Saturday Stars and Players for the Rest of the Week

 

Football, baseball, basketball, hockey?!

 

Fresh off a customs inspection at the border (presumably) and sitting around my office for awhile is another pile of goodies from buckstorecards. As always, he hit up a bunch of different areas of my collecting interests. I could have easily saved the DJ Johnson Prizm signature for this week's Good Luck Ducks post, but it clearly says "SATURDAY STAR" on it while Oregon is actually playing on a Friday this week for the second time in three games. I have rules, you see. (Also, DJ plays on Sundays these days, if you can call what the Panthers have been doing "playing".)

Vernon Adams Jr. really seemed to kick off the era of Oregon looking to transfers to help their QB ranks, although he certainly wasn't the first.

It's fun to follow Ducks players in their pro careers when the NFL thing isn't in the cards. Fortunately, CFL cards exist, as do generous traders who drop them on my doorstep (figuratively, of course.)

Here's a nice, numbered, high end Kiko Alonso card from something called Topps Supreme. I wonder how many of their old brands Topps will resurrect when they get their NFL rights back.

With the nearly complete lack of labels and color here, you'd have to forgive me for assuming this was one of those janky Leaf products. It's actually a Press Pass Showcase card, and looks very interesting with the red ink signature (on card!) and two distinct head shots.

I still pick up the occasional Eagles card from time to time, and this one is right in my wheelhouse as it's one of the members of the Super Bowl LII winning team. Nice.

It's on to a different sport and a bird of a different color. This is the white bordered variation of Lance Lynn's not-Photoshopped 2024 card because the photo is actually from 2017 (or earlier.) I did the research when the set first came out to track down the original Getty photo to confirm this, but I'm not doing it again.

I don't typically put college/draft cards of players the Cardinals drafted on my want list unless there's a prominent mention of the Cardinals on the card somewhere, but I also do include them in my binders when someone sends them to me. Pete Hansen is still working his way through the minor league ranks and played at high A this past season.

Is this art, AI, or some sort of AI-assisted art? I'm not sure, but I do know that it's from one of those online exclusive mini sets. This looks to have been released prior to Albert's reunion with St. Louis.

It's on to the non-aviary section of the package now, as we're checking out a "teal explosion" parallel of a Jerami Grant card. Grant is currently my favorite player on the team and was actually born in Portland when his father (Harvey) played for the Blazers, but with the team stuck near the bottom of a seemingly bottomless pit ever since Chauncey Billups came sniffing around, any decent veteran like Grant is always the subject of intense trade rumors.

Cards like this are just unfortunate, and a product of the way the NBA Draft functions, or at least used to. Joey Dorsey probably wore this Blazers cap for a few minutes that day before he was dealt to Houston. Sometimes you do get fun stuff out of these situations, like LaMarcus Aldridge holding up both  Bulls and Blazers caps during one of his photos. Still, this is a nice little oddball to have, and certainly less unsettling than seeing Luke Walton on a card wearing a Blazers jersey as a gimmick/tribute to his father.

It's already hockey season?! I've seen some of the scores come across the ticker already, so it must be. I picked out a former Blues player I'm actually somewhat familiar with for today's Blues-card-o'-the-post. Pacific made a lot of junk in their day, but this isn't bad.