Hoopography Top 25 Countdown: #15

I love acetate cards. It's easily my favorite trading card technology even though I've been cheating on it with refractor cards lately. Acetate is basically the name given to cards that are produced by encasing or printing an image on a translucent piece of plastic. The heyday for acetate cards was in the mid 90's. Unfortunately, trading card companies have gotten away from this technology which really is a shame. No doubt, I'd love to see a company come out with some acetate inserts featuring some of the modern day superstars, but I'll continue to also hunt down some of the better acetate cards of the past.

One of my favorite acetate cards also happens to be #15 on my PC Top 25 Countdown. The '98 Metal Universe Titanium Anfernee Hardaway is really a tremendous card. It not only features Anfernee "Penny" Hardaway, but Michael Jordan as well. Actually, many collectors pick this guy up because of MJ's presence. That's made the modestly valued card sell for almost double its $15 book value. It's not uncommon for this card to sell for $20-$25 dollars. That's pretty good during a time in the hobby when most cards fail to even reach their book values on the secondary markets.

For me, the Hardaway (with Jordan) is the gem of the set. I'm a huge Hardaway fan and collector, and consider this Metal Universe Titanium one of his best inserts. As many of you know, I'm a huge 90's insert nut as well. That means I'm currently attempting to put this awesome looking set together along with every other 90's insert set (or at least it seems like that).

I recently doubled my ’98 Metal Universe Titanium collection by adding the Antoine Walker, Juwan Howard (K. Garnett in background) and Kerry Kittles (A. Hardaway in background). I also have the Marcus Camby and Ray "Jesus Shuttlesworth" Allen cards from the set. I really like the J. Howard, but the Hardaway with MJ in the background is still my favorite of the six in my collection.

With six down, I have fourteen more to go. If I really concentrated my time and funds on putting the set together, I could probably put the rest of it together relatively quickly with the exception of the pricey Jordan and Kobe cards. I have too many sets I'm putting together right now though, so this one might take me some time. These Metal Titanium cards are fairly common. They were inserted into packs at a rate of 1:72. That’s really not too bad, and there usually are a few different auctions featuring these cards every week. Unfortunately, A few of the cards can get a little expensive (’98 Pippen Titanium completed eBay auction,’98 Jordan Titanium completed eBay auction, ’98 Rodman Titanium completed auction).

Although it's going to take me a while to put the entire '98 Metal Universe set together, I'm pretty happy to have what I consider the gem of the set in my collection. That's why this "Penny" Hardaway Metal Universe Titanium acetate card is #15 on the Hoopography Top 25 Countdown.