Good Luck Ducks, Week 1: Greater Oregon

New season, new conference. 

 

There's a, um, movement -- if you want to call it that -- where certain residents of the Pacific Northwest want the state of Idaho to annex a portion of eastern Oregon. They call it Greater Idaho. I bet you can guess what I think of that whole thing, a sort of far-fetched idea from a far flung outpost of the country. (Honestly, if you love Idaho so much, maybe consider moving there?)

It's the end of August, and that means the Oregon Ducks are back on the field. It's their first year in the Big Ten conference, but they have the usual three non-conference games to get through before they get their first taste of action against the primarily midwestern opponents. Idaho is up first, an FCS team from the Big Sky conference. While the Vandals aren't necessarily trying to steal precious resources and territory from The Beaver State, they would love to take the preseason number three ranked Ducks down a peg or five.

So much has changed for Oregon this season, with wholesale changes at nearly all of the skill positions. I can't remember Oregon ever being ranked this high before the season, and those expectations seem even more questionable considering that they've moved on to what is by most accounts a tougher conference with so many new players at important positions. Dillon Gabriel will start at QB for the Ducks, entering his sixth season after playing for UCF and Oklahoma. Gone are Bo Nix and Troy Franklin to the Denver Broncos, but there is still an extremely talented and versatile corps of receivers standing by. Jordan James takes his first crack at RB1 after primarily being a second option last season and a short yardage/goal line specialist early in his career. Also, there's a dude named Kobe Savage on the team now? Cool name, for sure.

Notes and such:

• I'm not going to talk about the uniforms every week, but suffice it to say that I've liked what I've seen previewed so far. It looks like they're really leaning into a throwback-inspired look more than ever this year, along with the latest experimental Nike technology, of course.
• Do they have any history at all? Oregon has the, uh, slight edge, with a 52-3-4 record over the Vandals. They used to play every year up until 1970, but their last meeting was in 2004.
• Ducks Ranking This Week: 3 (AP). It's meaningless until we hit at least the halfway point in the season, or basically whenever the actual CFP rankings come out. By the way, perhaps even a bigger deal in the long run than all the conference changing shenanigans is the expanded playoff format this year. I like it, but I wish it didn't take such a huge chunk of my lifetime to get there.
• ???? Heisman Watch: Despite the lofty expectations thrust upon this team, I am not sure they have any sort of Heisman candidacy going at this point. Sure, Gabriel has a lot of buzz right now because he's coming off a nice season with Oklahoma, but it's tough to know what to think at this point. It's The Duck (mascot) at this point who is doing all the legwork to get noticed. Could we get him on the ballot?!
• Game time is 4:30 PM PDT on the B1G Network in Eugene. Go Ducks!

Value Meal

The latest installment of the Nachos Grande Extra Value Meal Group Break Supreme. 

 

It's another day and it's another batch of group break cards from the Nachos Grande Discord break group. This batch of stuff mostly features cards from early in 2024 that you're probably sick of looking at by now, plus a couple of weirder sets from 2022. I'll keep this short and sweet, although you probably won't stop staring at that bizarre AI thing with Ted Simmons' name on it (numbered to 100!)

In 2022, Topps released Chrome Sonic, which I mistakenly thought was just another configuration of their regular Topps Chrome product, like Chrome Lite and what have you. I suppose that in some ways, it is. But this is technically a separate set in that all of the base cards are just slightly different than the base cards from the actual Topps Chrome set. Some of the cards find the Topps Chrome logo moved to the other side of the frame, but not all of them. The primary way to tell that these are Sonic (and not regular Chrome) is to go all the way to the fine print on the back and check the stupid "Code" printed in bold face.

This is a refractor Sonic card, which again only truly varies in the code number on the back. I also tend to get this set confused with Chrome Cosmic (or is that Cosmic Chrome), but that set is an entirely different thing with a different design. Did they continue this Sonic thing in 2023 or 2024? I have no idea and maybe don't want to know.

I haven't seen a lot of Bowman this year, but I'll occasionally spring for a blaster just to give myself some trade bait. People still like those Bowman 1sts, apparently. Travis Honeyman is no 1st, but he is a Honeyman (and also heavily Photoshopped.)

In case you haven't seen this year's Bowman design for some reason, here it is in a nutshell. Prospect card on the left, rookies/veterans design on the right. It's kind of a fun quasi-mirror image situation.

I did well in the Topps Heritage department, scoring a purple Chrome parallel of Jordan Walker. It's been a couple of years since I happened upon a purple hot box, despite my annual misguided attempts to build the set through retail boxes. (Don't ever buy retail if you're a serious set builder. That goes for all Topps products.)

