Transitional Season

 

Shifting from summer sports to fall sports with help from a huge stack of cards from each.

This time of year can always sneak up on a person. The Boys of Summer are winding down while the gridiron lines have been painted and are ready to go. Full-on hoopin' is just around the corner. Let's check out some cards from the fall sports and a few baseball ones from buckstorecards, with the typical several months time delay you're used to seeing around here.

Cooper Hjerpe starred locally (at Oregon State) and wound up drafted by the Cardinals, which means that they are actually some intentional Beavers cards in my collection. Hjerpe (pronounced JER-pee) is on his way back from suffering some major injuries in his pro career and could look to make a big league impact at some point.

Here's a Triple Threads card with that canvas-y feel of old Eagles favorite Brian Westbrook.

My Ducks collection gets another fairly low numbered card in this Luke Ridnour "Proof" from 2009-10 Studio.

A pair of Ducks football players team up here on a Playoff Contenders inserts from around 20 years ago.

Kramer Robertson only had a single plate appearance in the big leagues across two games and would end up hanging it up after that final season (2023).

Oregon has always been successful at placing quarterbacks in the pro ranks, although for a time many of them were journeymen like A.J. Feeley.

This might be my first and only Harry Giles Blazers card, but it's a good one!

Here's a numbered (to 100) Reuben Droughns card from Score Select, capturing his move from the Browns to the Giants.

Speaking of Cleveland Ducks, Dillon Gabriel started about half of his pro team's games in his rookie season but is caught in the middle of the drama where his team's position group also includes the son of Deion Sanders and a sex pest (to put it mildly.)

Demetrius Williams seems to have a ton of football cards for his era and the impact he made on the game, but I'm not complaining. Of course, these days he'd probably have more than three hundred thousand Wild Card so-called one-of-ones.

Although the orange clashes with the lime green here, it's always fun to end up with a shiny new Prizm Troy Franklin card.

This one fits Dolphin colors a bit better.

Panini Origins has long been a hobby exclusive, so any chance at snapping up a single or two of someone I collect from these sets is a nice deal.

The Eagles haul continues here with one of their best all-time running backs, LeSean McCoy.

I'm not really able to place the name Ed Reynolds anymore, but I thought the pink tint of this autographed Prizm card is interesting. Check the breast cancer awareness ribbons as well.

This is another four pack of lesser known Eagles guys on numbered cards (plus another McCoy.)

As is typical, I also ended up with another stack of St. Louis Blues cards. I chose this one from 1991 to scan. I mean, his name is Zombo after all.

First Look at New Donruss

What 2018 Donruss Baseball would look like if it actually existed. 

Before I dive right in to talkin' basketball cards, I want to ask a baseball question. Did Panini lose their MLBPA license? Does anyone know? There are no future release dates to be found, no sell sheets and scarcely a trace of a mention of baseball over at the Panini America website. As much as I dislike logo-less cards, I would only be okay with Panini getting out of the baseball game if I thought Topps was doing a good job. (Spoiler alert: I don't think Topps is doing a good job.)

I'm really here to talk hoops cards (but not Hoops cards), in case you didn't know. Fresh on the heels of the season's first release (NBA Hoops, naturally) comes Panini's version of Donruss. These look very similar in color and feel to last year's release, but trade the quasi-1990 baseball look for something a little more generic. I picked up a blaster recently "for research purposes" and here are some cards from said blaster.

This Retro Series design is a little queasy looking, but you don't see Dave Bing cards every day. Actually, you pretty much never see Dave Bing cards. I am always a fan of throwback NBA cards.

You can tell this is a late career David Robinson photo because the uniform has the championship trophy patch on it, something that I associate with the NBA on ABC era. Robinson won the second of his two rings in 2003, so let's go with that.

Another year, another Sixers #1 draft pick. And like many of those who came before him, Fultz has injury issues. He also was an incredibly suspicious choice for a #1 pick in my book, the best player on an awful Pac-12 team for just a single season. Of course, you could also say the same about Lonzo Ball, though his team was pretty solid.

More Retro! The Ice Man! I love it.

Gordon Hayward's first All-Star appearance probably came at the expense of Damian Lillard not making the team again. He was famously dealt to Boston, played 5 minutes and suffered a gruesome injury.

My promised one-per-blaster guaranteed memorabilia or auto. It's always memorabilia, isn't it? Harry Giles is someone who I keep having to remind myself is a (theoretical) NBA player, and not Harry Stiles, or Prince Harry -- who sounds like he could be a Harry Giles -- for that matter.

Buddy Hield once slaughtered the Ducks while he was playing at Oklahoma, and I'll never forgive him for that. Or, at least, I'll never forget. One of those two.

This reminds me of something SkyBox would have done back in the day.

Gordon Hayward wasn't the only All-Star to change teams this season, as Kyrie is now in Boston.

I expected more parallels for some reason, but this "orange laser" Doug McDermott ended up being my only parallel pull of the box. It is not numbered.

I find it really obnoxious that the Lakers wear MPLS throwback uniforms at times. Of course, I find everything the Lakers to do to be pretty obnoxious. I do love the look and feel of all of the Court/Hall/Rookie Kings cards, though.

Finally, a Blazer makes an appearance. Here's my first card of Jusuf Nurkic in a Blazers uniform.

Biggie Swanigan got a taste of the NBA life when he got a few starts last month, but he seems to have been exiled to the end of the bench ever since. Yes, Panini is still hanging on to the classic Rated Rookie logo.

Here's Swanigan on one of those Kings inserts that I like.

Hassan Whiteside, rebounding machine.

And finally, here's the Rated Rookie card of the Blazers other draft pick. Portland moved up to get Collins, a lottery pick at #10, and he's now getting his turn at center with Nurkic temporarily on the shelf.