A Four-Sport Blowout

I'm not worthy! 

One of the unfortunate things for me about the global health crisis we're still living through is that I've received a few extremely generous packages from regular trading partners that I just haven't been able to fully reciprocate just yet. I am still waiting until it's safe to go to the card shows. Of course, in the grand scheme of things, this pales in comparison to almost literally anything everyone has suffered through, but it still bugs me. This latest example of generosity is one I've been sitting on for quite awhile: a big envelope stuffed full of eye-popping cards from buckstorecards. As usual, there was a generous share of stuff from all of the major sports.

Vladimir Tarasenko has had difficulty staying on the ice since his Blues won their championship. He returned to action for his first game of the season (and only fifth since 2019.) Apparently he has some serious shoulder issues that are threatening his career. This card is actually sort of a half-acetate look to it.

Next up is baseball and an Ozzie Smith card from the always classy Triple Threads - 2020 Edition. I should probably make more of a point of finding some of the singles from these sets of the players I collect.

Here's a strange case of a player who never appeared in a game with the Blazers (or any NBA team for that matter), and was undrafted, yet spent enough time on the roster to get his own card. Morgunov had a lengthy pro career, playing for more than two decades in Russian leagues and others.

Nassir Little is starting to look like the next young Blazers player to start to make some gains on the court in his second year, a la Gary Trent in the latter portion of last season. It's really cool to this jersey swatch from last year's Court Kings set.

No one else sends me CFL cards besides buckstorecards. You can't really find CFL cards in the US, of course. I wouldn't have even known that Josh Huff was still playing football if it wasn't for this card. It's really cool.

Another Duck appears! Actually, it's no mere Duck, it's the NFL's offensive rookie of year, Justin Herbert... on a green parallel, no less. Herbert's cards are often expensive now, so I don't expect I'm always going to be successful in prying them away from other people.

It's back to baseball. This David Freese card from the very first Prizm set doesn't seem to be listed in TCDB. Is it "cracked ice" or something? I'll have to do some more research. (edit: It looks like it might be a National Convention exclusive with a 25 card print run? Wow!)

It's tough to tell the difference between Triple Threads and Museum Collection at times, although I feel like Museum Collection's design varies wildly from year to year (at least in baseball.)

Now that Jalen Hurts is apparently the Eagles #1 quarterback (until the draft, I guess?), it'll be interesting to see what happens. If he had a good group of veterans around him, I'd certainly think he has the talent to succeed, but it looks like the team is pretty much in full rebuild which doesn't bode well for a young, smaller QB.

The last one was too big to contain. I could have scanned this, but its hugeness wouldn't have translated. That fancy new card stand can barely hold it, even. It's basically an 8x10 signed photo with official Panini branding and all that.

Throughout the past year, I've tried to pay it forward as much as I can with some giveaways and PWEs. Hopefully we'll get back to a place where I can send out larger packages with better content on a regular basis soon.