Saturday, March 16, 2024

Contest Time! March Radness XV


The annual March Radness contest is back for the 15th (!) time. Fill out a bracket and maybe win a prize? 

We back. Pick the best NCAA bracket and you can win a prize. There are also runner-up prizes. I will also create a bonus contest at some point, selecting a game for anyone, including those who don't want to fill out a bracket, to predict the final score of (game TBD.)

2024 rules:
  • Selection Sunday is March 17th (tomorrow!), which means that is the earliest the brackets can be filled out. The games that actually count for the contest will start on March 21st.
  • Default ESPN scoring rules apply. You must fill out the entire bracket, including the tie-breaking final score of the final game.
  • First place wins a 2024 Topps Heritage Value Box (blaster) or suitable equivalent (subject to availability! up to $24.99 in value!) I will email the winner shortly after the final game to make the prize selection among the available products at the time.
  • Second and third place prizes will consist of some team bags of cards from your favorite MLB and/or basketball teams.
  • As always, the worst (honest) bracket will get something, too.
  • Click here now to join, and follow the "Create a Bracket Now" link. Make sure to fill out your entire bracket prior to March 21st!

Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Seasons Greetings from Oren


A timely big bundle of cards that is finally revealed a few months later. 
 
'Tis the season (*checks calendar*)... oops, it's March! Well, as the sun breaks are starting to increase and daylight savings is in full effect, let's check out a fantastic batch of stuff from super generous trader Oren.


For one reason or another, Dylan Carlson seems to have settled into a role as fourth outfielder after arriving in the dreaded 2020 season with much hype. Assuming some semblance of health, Gold Glove-winning infielder Tommy Edman is the anointed starting center fielder (?), but I felt like the outfield had the best overall balance with Carlson in center over the last couple of seasons. That's not to knock what Edman has done in the outfield, as I feel like he could probably capably hold down any position on the field. I'd just prefer Carlson in center for now, at least since Harrison Bader was sold off.


I had never seen one of these white bordered 2020 Topps Heritage cards. In fact, I had completely forgotten that they existed. I think my scanner gave the red printing more of a pinkish glow than it really has, but this is still pretty striking.


I'm a sucker for a black bordered refractor. I also really like the rare black bordered flagship cards a lot, especially during the days when they shared a bit of sparkly magic with the much more attainable gold parallels.


Matty Mo is looking pretty formidable on this busy Donruss Leather & Lumber design. I feel like this brand is one that Panini has unleashed rather sparingly since acquiring the DLP portfolio (though how they didn't retain the L part of that conglomerate is a story I've long forgotten about.)


Here's a young, beardless Jason Motte who was still trying to be a catcher, in a weird photo that makes it look like he was trying to look like he wasn't just caught doing something weird in the locker room. Is that even a locker room? What's going on in the background?


It felt like it took Rob Kaminsky forever to make it to the Cardinals major league team since he was drafted in 2013, and it really did. It was only in his second stint with the club in 2020 when they were keeping an active stable of, I don't know, like 45 pitchers because at any given time a third of them were getting sick. This was all in an attempt to salvage what ended up being a 60 game season. Let's just pretend none of this ever happened, at least in baseball.


I wish this was still a time when a Hall of Fame election meant a serious boost to card values, but if you take even a slight glance at any Scott Rolen cards on the market you'll see that is sadly not the case. Of course, that means all the more for me. People would still rather throw money at some young prospects who may or may not pay off big someday. (They won't.)


Next up is a pair of Cards cards from the much delayed 2021 Topps Chrome Platinum... something, something. I kind of nodded off before I could complete my thought here.


These cards look nice, but yet another variation on the first full scale Topps baseball card set was not perhaps the most original thing that they could have thought of. I do prefer these (and their parallels) to the 2022 set, which likewise happened to be released a year late. The 2022 set looks very off, like most of the photos were AI generated or enhanced.


It's not all just Cardinals here, although that would certainly be nice enough. Thanks to Oren, I was fortunate to add another numbered card to one of my very favorite player collections.


CJ Elleby was a solid Pac-12 (RIP) player, but it didn't seem like he was cut out for the NBA. He's still just 23, but it doesn't seem like he's up to much at the moment.


The Blazers have been a sad mess for the past few seasons. Elleby probably won't evoke many feelings of nostalgia for this specific era, unfortunately.


I will get nostalgic about the Jusuf Nurkic days, however. Like many a Blazers center before him, he eventually became a scapegoat for fans' negative feelings about the direction of the whole team, but this is a guy who went out and did his often thankless job night in and night out in an NBA era that isn't really built around big men like him anymore. He's doing fine in Phoenix.


Noah Vonleh was a lottery pick who played for a lot of NBA teams in his near-decade long career. He's with the Shanghai Sharks these days which is basically a meme, even though he's still just 28.