I also landed a coveted short printed card of the ex-Cardinal Juan Yepez. Yepez hasn't quite turned into the latest in a long line of Cardinals outfielder castoffs to make it big with his new team, although he's also not really an outfielder. Still, a quick glance at his stats with the Nationals this year (Nats stats!) suggest that he's been a half-tick up from league average, which is more than he was contributing with the Redbirds.

Free Stuff Friday: Damaged Goods II

More free stuff. 

 

It's time for another round of free cards to claim. Similar to January's "Damaged Goods" post, these are all cards that I didn't feel comfortable adding to my TCDB trade list for one reason or other. Some of these cards are leftover from last time while others are making their first appearance here.

No qualifications are needed here. If you have something you'd like to send me in return, feel free, but don't sweat it. (If you're someone who likes to pay things forward, you can always send me -- or someone else -- something I might not collect but might be something someone else could use some other day.) I'm happy to also just send these out to be rid of them.

As with last time, if you have any questions about what the damage or flaw is with any of these cards, feel free to let me know and I'll get back to you. You can claim cards here in the comments, on Bluesky, via email or Discord if you know where to find me.

There's a perfectly good set of fingernail stickers if that's your type of thing.

Click to enlarge any of these images.

FYI, not all of the pocket schedules show any damage. I just felt like throwing them in here.

Some police giveaways from my childhood where the community outreach officers would come to your school. I must have upgraded all of these at some point.

Time to Shine

These Affordable Group Breaks brought in some shiny things. 

 

Facebook group box breaks are pretty much the only consistent thing in my card budget at this point. (It's also one of the only reasons I haven't fired my Facebook account into the proverbial sun.) Let's check out some more goodies from some Affordable Group Breaks.

I began my time with this blog and my slow return to collecting cards on an even slower, but grudgingly acceptant trek towards appreciating shiny Topps Chrome cards. It's sad, and true, but I feel like I have an even bigger problem with how much I love clear acetate cards. This means that stuff like Topps Tek is right up my alley, but I don't think I'll ever be able to afford (or let myself afford) to open a box of it on my own.

This particular Topps Tek break (the 2000 set) was actually a player break, and I am certainly not regretting buying the Rick Ankiel slot. This die cut (basically, it's got round corners) Rick Ankiel pattern is numbered to just 10 copies. Nice!

Fast forward a couple of decades to land on the latest Topps Stadium Club release. The 2023 set was delayed into the early days of 2024, and I haven't heard of any news on a potential 2024 release, not that I'm really keeping up with card release calendars or new product press releases at this point. This one is a Chrome parallel of tonight's Cardinals hero Arenado, who hit a walk off grand slam to put the Brewers to bed for once.

This one rivals Ankiel's special gold card as the best of the lot. Alec Burleson basically carried the Cardinals through their early summer hot streak, but the team has come back down to earth and basically fallen through it since those days. Still, there's a lot to be encouraged about Burleson's work at the plate, and he is seen by some as a young option going forward at first base with a lot of other scenarios in play in the outfield.

I feel like Topps Big League inserts are pretty easy to come by, but at last check I'm still lacking the Paul Goldschmidt card from this very set.

The Affordable Group Breaks often offer up some interesting stuff from the past (which no doubt helps keeps things "Affordable".) This fancy looking thing from thirty years ago would have certainly been out of my price range if I hadn't dropped cards altogether for whatever the hell I was up to in the mid-'90s, but it looks pretty nice right now. The Gregg Jefferies card on the right is a gold parallel numbered to 10,000, which would make it more plentiful than almost every parallel these days. It's very challenging to find any numbered card from the '90s now, however.

It's almost football season, isn't it? Yikes.

Domestic Trading Card Day

The annual trading card holiday had a smaller footprint this year. 

 

Topps Trading Card Day was originally a collaborative effort between multiple card companies (remember those?) and was called something like National Baseball Card Day. I've never actually officially participated in this annual event, mostly due to a lack of participating shops in my area. I do usually hit the online markets to try to get what I want, and have managed to do just that this year.

In recent years, the annual event had expanded to multiple products beyond just baseball cards (and was briefly retitled International Trading Card Day), but it appears that it was scaled back to just baseball this year. Each team gets one player in the annual freebie set, and this year's Cardinals representative was Nolan Arenado. I managed to pick his card up in a TCDB swap.

