Hedo Turkoglu Swatch Card

Hedo Turkoglu played in the NBA for 15 years, 8 of them with the Orlando Magic, so it's fitting that when I opened a multi-sport repack box with "guaranteed hits", that would be the team I would pull a card of his with:

That's card #72 from Panini's 2011-12 Past & Present set and Gamers sub-set, featuring a two-colour swatch. I find it ironic that basketball jerseys are small and sleeveless while hockey jerseys are big enough to conceal equipment and keep warm, yet basketball jersey swatches sometimes take nearly the entire card and hockey jerseys are a square inch in size.

Turkoglu was born in Istanbul in 1979 and retired from basketball in 2015, earning the NBA's Most Improved Player title in 2007-08 and helping the Magic reach the Finals in 2009 along the way.

He also played for the Sacramento Kings, San Antonio Spurs, Toronto Raptors, Phoenix Suns and Los Angeles Clippers. Apparently, his time in Toronto was pretty hectic. Heh.

Bob Elliott Autograph Card

Bob Elliott was the first college basketball player to amass 2000 points and 1000 rebounds at the University of Arizona. When it came time to play pro, however, he only got to play three seasons in the NBA, for the now-defunct New Jersey Nets (now playing out of Brooklyn).

He does serve as the NBA Players Association president, plays with the Retired Players Association Band, plays a huge role in the NBA Cares program and was the colour commentator for the NBA Live game for years.

I got this card of his via trade (it was an add-on, not what I was after) about a year ago:

It's from Panini's 2011-12 Past & Present set (card #BE, the Elusive Ink insert sub-set), and is signed in blue sharpie on a sticker. I've seen some cards from this sub-set feature a colour picture; I'm not familiar enough with basketball to know if it's because those are current players or not (I don't know who B.J. Armstrong is), but I kind of wish this one was in colour, so I could know what that uniform really looked like.