Junk Wax Gem -- 1995-96 Hoops Grant Hill

As a collector of NBA cards as a kid, I have a handful of cards I pulled from packs that I've always enjoyed.   This is one of them.  It is a 1995-96 Hoops Grant Hill NBA Co-Rookie of the Year card.

(Please ignore the name on the case.  Obviously this case was intended to house a Shaq card, but I had no other way to protect the card at the time and I've never had the energy to pull it out of it's mislabeled tomb.)

What the scan doesn't show is that the sky behind Mr. Hill is actually translucent.  Also, the card is one of those "no number" cards, which is very impressive to a pre-teen collector.  And the fact that the back of the card is a mirror image to the front was also quite awe-inspiring to my young, impressionable mind.  Cards like this one were the reason I kept (and keep) shoveling my hard earned money into the proverbial money pit of card collecting.

I have no memory of the moment that I pulled the card, but I do remember the joy I had when I flipped through my basketball Beckett and discovered it's (at the time) great worth.  I'm sure that it was a $25 card at the time.  If I would have known then that, much like it's peers, it would never appreciate in value (there are currently five of these cards listed on COMC, ranging in price from $8-18), I would have attempted to trade or sell it to fund the purchase of more packs of cards.

But, all these years later, I'm very happy that I've lugged it around and can now proudly display it in all its Junk Wax glory.