Seasons Greetings from Oren

A timely big bundle of cards that is finally revealed a few months later. 

 

'Tis the season (*checks calendar*)... oops, it's March! Well, as the sun breaks are starting to increase and daylight savings is in full effect, let's check out a fantastic batch of stuff from super generous trader Oren.

For one reason or another, Dylan Carlson seems to have settled into a role as fourth outfielder after arriving in the dreaded 2020 season with much hype. Assuming some semblance of health, Gold Glove-winning infielder Tommy Edman is the anointed starting center fielder (?), but I felt like the outfield had the best overall balance with Carlson in center over the last couple of seasons. That's not to knock what Edman has done in the outfield, as I feel like he could probably capably hold down any position on the field. I'd just prefer Carlson in center for now, at least since Harrison Bader was sold off.

I had never seen one of these white bordered 2020 Topps Heritage cards. In fact, I had completely forgotten that they existed. I think my scanner gave the red printing more of a pinkish glow than it really has, but this is still pretty striking.

I'm a sucker for a black bordered refractor. I also really like the rare black bordered flagship cards a lot, especially during the days when they shared a bit of sparkly magic with the much more attainable gold parallels.

Matty Mo is looking pretty formidable on this busy Donruss Leather & Lumber design. I feel like this brand is one that Panini has unleashed rather sparingly since acquiring the DLP portfolio (though how they didn't retain the L part of that conglomerate is a story I've long forgotten about.)

Here's a young, beardless Jason Motte who was still trying to be a catcher, in a weird photo that makes it look like he was trying to look like he wasn't just caught doing something weird in the locker room. Is that even a locker room? What's going on in the background?

It felt like it took Rob Kaminsky forever to make it to the Cardinals major league team since he was drafted in 2013, and it really did. It was only in his second stint with the club in 2020 when they were keeping an active stable of, I don't know, like 45 pitchers because at any given time a third of them were getting sick. This was all in an attempt to salvage what ended up being a 60 game season. Let's just pretend none of this ever happened, at least in baseball.

I wish this was still a time when a Hall of Fame election meant a serious boost to card values, but if you take even a slight glance at any Scott Rolen cards on the market you'll see that is sadly not the case. Of course, that means all the more for me. People would still rather throw money at some young prospects who may or may not pay off big someday. (They won't.)

Next up is a pair of Cards cards from the much delayed 2021 Topps Chrome Platinum... something, something. I kind of nodded off before I could complete my thought here.

These cards look nice, but yet another variation on the first full scale Topps baseball card set was not perhaps the most original thing that they could have thought of. I do prefer these (and their parallels) to the 2022 set, which likewise happened to be released a year late. The 2022 set looks very off, like most of the photos were AI generated or enhanced.

It's not all just Cardinals here, although that would certainly be nice enough. Thanks to Oren, I was fortunate to add another numbered card to one of my very favorite player collections.

CJ Elleby was a solid Pac-12 (RIP) player, but it didn't seem like he was cut out for the NBA. He's still just 23, but it doesn't seem like he's up to much at the moment.

The Blazers have been a sad mess for the past few seasons. Elleby probably won't evoke many feelings of nostalgia for this specific era, unfortunately.

I will get nostalgic about the Jusuf Nurkic days, however. Like many a Blazers center before him, he eventually became a scapegoat for fans' negative feelings about the direction of the whole team, but this is a guy who went out and did his often thankless job night in and night out in an NBA era that isn't really built around big men like him anymore. He's doing fine in Phoenix.

Noah Vonleh was a lottery pick who played for a lot of NBA teams in his near-decade long career. He's with the Shanghai Sharks these days which is basically a meme, even though he's still just 28.

There were even football cards on offer. Today was apparently some sort of NFL free agency day as my phone kept blowing up with Eagles notifications. They were busy! 

This is just a good looking card. It's probably the green. Blount is an Eagle here but a Duck first, so he goes into the Ducks collection.

