My Chris Webber Player Collection

I grew up in Sacramento and while I was in middle school the Kansas City Kings relocated to Sacramento and we got our first professional major league franchise.  It was pretty exciting times and I was lucky enough to have a dad who decided to buy season tickets.  Our tickets were in the front row of the second deck kind of in the corner and they were great seats.  I believe they were $12 or $16 per seat that first year. Arco Arena was constructed and the first iteration seated 10,333 fans.  It was wild and crazy from the start and I loved going to games, even when the team wasn't strong.

The first year they made the playoffs as a #7 or #8 seed despite having a record below 0.500 and were led by Reggie Theus, Mike Woodson and Otis Thorpe.  After that first year they went on a decade long playoff drought but we still loved our Kings.  Times started changing with a trade of Billy Owens for recent Hall of Fame inductee Mitch Richmond.  We had a legitimate star and a team that played fairly well.  However there was never a real challenge for a championship until the guy that gave us some credibility was traded for Chris Webber.

Webber and some other key additions brought a championship caliber team to the Capitol City and the team was called the Greatest Show on Court.  They were so fun to watch with either Jason Williams or Mike Bibby at point, Doug Christie and his lock down defense that the 2 guard, Peja Stojakovic and his sweet jumper raining down 3s from the small forward spot and Vlade Divac and his amazing passing skills jumping center.  The star of the show was Chris Webber.  He could do it all, shoot the ball, thunder dunks, swat away shots, handle the ball and was a great passer.

Although the Kings never capitalized on a championship (and yet I am a firm believe that the game and series against the Lakers in 2002 was fixed but I want to keep this post positive), they hold a dear place in my heart and a few years back I decided to collect Chris Webber cards to keep the memory fresh.

The Bazooka Relic card at the top was a recent pick up at the LCS bid board.  I was so excited to find the card, it was one that wasn't in my collection and one I hadn't seen before.  Shortly after I decided to make 2015 the year of the base card, I found a seller that had quite a few cards at very reasonable prices that fit my base card needs and I ended up picking up 159 different cards, all but just a couple were base, and 64 of them were of my favorite King, Chris Webber.

I decided not to share all 64 but show the 18 from him time with the Kings.  If you aren't familiar with his career, Webber also played on the Warriors, Bullets/Wizards, 76ers and Pistons.  I also have quite a few cards featuring Webber in his University of Michigan uniform.

 One of the reasons I like collecting players other than baseball players is the chance to see other card designs.  Also the action in basketball seems so easy to catch in photos and translates well to cards.  There is a good variety of Webber's skills being demonstrated in this group, his dunking, jump shooting, ball handling, post work and a couple where it looks like he is about to pass.  A great collection of nice looking cards.

A little less action in this batch but still some nice looking cards.  The Pro Sigs card on the middle right shows him doing perhaps his greatest weakness in free throw shooting.  Something exciting to me is the appearance of new Webber cards in recent releases.  Good to see him remembered as the great I recall dominating games in Sacramento.

I am still working on my Webber base card want list.  I do know that with this purchase I now have 628 different cards in my Chris Webber collection.  According to Beckett his has 2812 cards so it looks like I have about 22% of his cards.  I know I have tons of his base cards so I am interested to see how lengthy the base card want list is.

Eventually I will crack out some of my nicer cards and some without the Kings focus to share.