Baseball is Back!

 

Baseball cards are back as well, and they brought a few other sports with them. 

 

Let's hop in the wayback machine and check out some cards that Sportscards From The Dollar Store sent quite a few months ago -- last year, in fact. Yes, that means that I'm quite a bit behind in the blogging show-and-tell here, but I'm not going to explain myself or make any apologies for it. We're here to look forward, and forward we shall look!

Along with a really nice '78 O-Pee-Chee HOFer came a few Cardinals cards, including another one of those "so weird, it must be Panini!" cards that features a silver ink autograph on a leather swatch. If I'm not mistaken, this might be the one year (2019) that they brought typically high end Leather & Lumber brand to retail, which would also mean it was my first dip into the Panini Points realm.

Like many a pitcher with a rocket arm before him, Trevor Rosenthal seemed to burn hot quickly and then more or less disappear. Since departing St. Louis, where he was a full time closer, Rosenthal has logged big league innings for four other organizations but hasn't made it back to the big leagues since the cursed 2020 "season".

Well, I assume you all know all about Stan the Man's story, so let's just take a beat and enjoy a cool looking card. I'm sure that photo has to be colorized, but I don't care.

Moving on to tackle football, buckstorecards always finds me some really fun Oregon cards. Bonus points should be awarded for catching a Duck in Duck gear.

There's no gear here at all, and this weird Panini Day set seems to have a lot of unaccounted inserts in the TCDB files, which can be a bit frustrating. No, I don't really want to figure out my own checklist for this set. Panini can be a real nightmare when it comes to that stuff.

Haloti Ngata is a very large man, so it must have been difficult to fit him in the frame here,. They almost nailed it, but not quite.

I really like the design of this old Topps Finest Donovan McNabb relic. It has a honeycomb thing going on.

This one isn't bad, either. There's no honeycomb, but there's still a hexagonal jersey swatch.

On the other hand, I feel that this design is unspeakably awful. The glittery background almost reminds me of "snow" on an old TV set. This might have looked better with more of a television theme to it, but what do I know? They don't consult me on these things for some reason.

Here's a Turkey Red design that I don't recognize. Did they ever make tobacco cards that looked like this? (I mean, besides the sticker signature, of course.)

I'll always wonder what Joey Harrington's pro career would have looked like if he had started off with a better franchise that didn't rush him to the field because they didn't really have any other options. He was never a big numbers guy, but he was more of a leadership pro. In the right system, I wonder if he could have thrived.

It's the man of many nicknames, FredEx, The People's Champ, etc. (Most of these he gave to himself.) He only really had that one memorable play, but it was definitely a stunner.

Here's another "bonus points" Ducks card.

Here's the first of a pair of fancy looking Dion Jordan "material" cards. Jordan has a ton of cards, and almost all of them are with him wearing Dolphins gear. He didn't really get a chance to make an impact in the pros until he got to Seattle, though.

How long are these rookie photo shoots for the NFL? There are so, so many different cards out there and so many dorky poses that they have to make.

This counts as a little bit of a patch, doesn't it? I can see a little bit of color there that isn't white.

I wish the careers of De'Anthony Thomas and Patrick Mahomes had overlapped a bit more. I could see DAT getting utilized more as a gadget type player once Mahomes started getting more established.

Our last Duck of a very excellent group of Ducks cards is a "Gold Zone" Score parallel of Penei Sewell, numbered to just 50. You can still find some interesting cards in a lower end product.

There's even a basketball card in the mix. Al-Farouq Aminu was a consistent presence in the peak years of the Blazers "Dame Time" era.

Sports cards with no printed name or photo on the front are a bit weird. I can assure you that this is a Brian Elliott card, a longtime goaltender who was still active in the NHL as recently as last year.

I do love a good team photo, even a hockey one. This is apparently from a 1990-91 Kraft Singles set. I'm not sure if it was a regional thing or a wide release, aside from the copyright info on the back telling us it was a Canadian release of sorts.

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!

Feathery eBay Wins

Quack, quack, quack. 

 

Due to the things and the way they are, I promised that I wasn't going to be posting about the Ducks or college football this year in the way that I usually do. At the time, it was not expected that the Pac-12 was going to attempt to stage a season this year, but of course they ended up caving in eventually once all of the other Power 5 conferences decided to put their young unpaid athletes at risk for the sake of a few entertainment dollars (and the schools' coffers, no doubt.) I'm still going to watch, but there's really nothing to celebrate here.