There were even football cards on offer. Today was apparently some sort of NFL free agency day as my phone kept blowing up with Eagles notifications. They were busy! 


This is just a good looking card. It's probably the green. Blount is an Eagle here but a Duck first, so he goes into the Ducks collection.


I wanted to like Nelson Agholor, especially after the Eagles wisely moved him to the slot and started taking advantage of his speed more than his pass catching ability, but... I don't know, never trust a guy from USC, I guess.


Well, we've reached the end of the scans, but there is so much more. What all can you spot in this photo? There is some amazing stuff!

Monday, March 11, 2024

March Radness is Coming (... paging Pete Lugo ...)

 

A contest is brewing. Addresses are needed. 
 
It's officially conference championship week in college basketball, which means that we're gearing up once again for the annual March Radness contest. I am still looking for mailing address confirmation for a couple of folks from the last (football) contest. If you're Pete or Danny, please get back to me as soon as possible via email. Thanks!

Wednesday, March 6, 2024

In the Year 2024


A look at the ubiquitous 2024 Topps set. 
 
This would have been a bit more timely if it was posted closer to the release date of a few weeks ago, but I thought I'd show off/give some thoughts on the latest Topps flagship set.


Chances are, you already have a few of these cards and may have formed some opinions of your own. I do really like the design quite a bit, particularly with the way they used foil in the team names. If Opening Day was still around, I could see a cheaper and therefore uglier version of this without any of the foil printing or stamping. With the foil, however, it pops. Aside from this significant turn in design direction, a lot of what you see is going to be the same. Heavily zoomed/focused photos help you get a little more familiar with your favorite (or least favorite) players, but they tend to wash out the background and remove the "action" part of the game, which is a shame. For this particular rookie pair, I do like the way the player positions are stacked when they fit into multiple categories. I like that they chose this route instead of forcing a single position on someone who does a lot of different things on the field.


The Cardinals only managed to get nine cards into this expanded set of 350 cards. There's enough players to field a complete lineup on the field, but that's it. The two rookies likely won't be much of a factor with the big club this year, and Tyler O'Neill is already gone. There's no sign here of Nolan Gorman or Jordan Walker, two of the Cardinals brightest young stars, nor do we see Gold Glover Tommy Edman. Masyn Winn, who debuted last season, is expected to be the team's starting shortstop this year but his RC is also being held back for some reason.


This is why I will never get involved in the deeply stupid RC or rookie card debate. Masyn Winn already has multiple insert cards in this set, and yet he couldn't get a measly base card.


Back to things I do like. The card backs have gotten a bit of a facelift after looking pretty much the same over the last several years. Full stats are represented once again, and everything just looks a bit cleaner.


Let's look at bit more at some of the parallels and inserts. After the success (?) of 2023 Update's holiday-themed parallels (Halloween, essentially), even more retail exclusive parallels were added to fit with this season. This set's theme is Easter, apparently, although the base "Holiday" parallel foil pattern looks a bit like some crappy wallpaper in an old building. It's also going to get confusing very quickly if they insist on calling these "Holiday" if they also continue making a separate Holiday set at the end of the year. (The holiday parallels, it should point out, were ostensibly to replace the one-per-pack manufactured relic cards that used to be inserted into blasters.) Due to the ever popular "shrinkflation", however, you get fewer cards than you used to in a given blaster, as there are now two fewer cards per blaster pack than 2023 Series 1, and still no relic!


The 1989 inserts are back to mark the 35th Anniversary, which is apparently always Topps' favorite anniversary to celebrate. Who knows why? This set is actually fairly large (100 cards in Series 1) this time around, which would make it quite a challenge to complete the whole set if it continues the same way through Series 2 and Update.


Stars of MLB are kind of plague if you only buy retail products. On average, you get around 10 cards per blaster pack and one of these in every pack. With the base set being 350 cards and the Stars of MLB set being 30 cards, it's almost as easy to pull this Goldschmidt insert as it is his base equivalent.


They've been doing this contest for years now, but I never participate. I'm just not much of a gambler and don't want to deface the cards for no reason.


A retired player like Tony Gwynn who was actually in the 1989 set really shows off the deficiencies of this design, with the left justification of the player name font being the hardest thing to swallow. It also looks odd that this uses traditional Padres colors while Gwynn is wearing the '90s (and beyond) shade of blue that they went for at the time.


I think these All-Topps Team cards were supposed to look classy, but I can't say a single thing nice about it. It's so weird that the coloring choices make Julio look like some weird clown alien here.


I'm not a fan of this one, either. I haven't seen much of Buster Posey in sets since his retirement, so that's probably fun for some Giants fans at least.


Yellow parallels are hanger box exclusives and no longer exclusive to any specific retail store (I'm not sure if there are any store chain exclusives anymore.) The design works better for some teams than others.


