Finally ... a four-year NBA veteran gets a Rookie Card

It's not a card that will make you rich, it's not one that will change your life -- but it's one that is a bit of a finale while also being a first.

It's a Rookie Card -- and it finishes up a tale that started, for me, months ago when I documented the cardboard enigma that is Chris Boucher, a center for the Toronto Raptors who has had quite a journey to an everyday spot in the league and and an odd one when it comes to cardboard.

His first season? Not one card -- but that made sense as he played just one minute in one game, though there are players who have done less and had more cardboard. His second season? Nope, not at least until the season was over.

Keep reading for the details of this oddity.

Card No. 172 in the newly released 2020-21 Panini Obsidian NBA set is the first one -- the first base card in a standard pack -- to feature Boucher who has a pair of NBA championship rings with the Warriors and Raptors as he was deep, deep on their rosters and then emerged as a regular beginning in the 2019-20 season and then moreso last year where he jumped to 13.6 points per game. That's what finally perhaps got him on a standard checklist -- that and he's a Canadian on Canada's team.

Before that time? Well, his only pseudo card appearances that might have been pondered as Rookie Card candidates (but are not) would have been in the Raptors' NBA Champions Panini Instant set or on a Panini sticker last year. (Sorry, guys, stickers are not Rookie Cards ... they're stickers.)

The weird part? Boucher actually appeared in countless releases since then -- but solely on certified autograph cards -- with around 50 different signed cards ... but none of them meeting the Rookie Card definition as they were inserts and not part of the main set. Hoops Premium Stock, Immaculate Collection, Chronicles and Opulence were among the homes for his cards ... but nothing was a Rookie Card until now ... more than 150 games into his NBA career.

And the irony of it all? It's not even noted as a Rookie Card. (Yet it is.) Obsidian is the home of a basic card with 14 parallels -- and 10 of those are serial-numbered to 99 copies or less and five of those are eight copies or less. There's realistically no way I can complete that rainbow just like his ink rainbows but I made sure I had his basic card in hand immediately when I found out that it existed.

A player having nearly 50 different NBA certified autograph cards before a Rookie Card is one that's got to be unusual and it might even be a record -- he never even had a single draft picks card of any kind -- and that, this oddity, is a big reason you're reading this here.

Why? Well, for me, it was worth the wait.

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