Card Identification Forum

When I go to Hardaway's page and use the filters there are 42 cards from the Optic set that show up. So not sure what you are missing?

ok, so my neighbor gave me his card collection, so how do i tell the difference between all these different parallels, like: Red, Red Wave, Red Prizm, Red Refractor, Red Ice... oh my gosh Panini are crazy!

Wellllllll, that's a completely different thing. Yeah, it takes an expert to decipher what Panini throws out there. Some are easy when there is a SN attached, otherwise it's like throwing spaghetti against the wall.

ok, so which card does he have?? my neighbor just gave me all his cards , so i am sorting them & trying to list them on here. How do we tell the difference between all these different parallels, when there are 42 different ones for 1 card!

Not a Panini expert, nor a fan really. best I can say is that each of the parallels has scans up for the most part. While Hardaway specific scans may not be here, other players have one up so you can compare from there. All the while you can curse Panini out for being difficult.

My sister gave up helping me. She said I'm on my own... I'm trading all these sports cards for Garbage Pail Kids cards or will sell them for a fair price ...ok, 1 question: Can i just add the name of a set that i have to my collection, without having to choose Add All Cards To Your Collection, or manually adding cards?

(oh, that's a Holo, by the way ...would be nice if we answered you!)

Welcome to the card collecting world in the 21st century. Since 1992, card companies began producing parallels to their base set. In the early years, there was usually only one parallel most often a gold parallel. Then came Refractors to the Chrome sets which, more often than not, you could not easily tell the difference, so much so that the companies started to add "Refractor" on the back (around 1996 or 1997). Collectors got into trying to complete a parallel set so much (and yes, in 1993 and 1994 you could complete the parallel set if you wanted to) that the companies realized the potential revenue to be gained with these parallels. And so it began, the flood of parallels and inserts and parallels to the inserts. If you look at Inserts and Related Sets for a set from 1992 and then for one from 2020, you will see the difference in length of the lists. And good luck on completing any parallel set in these later years! Panini are not the only ones; Topps are just as bad.

The biggest mistake the companies made (other than ruining the hobby for many collectors) was that many of the parallels have no distinguishing feature to identify them as the parallel. Yes, some are SN so that helps; some have a letter identifier as part of the card #; but many have nothing to differentiate them from one to the other, other than a wee bit of difference in how the light shines on them. Even experienced collectors get frustrated with trying to sort the parallels.

So if you think you ae having problems with identifying your cards having not encountered these parallels before, you aren't alone. And till they are identified accurately, they can't be listed because what would we call them?

pure insanity 

they can at least print the info on the back of the cards 

Never... would make it too easy for us collectors.