. So there's a lot of repetition here. They're not really changing the text. They've given us the same. Different concept but same style of creating a background. I know some of the hits on Topsnatics has been the reusing of all the photos. And here we have in just hoops alone, sort of recycled concepts for inserts. So even if they are cool and like Adam brought up, are any of these actually rare? Like what. When. What's the cream that's going to rise to the top with all this stuff? Because I bet if you put all those in a pile, they're going to look very, very similar. It's just which one has rings versus which ones has bricks in the Background. So I think there's a little too much uniformity across some of these hoops products. Well, Steve, you know my cranky take on being AI generated. Right. So I feel like a lot of the inserts and what we've seen in the topsonatic stuff has just been, hey, let me throw this in AI and ask, can you make something that looks like it came from the 90s but not a direct ripoff? I think that's a lot of what we're getting. So unfortunately, you're going to get redundancy like that if that's how you're designing it, which I'm just speculating here. But it seems like a lot of these inserts are just like a throw at the wall type approach. Where they're going and getting AI to come up with the concept, maybe even build off the card. I don't really know. But it's. I don't know. It doesn't seem as unique as something as, like back in the day where the block party insert, someone brought it up in the chat. I can't remember. Yeah, that's a great kind of comparison because, you know, somebody spent some time design that and now this is just looking back at that time period, most likely, you know, at least in my opinion, and going, let's create something that kind of looks like that and we'll throw it against the wall and we'll create two or three of them and maybe someone will like them, you know. Yeah, that's my salty take for the night. And it's when Tim was talking about the block by block I before, as you know, he was. I was muted and I was going to go look it up. And he said, oh, it's a rookie insert set. And to me, I was thinking similar was a krazy said, just a little bit of what? So what, we're dribbling basketballs block by block to get to the like, the hardcore. Like, what are we doing versus Imagine if they had a picture of Wemby in a home jersey and away jersey blocking two separate shots and they called it block by block, right? Like there's a little bit of work and a little bit of thinking, like, who are the popular players? What are people looking? But you say the word block in an NBA hoops set and people are going to think a defensive specialist, right? Not somebody dribbling a basketball block by block. And that's kind of what I feel like is it was more intentional. So here's an example. Here was this Oliver Miller. But anyway, I don't know how this came up. I just tried to grab it real quick. But he looks so slim that he doesn't look slim, but for Oliver Miller, he looks very slim there. He's, he's actually blocking somebody. So I feel like a lot of the newer ones, right? A lot of these newer inset insert designs, they don't really match the theme. They've got the design, but the actual thing that they're portraying is, I mean, it's just a guy dribbling. He's not blocking anything. So, you know, it's, it's. That's even further my point of like, just believe that they're AI generated because it has the feel and kind of the nostalgia hit for you going back in time and remembering. Oh, I remember the block something in the 90s and I used to collect and that was cool. And. But it definitely, I mean, what does that have to do with a block AI all the time? What it looks like is AI hallucinated and it's like, oh, you want blocks? Let me put blocks in the background and I'll put the word blocks in there. Is that what you want? And they're like, there you go. I didn't even, I didn't even see that at first. Yeah, could totally be that. So I don't know. You know, it's, it's, it's interesting because like you said, Steve, what's the cream that rises the crop? It's kind of hard to tell now because I was in one of our group chats and another salty take of mine was commenting on the AI and how basically it looks like Panini Chronicles where it's just a bunch of these releases that they had over the years that they're not doing anymore and they just stuck it all in one product. A lot of the inserts to me feel like that where it's just disjointed and it just doesn't make much sense. You know, in Chronicles you knew what you're getting. But a lot of these sets, it just doesn't seem to have a solid, like focus for what they're going after. But again, that's, that's my, my salty take. I don't know if any of you guys agree. We obviously haven't seen everything, or at least I haven't. I've only seen the hoops cards that have been shown here tonight from the new set. But it's interesting to see, at least in my opinion, few different options and I think by far the best looking ones are just the base cards. Not the laser whatever thing or these or the bounce house, but just the standard base cards look so much better. I think it's kind of weird to see a set where the. The best design or the best options, the most basic version. So, I mean, that's kind of a cool factor, I guess, that you're going to get a lot of those compared to everything else. But also, as we've been saying, just kind of a lazy kind of option to, to not go kind of a little bit deeper in on the inserts and make them actually sought after. That's a block party right there from 95 hoops as you listen on. On the audio. Yeah, that's. That's a block. Good point, Adam. Yeah, I agree. I, I think you're right. I, I think the base overall probably look the best. I mean, you know, and, and the cool part, and we. We brought this up before, so the kind of keep it a little bit more positive is that somebody can find something like 10 found the bounce houses and he really likes them and he's going after him. Cool. You know, maybe there's going to be some inserts that people are drawn to and so that can be a positive if you're collecting it. And the good news is PSA won't accept cards right now because they're like 85 million cards behind. So people can't go and just grade all Tim's bounce houses on them and then try and charge them 100 bucks. So maybe people like that are filling binder pages honestly will be able to get this stuff and get on ebay and, and enjoy it and weed out what they don't like. So. Yeah. All right, I have. So second half just started. Should we. Should we call it and I'll go enjoy second half of game six. Sounds good. Yeah, good to. I think we went through what we needed to one shout out to anybody listening is, you know, schedules are going to be a little tight with all of us that are on this feed on a regular basis. So definitely encourage people to reach out if you have topics. But more. More importantly, if you definitely want to join us, you know, I know other Ryan can tell you that we are not intimidating at all. And even though his significant other thinks he's making a fool of himself by just putting himself on here, sometimes too much. We definitely appreciate everybody joining us and, and so we're going to have some. Some lower attendances over the next few weeks. So please consider joining us and we appreciate everybody's engagement. Hey, Steve had one more thing we got to cover and it's the decade Hoops Hoopa plus. So Green Stiller from Instagram, Brian is his name. He reached out to me and mentioned that that was some of his favorites. So we can wrap it up after that. But yeah, the decade, what was it at 99, 2000. And so you had the base and then suits holding the Hoopla plus, which is kind of a shiny foil card version of it. Foil card, yeah. So appreciate that bringing you out and I didn't want to forget you. So appreciate that, Steve. All right, I think we're good. So if that's it, everybody go enjoy game six. I'll agree. I'm, I think I'm rooting for the Thunder in this, in this series, but I'd like to see a game seven. So let's see what happens tonight. And I appreciate everyone joining us. Be well. Enjoy your week, everyone.