The most exciting thing about this annual promotion to me, as a team collector, is the team-specific giveaways that you can find by going to the ballpark on a specific day. Each team has their own team set based on the Trading Card Day design. These have a holofoil finish that won't show well in the scans, as compared to the plain white card stock of the regular set. Each team set is distributed in five-card packs, and some teams have as many as ten (or even fifteen if I'm not mistaken) cards on their checklist, which means you would have to track down multiple packs to get the whole set.

Fortunately, things are a fair bit easier for Cardinals collectors, as for at least the second year in a row, the stadium giveaway set only contains five cards. Again, these have the same design but a holofoil finish, and you can also see that Arenado (above) got a different photo while Sonny Gray here appears in the expected Photoshopped St. Louis uniform.

Paul Goldschmidt has been a staple of past Trading Card Day giveaways, and he appears here in the 2024 team set as well.

Tommy Edman's presence is a bit of a downer, as he has yet to appear in a game this season and was recently traded to the dreaded Dodgers. I hope he does well there, but I don't want to watch it.

Youngster Jordan Walker rounds out the checklist. I'm hoping his career starts taking off again once there are sweeping changes in the coaching and front office ranks. (They are coming, aren't they? Aren't they?!)

An Old Pack of Cards: Footy

English footballers of yesterday. 

 

Welcome back to another in an occasionally series of packs that have been left laying around on my desk for a number of years, waiting for a rainy day to be discussed. Of course, the weather is very nice (and mild for August) right now as I write this, and my desk was completely cleaned off (and disposed of) in my move last October. However, apparently I let a couple of these stale old packs make the trip with me and they ended up on my new desk for some reason.

230 - Pat Van Den Hauwe (Tottenham Hotspur) - If I recall correctly, Erin was sent this pack along with some sort of online order from an apparel store years ago. This set features players from recognizable clubs that most likely all competed in the top level of English football at the time. It was a couple of years before the Premier League officially became a thing, so most likely they would have been competing in what was known at the time as Football League First Division,

224 - Colin Pascoe (Sunderland) - I'm glad they print the team names on the back, because I wouldn't recognize most of these kits.

150 - Mark Robins (Manchester United) - Remember when Sharp was a big player in home electronics?

209 - Glenn Cockerill (Southampton) - There were a lot of striped shirts in this league. It's funny to look back at the early days of the MLS here stateside and see how many teams tried to go with stripes at first.

257 - Rob Newman (Bristol City) - In-action soccer poses can be pretty entertaining.

223 - Marco Gabbiadini (Sunderland) - This is about the point in most packs where I start running out of things to say.

180 - David Bardsley (Queens Park Rangers) - By and large these players are a generation behind most people I would have heard of, and maybe a generation and a half away from today's young stars.

17 - Chris Price (Aston Villa) - Price kind of looks like one of my co-workers. You know, like the guy you duck behind a corner to avoid when you see him coming?

302 - Steve Davis (Burnley) - We end things here with your typical cool '90s guy.

International Card Exchange

Another cluster of cards from a Canadian friend. 

 

It's been a bit. Let's check out some more sports cards from a variety of sports! This latest batch comes from Sportscards from the Dollar Store, which I received back in May according to my very sophisticated system of records.

Chase Davis was the Cardinals first round pick last season (21st overall) and was recently promoted to High A ball. This little die-cut parallel card is from last year's Panini Elite Extra Edition set and is numbered to just 200. I'm slowly warming up to (some of) Panini's draft-style sets, although there's still a long way to go before I'll be actively seeking them out. I do really appreciate when people send me these types of cards as they can be hard to keep track of.

A huge chunk of the package was dedicated to my 2024 Topps Heritage needs. Buckstorecards was one of the big reasons why I was able to finish off the (low series, non-SP) base set earlier than usual this year.

It is almost football season already. Can you believe that? In less than a few weeks I'll be yammering on in this space again about the Ducks, so it's probably best that I find some more non-football content to post up throughout the rest of the summer and the fall.

Jeff Maehl was a converted defensive back and fan favorite in his time at UO.

I really wish that Upper Deck was still involved in making college football cards, because I tend to like them a lot more than other stuff that's out there these days. There are way too many fledgling companies involved now to keep track of, and checklist data can be unreliable at best, provided that you can find anything.

I definitely tune out the entirety of the NFL preseason, but will be paying attention to the Eagles again once that second weekend in September comes around. D'Andre Swift had a nice run for the Eagles but turned out to be one-and-done in Philly. (This is a silver Prizm parallel, by the way.)

Of course, it wouldn't be a proper Canadian card package without a little bit of the puck-and-ice (stick-and-puck?) This looks to be a card the player signed in person or sent through the mail. Fabbri has been with the Red Wings for several years, but played for the Blues back in the late 2010's.