Featuring Daniel Descalso

More sports cards from an old trading pal. 

 

I've been pouring my time into adding wants and don't-needs to TCDB of late, but I still need to find some time to show off some stuff that people have been sending me this year. This latest edition features cards from Sportscards from the Dollar Store. If you're familiar with past packages of his (or have just traded with him yourself), you probably know that this is going to cover all of the sports! It's been awhile since anyone has had a Daniel Descalso card to send me, so that was already a big highlight.

The America's Pastime cards from last year's Panini Chronicles set are absurdly thick. I'm sure there are autographed versions of these, but it still makes me wonder what they were thinking they these rolled (or, I don't know, plopped?) off the press.

Hell yeah! Daniel Descalso and Greg Oden in the same package? Now we're talking! This gold parallel features a nice above-the-basket shot that you pretty much never see in Panini's cards these days. I don't have a lot of nice things to say about Panini right now, but I'll save that for some other time.

Doug also sent some junk wax era Blazers cards. While the Terry Porter card was just a SkyBox base need (yeah, really), you've probably already noticed that the otherwise normal looking 1991-92 Clyde the Glide card has a strange number on it. It's actually a Tony's Pizza insert (food issue alert!) While I ate a ton of Tony's Pizza back in the day (I was a teenager), I didn't discover that they had basketball cards until the following season. Those 1992-93 Fleer cards were unnumbered, but otherwise looked just like the base set. It's possible that the 1991-92 cards never made it out to my neck of the woods, but I have no way of knowing at this point.

Here's a trio of Ducks players on their 2021-22 NBA Hoops cards. I'm glad that Chris Boucher is finally making his way into card sets.

Here's a really nice, very limited signed card from Joseph Young. Young is the son of Michael Young, the star from Phi Slamma Jamma that wasn't Drexler or Olajuwon. He had a couple of big seasons at UO after transferring from his father's alma mater but has mostly played overseas since turning pro. Doug also sent me a couple of really nice Ducks football cards, but I am going to save them for certain Saturdays in the not so distant future.

There was also a healthy stack of St. Louis Blues cards in the package, including a bunch from the most recent O-Pee-Chee set. These photos all suffer from the boring, closely cropped thing that are a fixture on so many modern cards: entirely devoid of action. Still, it's nice to get my hands on some cards of the players I know from the recent teams. I did not watch a ton of hockey this past season for whatever reason, but I'm always up for watching a game in theory. I wish Portland would get a team.

Get Pickled

Where baseball gets a little weird. 

 

The Portland Pickles are a local collegiate wood bat summer league team that plays games out here in SE Portland, one of the few area options for watching live baseball after the AAA Portland Beavers left town more than a decade ago. They play in a small stadium constructed in the middle of a city park. It's a fun time! They're really big on marketing (and, especially, their social media account) but I still wasn't expecting that they had actual baseball cards on offer. Erin found a team set at a little team shop downtown recently and figured it might be of some interest to me.

The set uses the 1960 Topps design as an inspiration, specifically the Rookie Stars subset. The team colors are basically the Cascadia flag colors, which form the base for the ribbon that goes through the center of the card.

I'm sure that there's no official licensing involved with this team issued set, but we get to see college logos on certain players. (Don't tell anyone.)

In lieu of stats, the backs contain a somewhat strangely worded bio that includes a few wacky notes. Most players have their "most embarrassing sports moment" put on display. In reality, I'm pretty sure Tommy would have no problem playing for the Yankees if they ended up drafting him. It looks like A-1 Automotive, which has several locations throughout the Portland area, is the sponsor here. That upside-down chair shield thing? We'll get to that in a minute.

Here's another Oregon State Beaver. I have no idea who any of these players are, so I just picked a few at random. When adding these to TCDB, I noticed the majority of the players are going to west coast schools as you might expect, though there are a few from further east.

This one is a really interesting photo. He's a pitcher doing a very non-pitcher thing. This has more of a little league feel to it, except with older humans.

I really have no idea what this guy's deal is, except that this was the card on the very top of the stack. It made me wonder if all of the players were going to have more of a cartoon look to them, but that turned out not to be the case.

Here's a nice shot of the field the Pickles play on from above and behind home plate. The entire outfield is lined with trees, which gives everything a really nice backdrop and serves as a natural batter's eye.

Apparently this is the guy that's famous for keeping track of strikeouts. This made me think that there isn't anyone doing any sort of official scoring, but considering that the stats are available online for this league (West Coast League) in some capacity, that must not be the case. I think he's just famous for holding up these signs. Well, Southeast Portland famous, anyway.

Here's the big mischief-making mascot who also serves as the avatar of the team's social media account. They've made national news several times for various things. At one point the mascot costume was stolen but was eventually recovered after much media attention.

Like any good small time baseball experience, there's a berm you can sit on in the outfield. Apparently this "raising of the chair" is a tradition when the team scores. Of course, you have to bring your own chair to raise, or you're going to look foolish.

Off We Go

My first TCDB trade was with a familiar face, so to speak. 

 

I wanted to thank everyone for their feedback on my topic about trading on TCDB, both on Twitter and through the blog. I've barely scratched the surface as far as what all I need to enter into the database for wants and haves, but I'm already three trades deep. The first cards arrived this afternoon from Mr. Haverkamp, who is a friend of the blog and frequent contest entrant.

I picked up a couple of Mickey Mantle cards to fill out some set needs. Mantle went from overexposed with his Topps deal to underutilized with his Panini deal. I wonder how long that Panini contract runs for, because I don't know if they're going to continue to make baseball cards in any capacity beyond this year.

This is my first Roman Emperors mini from the 2007 Allen & Ginter set. I wasn't even aware of Allen & Ginter until this blog started in 2008, so I have quite a few needs from the first two revival sets.

A couple of the old Fleer/Laughlin World Series cards were thrown in as a bonus. These weren't officially on my want list but they were definitely needed. I think there's at least a few different printings of this set. These ones are from the 1971 "black back" version.

I probably won't post about every TCDB trade I complete (I admire those of you who can find the time to do that), but I plan to keep at it as long as it makes sense to. I'm still going to be trading through the blog as well. If you do use the site, you can check out my profile here.