Dame!

It's time to celebrate with some cards from @bulldog2189 as the Blazers move on to the next round. 

I got texts, hugs, candy from co-workers and even an email from a possibly converted fan after last night's massive game and massive shot by Damian Lillard. Now that it's 24 hours later and I've sobered up, I felt like it was a good time to write again -- which means leading off with a card of the man himself. Fellow Blazers fan Bulldog from Nothing If Not Random sent over a bunch of cards last month, which included a few extras of my hometown team.

If you're a fan of early '90s NBA cards, you might recognize the back of this SkyBox card of Clyde the Glide from back in the day. It's missing its card number, however, making it a promo card that I didn't previously own. Nice!

This is a Premium parallel from this year's Contenders set of fallen (but not forgotten) big man Jusuf Nurkic. Nurkic made a surprise appearance on the team's bench last night (he is recovering from a massive leg break) which coincided with the Blazers game winning run at the end.

Kid Simons is here with an on-card autograph. Normally, it's hard to get excited about a guy who only gets garbage time minutes, but he got his chance to essentially play an entire game at the end of the season and looked great. He'll have to learn to play well with Damian Lillard, however, because Dame is never leaving and is going to play forever and ever.

It's a Cardinals blog, of course, and Bulldog had some nice Cardinals cards for me. One of my recent faves, Harrison Bader. He's got crazy defensive skills. Here's hoping he starts getting regular at-bats again as he recovers from a minor injury.

And this is a Chrome'd up version of Matt Carpenter's 2017 Stadium Club card, because we have to have different versions of things. It's a fact of baseball card life.

Bulldog also sent along a ton of Eagles cards. I chose this one to scan because I really like the color scheme, which is weird because I was never much of a fan of 1992 Topps baseball.

I also scored a low numbered autographed card of Ducks speedster Byron Marshall. Marshall has played sparingly in his NFL career, but I hope he can stick around a little while longer. Four (!) longtime Ducks-turned-pro recently announced their retirement, so there's probably going to be a fairly significant drop in cards for me to casually collect.

New Hoops

A new crop of basketball cards, featuring the Portland Trail Blazers. 

I dove into the deep, shark-filled waters of eBay group breaks to get my first taste of 2018-19 NBA Hoops. My logic was sound: I can avoid buying all of the packs and boxes and just concentrate on the team that I collect. And it all would have worked out splendidly if it wasn't for that lousy collation!

There are 10 Blazers in the 300 card base set, but I didn't get a single copy of the Damian Lillard or CJ McCollum cards, while getting several copies of other cards. Fun!

The base design is, you know, fine. It's Hoops. It doesn't really change. I didn't bother scanning the backs of any of the cards, because if you've seen the back of one (Panini) Hoops card, you've seen them all.

I mentioned a lack of a Lillard card, but Dame actually has two cards in the set for whatever reason. The final 20 cards in the set are part of a "Tribute" subset, and have a different design. Mostly, these are retired players, but there are a few current ones sprinkled in for some reason.

Nurk!

Rookies are shown in one of their media day poses over a dark wooden backdrop. Pretty standard stuff.

Trent was a one-and-done Duke star, and is the son of former Blazers draft pick... you guessed it... Gary Trent!

Big Z is having a big year already. This is exciting.

Ah, but there were inserts, too. Amplifiers crank up the volume in the crowd, apparently. I can't complain about an insert concept I haven't seen before, though.

Two of the Amplifiers out of a ten card set are Blazers, so CJ joins Dame here. He shoots threes at a high volume, but so does everyone these days.

Damian Lillard stars here on another insert design that I'm not as much of a fan of. We really don't need the same photo twice.

The draft picks that they got to pose for these photos are going to probably have a good laugh at these in a few years. Or, at least, we all will. Anfernee (yes, he was named after Penny Hardaway) skipped college altogether, playing out a year in purgatory at a prep school. He looks all of 13. The Blazers are playing the long game with him. It would be cool to see it pay off.

Lest ye accuse an eBay seller of messing with the base cards (why would they?), you can see (ye can see?) that I didn't get stiffed on a hit. Everything is a sticker auto in this low end product, but I was happy to get a brand spanking new Blazers autograph.

Good stuff all around. I just need to find the rest of the team set.