Sorry to bump another thread from a long time ago, but I find these stories fun and thought I'd share my own:
Adrian Dantley was my idol growing up. I started watching basketball in 1986 as a 6-year-old, and I was quickly mesmerised by his dazzling array of moves. I would practice them for hours on end on our hoop, even going so far as to imitate his famous free throw routine: dribble, dribble, wipe my brow, dribble, flip the ball and catch, shoot. I would not shut up about him to anyone who listened, and even dressed up as him one year for Halloween. As a new sports fan, those late 80s Pistons were a great introduction to the intensity of NBA basketball, particularly in the playoffs. I still remember how close Detroit came to toppling the mighty Celtics in 1987, and had Dantley not been knocked out with a concussion at the end of the third quarter in Game 7, Detroit may have prevailed. Then the following year, they finally did beat the mighty Celtics, only to lose excruciatingly to the Lakers in one of the closest series of all time. The following year, the Pistons traded Dantley to my dismay: I didn't believe the news at first when I heard at school and feel into a sobbing mess in my mother's arms when she confirmed it was true later that day. I swore off my Piston fandom at that point.
The following summer (1989), I was at a local sports shop called Nabozny's and saw that they were selling basketball cards, which I had never heard of before, having only ever known about cards for baseball, a sport I didn't care for. My parents bought me 3 packs of 15, and obviously I was desperately hoping Dantley would be in there.
First pack?
Nope.
Second pack?
Nope.
Third pack?
Gold!
I was so happy, and I then learned about his insane statistics, as back then, that was the only way I could get access to season stats. The picture on the back even had Dantley still clearly in a Pistons jersey judging by the colors. Over the following months, I got more and more cards with allowance money and spent countless hours sorting them and filling pages upon pages of notebooks with lists based on the information on the cards - it was a great way to learn about players before the internet. For my birthday one year, my brother illustratred the Dantley card onto my birthday poster.
Of all of my basketball cards, that first Dantley card I got is far from the most expensive - it is worth a whopping 10 cents according to this site. Nonetheless, it's easily my most prized card, and arguably one of my most prized possessions. I carried the original card in my wallet for over 10 years until it disintegrated (and I wondered why I struggled to find a girlfriend), and have a few copies of it in good condition.