Sunday Funday PWE Round-Up

Catching up with chunky cards from @sanjosefuji and more! 

 

I don't even want to get into how far behind I've fallen in card stuff here or what led to this situation. Let's just look at some cards! The first bunch came over from The Chronicles of Fuji. Fuji managed to cram a sweet stack of memorabilia cards and relics into a small envelope way back when, and I'm excited to finally show them off to you all.

Oooh, even Joey Heisman thinks these cards are pretty sweet!

Of course, Harrington only finished in 4th place in 2001, but he and his school managed to raise his profile enough that he went on to a decently sized (but not terribly successful) NFL career.

Here's a blast from the past -- it's Josh McRoberts, or McBob as he was affectionately known during his short time around here in Portland. This is one of those neat looking letter patches that I own so few of. It's even autographed! It's just a manufactured patch, of course, but it definitely resembles the lettering on the Blazers jerseys at the time during the Adidas days.

The Blazers hits just keep on coming. This signed sticker auto comes from decorated Spanish star Sergio Rodriguez, who spent the latter half of the '00s in the NBA before resurfacing stateside for a season about six years ago. He's still playing professionally these days.

Zach Collins is the NBA's only living and breathing vampire (that we know of.) He's currently a key member of the Spurs after starting his career with Portland.

I think we all know this guy, for better or for worse. There's kind of a strange cut-out for the jersey piece on this card to go along with the wood theme.

Ha is still apparently the only player from South Korea to play in the NBA, which is kind of a cool distinction as he otherwise didn't have much of an impact on the league. He tantalized with his size, but I don't know that the league had as much structure in place twenty years ago to develop raw talent that they do now.

I really liked Gary Trent Jr. while he was with the Blazers and it felt like his trade to Toronto was the beginning of the team's downward slide, even if we didn't know it at the time.

Next up, we have some goodies from long time PWE trader (and Dodger fan) gcrl. A couple of the online exclusive Topps Mini cards were on offer, including this insert from the 2017 set.

This one is even more special as it's numbered to just 25. Ponce de Leon has bounced around a few organizations after his last appears with St. Louis, but he hasn't resurfaced in the big leagues yet.

I also snagged some Allen & Ginter set filling needs from gcrl, including a couple of base cards and this Randy Johnson insert. Will we see a normal late summer release for this year's Allen & Ginter set? I haven't checked the calendars in a bit because my budget for cards has dropped off dramatically of late.

Here's a few more inserts from last year's Ginter set. I kind of want to burn the card at the top.

Lastly, I claimed a few random set fillers from The Angels, In Order back in the winter. (Yeah, it's been awhile!) Those Royals jerseys definitely scream early '00s to me.

The 2014 Topps Heritage New Age Performers design is one of my least favorites. It squishes the player photo over to the side unnecessarily. I get how they were trying to make this look like it should with with the 1965 Topps theme, but it doesn't work for me.

I also claimed this slightly smaller ("mini"...ish) parallel card of Mike Sweeney from the 2005 Bowman Heritage set. I've managed to add some Bowman Heritage cards to my meager set builds since I started trading on TCDB, but that area could still use plenty of work.

Thanks again to everyone who has sent me envelopes of all sizes!

Strange Blazers and Weird Cardinals

Interesting cards about from @sanjosefuji including my NBA and MLB teams. 

 

The Chronicles of Fuji brought the strangeness recently! A bubble mailer I received from Fuji back in June included a bunch of unique cards, primarily from my top two favorite pro sports teams. Instead of featuring the usual crop of current team dudes, these cards went way back into the all-time team rosters for some fun (and strange) cards.

Ha Seung-Jin came from an era where his status as a huge basketball man was enough to get him drafted, but he always looked completely out of sorts while on the court. I've looked him up occasionally over the years to see if he ended up having a big career overseas, but there isn't a whole lot of data other than that he was a participant for a lengthy time.

Ah yes, Greg Oden. He certainly qualifies as strange. This is a good looking wood paneled style card, numbered to 50.

Martell Webster is one of several Northwest basketball players who ended up starting a career in hip hop, either as a side gig or a post-playing career thing.

From the other team, Fuji sent stuff from several different years, including a couple of 2004 Topps Total card. This is a classic shot of a first year pro player just waiting for his turn to do something.

Even with the power of the internet at my disposal, I couldn't figure out what this card was at all. It's almost paper thing and lots of info on the back, but the front looks like it was spit out of an '80s dot matrix printer.

It's a super early Yadi card! This is really cool. This is actually a "gold edition" version of his regular Just Minors card. I don't know a whole lot about Just, but they certainly made some weird cards over the years.

The most exciting card of the bunch by far was this Jose DeLeon, my first 1991 Topps Desert Shield card! I've been reading about this gold foil stamped set for nearly thirty years now, but never owned (or even touched) a single copy of something from this set until now. I've gone so far as to have a card or two in my shopping cart at certain websites before, but never quite could pull the trigger.

Lastly, Fuji was one of the latest to help out with my 2020 Turkey Red quest. I knocked off another four from my list today thanks to a recent blaster pickup. Please let me know if you're able to contribute!