The cards I forgot I ever owned -

So, it turns out that my box of cards that came back to me this week had more than I thought it did.

There was stuff from every era in sports cards - at least the eras I've been alive for.  There were a couple of these USA Basketball cards from '96 that I haven't seen since...well, '96.

And these brought back a lot of memories.  I remember that a lot of people really started to focus on collecting basketball when the first Dream Team stormed the scene in 1992.  It was, after all, the greatest team ever assembled in any sport.  Ever. 

Even though these are from '96, it made me think about the triggers that get set into place that make some people life-long collectors.  That '92 team was it for me.  And it took a couple of these cards from '96 to show me that.

When I first opened the box and saw these couple of cards, I thought I was finding some lost Dream Team stuff.  And even though the dissapointment came and went quickly, it made me think about the cards that I collected as a kid.

I can still recall the exact look of the '92 cards I collected.  It was a huge deal.  I remember collecting the entire set of the Dream Team stuff from Skybox.  Anybody else remember the three cards that fit together to give the panoramic shot of the team together?  Awesome stuff.

And it makes me realize that if I had been 16 or 17 back in 1992 - I would've probably watched the games, but I wouldn't have made cards my top priority.  17 year olds have very different priorities, you know.  But in 1992 I was 11 years old.  And collecting the Dream Team was the most important thing in the world.  And there's the seed that makes a person become a collector - and in my case, a basketball card collector.

In any event, these cards are still cool to me.  Even though the second Dream Team wasn't nearly as big as the first, it was still our team.  But they weren't a big enough deal to collect more than two of their cards, evidently.