My Favorite 150 Items in My Collection-#136 Anfernee Hardaway 1996 Upper Deck Metal Collector Set

Why I like It: 1996 was right in the middle of the peak of Penny's career. He was my favorite player and as a kid I wanted every collectible I could get my hands on. I remember seeing this at K-Mart and I wanted it badly. That Christmas, this was one of my gifts. A unique different kind of trading card featuring my favorite player of all time.

My Favorite 150 Items in My Collection-#137 Anfernee Hardaway 1996 SPX

When I heard about 1996 SPX Basketball I was super excited. I always loved Upper Deck's hologram inserts, and now a whole base set dedicated to that was my kinda set. I then heard the absurd details (at the time, lol) 1 CARD PER PACK...what?!?!!? ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! The price of the pack at my local shop...6 BUCKS. FOR ONE CARD! But to me..it was well worth it for the quality of the card. When it finally debuted I bit the bullet bought a pack and pulled a Hakeem Olajuwon. Eh..not terrible..it's not MJ or Penny, but to me it was well worth it. I wanted the Penny soooooo bad. To this day, it's my favorite of the 3 hologram based SPX sets (for the 98-99 SPX turned to SPX Finite and basically moved away from the hologram technology in their base sets and became a serial numbered tiered product). Later on that year, I spotted this card at a card show and if I recall paid $6 bucks or basically the cost of another pack. I was stoked to own this card. So beautiful. Today, the card's not worth much, but it symbolized what was starting to happen around this time..the concept of the "high end brand". I view it as a pioneer to what was see in today's higher end products.