Cards from Oren and a Final Contest Reminder!

 

Don't forget to fill out your bracket! And let's check out some terrific cards from Oren. 

 

We're less than 24 hours away from the start of the big NCAA men's basketball tournament, which means it's time to get those brackets filled out. We're still taking sign-ups down to the wire, so check it out if you haven't already!

After the jump, because there is a giant amount of images to load, let's check out some cards from a trade with reader Oren that was put together over the Christmas holidays.

First up is an old Chrome blue parallel from blog favorite Adam Wainwright. And by "blog favorite", I mean my favorite. You knew that, didn't you?

I'm still far from even completing the base set of the inaugural Allen & Ginter set from Topps, but occasionally I'll end up tracking down a nice mini like this one. My team collection is more important than any set build, but I'd like to put those 2006 and 2007 sets to bed someday.

I'm glad there was a trend to move towards on-card autos for important cards instead of stickers. This makes a nice "1st" signed card of the Cards pitching prospect Graceffo. This is one of the few things I can praise Topps for in recent years.

This is from a set with a jillion parallels, so I'll probably be picking up cards like this for the next eternity. This one happens to be numbered 01/25.

Speaking of a jillion parallels, Dylan Carlson really has about a jillion 2021 cards.

Here's a fun reminder of one of those first Topps Heritage sets I started to collect.

People have dogged on manufactured patch cards for about as long as they've existed, but if you just treat them as fancy inserts, they can be pretty cool. Who doesn't like old All-Star Game logos?

Flaherty appears here on another low numbered (to 25) parallel, this time from the 2020 Bowman set.

I added a ton of Duce Staley base cards to my want list on TCDB but hadn't bothered with anything more rare than that, so it was really cool to find this jersey card in the package.

I wouldn't be surprised if I have more jersey cards of this guy in my collection than number of games watched. Card companies' fascination with rookies is neverending.

What would you call this parallel? A splatter-fractor? I think they decided to use the term "mini-diamond" or something strange like that.

Liberatore looks like he's trying to break out of the green madness that's surrounding him in another serial-numbered parallel.

Next up is a couple of "fish-fractors". Whitey!

KK!

I'm hoping for big things out of Masyn Winn in his second full season as the Cardinals starting shortstop. I mean, it could be that there isn't a lot to cheer for this season, so I suspect I'll be looking harder at individual things like Winn's continued development at the plate. (There's also a good case to be made for not wanting to look too hard at anything during this lame duck season.)

Remember those Masterpieces sets from Upper Deck? Everyone liked those. Now we're just stuck with those horrendous Goodwin Champions cards if you ever occasionally want to catch a glimpse of what could theoretically be a baseball player on a UD card.

It came without a ton of fanfare, but Big City signed one of those one-day contract things to officially retire as a Cardinal last fall. He was fun to watch for a time, during those wild Days of Matts.

Panini's Threads sets used to have cards like this that prominently featured teams' home and away uniform designs until Nike made the concept of home and away jerseys irrelevant.

Panini Crown Royale doesn't usually have a retail component and you get very few cards per hobby box, so I almost never see these cards. I'm not sure that Keon Johnson will ever be considered "Royalty", but he has carved out a nice spot with a young Brooklyn team.

Quez Watkins was a solid target for Jalen Hurts early in the QB's career, but he hasn't appeared in a counting NFL game since 2023.

I never really took notice of them until recently, but I've started to like the "scope" parallels that Panini has been throwing in some of their products.

Although it felt like he had less of an impact this season than any other in his career, missing four regular season games, DeVonta Smith remains a dangerous part of the Eagles passing attack.

There are a lot of really nice Shaedon Sharpe cards out there, and I definitely could use some more.

Here's another Crown Royale Keon!

Unfortunately, Greg Brown III's lasting legacy with the Blazers (and quite possibly the NBA) was his wild in-game preseason dunk during his rookie year that spawned a line of t-shirts. It's cool to see him turn up on this Teal Explosion parallel.

Nassir Little looked like a solid draft pick at the time, but injury issues kept him out of the rotation more often than not before he was eventually shipped off to Phoenix. It looks like he's had decent G League numbers this year, though.

Here's an autograph of the former Ducks star who got some time with Chip Kelly's weird version of the Eagles.

While I don't love the color scheme on this card, it's a tremendous get to land a signed card of a Tecmo Super Bowl-era Eagles guy in Mike Quick.

There's almost no sign left here of Darren Carrington's Oregon Ducks ties aside from the state flag backdrop. Good ol' (well, new) Leaf.

While I was only able to squeeze in images for about half of the cards I received in this incredible trade, it was truly a fun one. This last image shows that most scanners (especially mine) don't do well with slabbed cards, but I'm not about to pull this one out of its case to get a better image.

Good luck with the contest, everyone!