I wanted to like Nelson Agholor, especially after the Eagles wisely moved him to the slot and started taking advantage of his speed more than his pass catching ability, but... I don't know, never trust a guy from USC, I guess.

Well, we've reached the end of the scans, but there is so much more. What all can you spot in this photo? There is some amazing stuff!

KO Rob Levels Up My Blazers Collection

NIB: New In Box 

Reader of the blog and regular contest-participant KO Rob sent me a bunch of Blazers this spring. Like a whole bunch. He literally increased my collection by a percentage well into the double digits. (Note: I did not actually calculate this.) Of course, the pièce de résistance was this wonderful Clyde Drexler Starting Lineup figure. It's from 1992 (I love the authentic Kay-Bee Toys price sticker) and shows Drexler in a uniform for the partial season where the Blazers switched to the all caps BLAZERS font in black for their home uniform. The unis were deemed too illegible, and the design was tweaked before the season was over with larger letters in red. The result ended up being their uniform design for the next decade, before they changed the font and committed once again to black lettering.

The figure makes a nice companion to my card show purchase from a couple years ago, which features rookie style Drexler and two (!) trading cards. I can't guarantee that I won't free these Clydes from their plastic prisons, but for now they stay up on the wall like this.

As previously mentioned, there were a lot cards to sort through. I just picked a small handful to show here. Andre Miller is here on a serial numbered (to 499) early Panini Prestige card. These throwback unis were great, and I wish they would bring them back.

Brian Grant was a warrior on the court and has been a warrior in the field of Parkinson's awareness and knowledge. This is a good read on his journey.

The Finest!

Fred Jones of the Ducks slips in here. This fits into my Oregon collection, of course, but Jones is also from the Portland area and played for the Blazers for a spell.

I always liked these oddball sized cards (think Fleer Extra Bases and NFL Gameday). I need to finish off this (team) set.

Kenny Anderson has all kinds of weird feelings about these '90s cards.

This card is translucent but is not entirely clear. It's the rare card that scans a lot better than it actually looks.

 

We head into vintage territory with stylish LaRue Martin. "Vintage territory" just means the '70s, by the way, for a franchise that was born in 1970.

Caption contest?

The legend.

Mark Bryant is represented here on the always classy Flair card.

Father of Klay and Laker-identifier. Thompson had the misfortune of not being big enough as the ideal NBA center in his day, and also had to follow in the footsteps of broken Bill Walton. His crossover into Lakers territory was never forgiven in my household, though.

No lengthy Blazers post here is complete without a Sabas card.

Time is running out!

With another NBA Draft in the books, Biggie Swanigan is going to have his work cut out for him if he wants to carve out a role with next season's Blazers.

And speaking of future Blazers, Gary Trent's son -- a star at Duke they call Gary Trent Jr. -- was acquired by Portland after he was drafted in the second round. It would be fun to see him earn a meaningful spot on the team, if anything for nostalgic purposes.

A National Hero

An impressive collection of basketball cards sent my way included my new most prized possession.

Jon of longtime website Community Gum was lucky enough to hit up the National this year, something I've scarcely even dreamed of doing. I'm more of a small potatoes card show kind of guy, but I nearly (nearly!) fell out of my chair when he reached out to me to ask if there's anything he should look for that I might be interested in. This is just part one of a multi-part post as I don't feel like writing about baseball tonight for some strange reason, so we'll just be looking at hoopsters here.

Upper Deck has carried on the Fleer line long past its expiration date in its basketball product, as it recycles old designs to show players in their college uniforms as Fleer Retro. It's a weird concept. Obviously, I'd be more interested in these sets if Upper Deck had an NBA license, but there's always room in my collection for The Glide as a Houston Cougar or Houston Rocket. This EX throwback uses a clear acetate meets die cut style that Upper Deck shouldn't be able to afford to manufacture at this point. Are they out of business yet?