Royal blue parallels are here once again. I feel like they've never settled on a consistent shade of blue for these, but I don't think I've sat examples from each year side by side to get a good comparison.


And here is a card full of eggs.

I didn't intend this to be an exhausting review of all things 2024 Topps, so I've left out a few bits and pieces. The Superstar Blueprint cards have caused a bit of a stir but every time I pull one someone snatches it up right away. There are more parallels than what I've shown here, of course, but they're mostly just different colors and shiny accoutrements.

In short, I like this set quite a bit and it's one of the few flagship ones I normally wouldn't mind building, but I'm also trying to steer myself away from doing much more set building as it just takes up a lot of space. I'm always going to have more fun digging through my Cardinals binders than I would have in looking through a complete set. For that reason, I do have quite a few base cards that I don't need. Hit me up on TCDB or elsewhere if you're looking for anything. Thanks!

Monday, February 26, 2024

Baseball is Back!

 

Baseball cards are back as well, and they brought a few other sports with them. 
 
Let's hop in the wayback machine and check out some cards that Sportscards From The Dollar Store sent quite a few months ago -- last year, in fact. Yes, that means that I'm quite a bit behind in the blogging show-and-tell here, but I'm not going to explain myself or make any apologies for it. We're here to look forward, and forward we shall look!


Along with a really nice '78 O-Pee-Chee HOFer came a few Cardinals cards, including another one of those "so weird, it must be Panini!" cards that features a silver ink autograph on a leather swatch. If I'm not mistaken, this might be the one year (2019) that they brought typically high end Leather & Lumber brand to retail, which would also mean it was my first dip into the Panini Points realm.


Like many a pitcher with a rocket arm before him, Trevor Rosenthal seemed to burn hot quickly and then more or less disappear. Since departing St. Louis, where he was a full time closer, Rosenthal has logged big league innings for four other organizations but hasn't made it back to the big leagues since the cursed 2020 "season".


Well, I assume you all know all about Stan the Man's story, so let's just take a beat and enjoy a cool looking card. I'm sure that photo has to be colorized, but I don't care.


Moving on to tackle football, buckstorecards always finds me some really fun Oregon cards. Bonus points should be awarded for catching a Duck in Duck gear.


There's no gear here at all, and this weird Panini Day set seems to have a lot of unaccounted inserts in the TCDB files, which can be a bit frustrating. No, I don't really want to figure out my own checklist for this set. Panini can be a real nightmare when it comes to that stuff.


Haloti Ngata is a very large man, so it must have been difficult to fit him in the frame here,. They almost nailed it, but not quite.


I really like the design of this old Topps Finest Donovan McNabb relic. It has a honeycomb thing going on.


This one isn't bad, either. There's no honeycomb, but there's still a hexagonal jersey swatch.


On the other hand, I feel that this design is unspeakably awful. The glittery background almost reminds me of "snow" on an old TV set. This might have looked better with more of a television theme to it, but what do I know? They don't consult me on these things for some reason.


Here's a Turkey Red design that I don't recognize. Did they ever make tobacco cards that looked like this? (I mean, besides the sticker signature, of course.)


I'll always wonder what Joey Harrington's pro career would have looked like if he had started off with a better franchise that didn't rush him to the field because they didn't really have any other options. He was never a big numbers guy, but he was more of a leadership pro. In the right system, I wonder if he could have thrived.


It's the man of many nicknames, FredEx, The People's Champ, etc. (Most of these he gave to himself.) He only really had that one memorable play, but it was definitely a stunner.


Here's another "bonus points" Ducks card.


Here's the first of a pair of fancy looking Dion Jordan "material" cards. Jordan has a ton of cards, and almost all of them are with him wearing Dolphins gear. He didn't really get a chance to make an impact in the pros until he got to Seattle, though.


How long are these rookie photo shoots for the NFL? There are so, so many different cards out there and so many dorky poses that they have to make.


This counts as a little bit of a patch, doesn't it? I can see a little bit of color there that isn't white.


I wish the careers of De'Anthony Thomas and Patrick Mahomes had overlapped a bit more. I could see DAT getting utilized more as a gadget type player once Mahomes started getting more established.


Our last Duck of a very excellent group of Ducks cards is a "Gold Zone" Score parallel of Penei Sewell, numbered to just 50. You can still find some interesting cards in a lower end product.


There's even a basketball card in the mix. Al-Farouq Aminu was a consistent presence in the peak years of the Blazers "Dame Time" era.


Sports cards with no printed name or photo on the front are a bit weird. I can assure you that this is a Brian Elliott card, a longtime goaltender who was still active in the NHL as recently as last year.


I do love a good team photo, even a hockey one. This is apparently from a 1990-91 Kraft Singles set. I'm not sure if it was a regional thing or a wide release, aside from the copyright info on the back telling us it was a Canadian release of sorts.