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An attempt to find one of the contest prize winners, plus a bonus collecting dilemma. 

 

I've had a lot better luck about people claiming their contest prizes this year, but I'm still looking for one more person to step up. If you submitted your March Radness bracket as "J.D. Drew", please get in touch with me soon as I owe you a third place prize.

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Here's a one card wonder for today. This rainbow foil parallel Topps from last year wouldn't ordinarily fit in my collection, but I received it in a TCDB trade recently. As you can see, for all intents and purposes this is an Aaron Judge card. However, Matt Carpenter is also in the photo off to the right. Someone must have tagged Carpenter in order for it to be added to my want list, as I try to collect all of Carpenter's cards regardless of which team he's with.

You see, the thing is that I have never dared tread on the slippery slope that is what others often call a "cameo" card, as in a cameo/guest appearance on someone else's card. I suppose I could could cave in and finally do this -- and one compelling argument is that I'm not likely to acquire many other cards of Carpenter's stint with the Yankees. (I think his only real appearance on a card with them is one of those Topps Now things.) If it was just a base card, I might toss it back in the trade box and pretend this never happened, but I would feel a bit weird about ignoring this card.

How does everyone else feel about "cameo cards" when it comes to your PCs?

Bootleggin' with Panini, Part 4

A Panini Instant basketball tribute to the 1988 Donruss set. 

 

Previously on Bootleggin': Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Towards the end of my last post on this topic, I remarked that there probably wouldn't be any more posts in this series in the foreseeable future, as the first (?) set of Panini Instant Retro Rookies based on old baseball designs carried a hefty price tag for the three single cards that I wanted.

Fast forward a couple of years and the prices have come down to the point where I was able to snag one of the cards. There's also an affordable Troy Brown Jr. for sale online, but I'm holding out for a cheap copy in better shape. As for Anfernee Simons, he's probably going to have to wait as long as he remains a starter in this league and continues to be one of the Blazers top scorers.

That leaves us with Gary Trent Jr., whose card prices exploded in 2020 following his performance during the NBA "bubble" tournament action. He was since shipped off to Toronto, where he's been a part-time starter and productive scorer, if not the type of guy you're going to invest a lot of money in his collectibles.

As far as the design of these goes, the player name font on the front is a little off. It seems like they just picked something randomly that would fit and went with it. The backs are, like the '19/'20 (1989) version, a bit sad. There's also no print run printed on these, unlike the later cards.

It looks like they did not make this set again after the 1991 tribute. It seems like a bit of a wasted opportunity, especially this season with Victor Wembanyama out there just waiting for more cards. I get the feeling that Panini Instant isn't very popular, especially in the NBA. In my searched, it did look like there was a similar concept out there for the NFL. I wonder if those cards were more popular.

Benefiting from a Purge

 

Rolling the dice on an unseen Blazers lot. 

 

A blogger who I've sent some basketball stuff to in the past, CaptKirk42, has been in the process of purging some of his collection. I happened upon his efforts to ditch a bunch of basketball cards earlier this year, and rolled the dice on a couple of team lots for just a bit of shipping fees.

Out of a lot of 70-ish Trail Blazers cards, I was able to find a home in my collection for 7 of them. Honestly, that was a bit better than I was expecting. Still, it was fun to dig through a random assortment of cards and get the extras listed up on TCDB.

Marcus Kennedy actually never played in the NBA, but he was a Blazers draft pick as mentioned on the back of the card. I don't usually go seeking out college cards for my pro team collection, but I will include them in my binders if one that fits happens to fall into my lap. It does help if my favorite team is mentioned somewhere on the card, as it does on the back of this one (barely.)

Several of the cards I kept were from various international versions of Collector's Choice cards from the '90s. Unlike the other big North American pro sports, basketball has a massive following in many other countries, so the idea of making Italian, Spanish, and French sets (to name a few) back in the day was pretty smart.

PJ's Party? Sounds awesome. This is referring to the team's head coach at the time, P.J. Carlesimo.

Those SkyBox Emotion cards were a bit over the top.

Here's the fourth Uncle Cliffy card of the lot. It's an Electric Court parallel from the 1993-94 Upper Deck SE set.

I also snagged the Raptors for a certain blog trading pal, and I believe the ratio of keepers-to-traders there was much more successful.