These crazy Bread for Energy/Bread for Health inserts feature some Blazers of (recent) yore. I deduced that these were from the 2011-12 Panini Past & Present set by seeing this very set on Jon's want list, so he must have had some extras. Felton and Crawford came from a much loathed Blazers team, with Felton arriving to join the team for the first time completely out of shape and Crawford accused of quitting on the team midseason when it became clear that the playoffs were out of reach. I'm not sure who the guy on the far right is, but sources indicate that he's banned from the blog for the foreseeable future. (These still go in the Blazers binder, of course.)

Wesley Matthews was my favorite Blazers player, so last season I finally went out and did what any adult person should do with their disposable income: throw it away on a replica jersey of said player. Wes promptly went out and blew out his Achilles, sealing his team's fate for the season and threw a rolling chain of events his own fate with the team. Matthews supposedly wasn't tendered any kind of contract offer in the offseason as a result of some serious roster shakeup thanks to... (sigh)... moving on. Anyway, I'll be following Matthews' post-Blazers career closely and wish him the best. He will probably be added to my player collections at some point.

Congratulations! What did I win? A... draft pick redemption!

It's a, um, hmm... non-auto as the notes say? I'm guessing there's a story behind this one. Maybe Jon can explain it to me someday.

It's a nice looking card, at least. Leonard is one of the few Blazers that remain from the roster that made the playoffs the last two seasons and he figures to get a larger role in the offense and the much larger leap in playing time that comes with it.

Cool, Panini! Thanks for the "autograph"! (Actually, Panini should be apologizing to Jon, unless it's Meyers himself that is the culprit? I don't know how these things work.)

Here's the kicker - I felt really silly for even requesting this, but the only thing that came to mind when Jon mentioned the National was for him to look out for a good deal on a Clyde Drexler rookie. I have a weird history with Fleer's inaugural NBA set that I don't really feel like getting into at the moment. (Maybe I'll save that for a round of Late Night Blog Confessional?) In any case, I've never owned a rookie card of my all-time favorite basketball player and now I do. And it's in perfect shape! (I couldn't even bear to remove it from the top loader to scan it.) Not that condition matters all that much to me, but I was floored when I saw this card. I am forever in debt to Jon for tracking this down for me and will be keeping his want lists close at hand during my future wheelings, dealings and card show shopping. Even decades removed from Clyde's departure from Portland, his stuff (and all things Blazers) come at a bit of a premium around here, so I've always been hesitant to pull the trigger on one of these.

Thanks again to Jon!

The Big Guns

Nothing but top shelf here.

Helping to clean up some of the mess, Brian of Highly Subjective and Completely Arbitrary agreed to swap 2015 Topps First Home Run Medallion cards pulled from blasters this year with the caveat that someone was going home with a bunch of unwanted Twins cards. I was just thrilled to get rid of some stuff, as usual, as well as add a so-called hit to my Matt Carpenter collection.

Brian also included a bunch of brand new Cardinals cards in the deal, including my first (maybe) look at Mark Reynolds in a (maybe) real St. Louis uniform. I'm suspicious, though, because that is my nature.

While Trevor Rosenthal may be getting all of the glory as he has just tied the franchise single season record for saves, Adam Wainwright is making headlines of his own as he's threatening to actually pitch again this season. He's been cleared for "baseball activities" and apparently is aiming to contribute out of the bullpen, defying all logic and medical science.

Here is a great little insert card from the 2015 Topps Archives set of the Cardinals injured catcher. This is right up Erin's alley in terms of her narrow collecting interests, so it would seem I'm going to have to find another one of these for myself.

Here's the shiny, heavy Matt Carpenter Medallion card. I had pulled a similar card of Big Papi from back when he was just the guy who played for the Twins who used to go by David Arias. And yet, this wasn't even the best card of the lot...

Holy buckets, people! It's Clyde the Glide on some sort of patch card. This is by far the best Drexler card in my collection, that is until... until... [TO BE CONTINUED].

Seriously, there are some great trade posts coming up!