I thought I'd show off a couple of recent eBay pickups today. I can't pretend that this is some sort of coincidence that tonight is Oregon's first game, but you shouldn't expect these posts to continue for what's left of the fall.

I've been so focused on Justin Herbert's NFL debut, and even managed to score a few of his cards before prices got too unruly. It's made me overlook the rest of last year's excellent Ducks team and their cardboard debuts. I got this Troy Dye autograph for super cheap, and it shows off the new(ish) uniforms quite nicely. 

This one I teased on Twitter about a month ago. With an h/t to Dennis for the find, I scooped up this late career printing plate of the Portland native and former Oregon star Joey Harrington from the 2008 Topps Chrome set at a very reasonable price.

Here's the back. Harrington didn't have the best career, but he was a starting quarterback for the bulk of it, which is something not a lot of players can say.

No Time, Some Hope

No time for new Topps when there are trades to document.

Dennis from Too Many Verlanders sent me a bunch of cards for a bunch of other cards as these transactions usually play out. If I'm not mistaken, this may well be the last trade package I received in 2013 that I haven't written about, so it's almost like I'm sort of caught up! Maybe.

Dennis hit up a number of my player collections, and was able to find several Jim Edmonds cards that I hadn't seen before. This one is weird, however. There's probably some sort of weird post-photography digital madness going on her to make this look more like a vintage Bowman card instead of something from 2002, but this definitely does not look like Jim Edmonds. It could be Jimmy, and it probably is Jimmy, but he looks very weird here.

Speaking of weird, we travel back in time to take a look at Matt Holliday as a fresh-out-of-college kid. This is the International parallel of his Bowman rookie card, which is another nice addition to my collection. This is the time to once again point out that anyone that I have a player collection of includes their years spent in other uniforms. I think this is a fairly normal thing, but I know some people have exceptions. In other words, since I don't have Albert Pujols listed as one of my "PC" guys, that means I don't want his Angels cards. I also don't want his Yankees cards after he gets released in a cost-cutting move and New York takes on a portion of his salary.

Oh, hi there, Ozzie! I guess I didn't realize/remember that the Topps All-Star Glossy Send-Ins lasted beyond the '80s and extended into the early '90s.

Finally, about half of the package of cards was comprised of Oregon Ducks football guys, which is great. I cannot get enough of those cards. Many of them go into the pot of cards to be used in future Good Luck Ducks posts, but the crown jewel of the deal cannot be ignored. This is a great looking jersey card, and had Joey's NFL career turned out a bit differently, it might have also been an expensive one. This is probably the time to say that if you're into football cards and you have a bunch of clunker hits lying around of guys like Harrington or Kellen Clemens or A.J. Feeley, I'm the guy you need to talk to if you want to get rid of them.

Good Luck Ducks: Texas Never Whispers

Football.

Oregon says goodbye to its longtime defensive coordinator Nick Aliotti today, as the fiery coach has decided to hang it up after one last football game. That football game will be played against the Texas Longhorns at the Alamo Bowl, which is just more than an hour's drive from the UT campus. As a de facto road game for the Ducks, it will be a challenge to win this game even if you don't consider all of the other factors.

This is the fourth season that the Pac-12 has been affiliated with the Alamo Bowl, and the conference has gone 1-2 against Big 12 opponents in the previous meetings. Last year, Texas defeated a higher ranked Oregon State team in a very close and competitive game. Given how things have gone this season for Oregon, it's really hard to say who will win this one. Even considering the massive almost-home field advantage for the Longhorns, Oregon comes in favored by more than 3 touchdowns. I could see Texas winning in a close fought game just as easily as I could see Oregon winning by 30 or 40 points.

Mack Brown, the longtime head coach at UT, will be coaching his last game in the burnt orange today. Unlike Aliotti, Brown was basically forced out. With pockets as deep as this guy, Texas will certainly lure someone notable to takeover head coaching duties. I wouldn't worry about them too much. It does say something about your status as an elite football school when back-to-back Alamo Bowl appearances means that you've fallen on hard times. Meanwhile, Oregon will be slumming it in a non-BCS bowl for the first time since 2008.

Marcus Mariota should finally be healthy for the Ducks after a month off, while star running back Malcolm Brown should provide a formidable foe. Oregon has had difficulty stopping the run at times this season, but hopefully Aliotti has one last trick up his sleeve.

Oregon's last meeting with Texas resulted in a 35-30 win in the 2000 Holiday Bowl.

Game time is 3:45 PST (on a weekday?) in San Antonio with national coverage on ESPN. Go Ducks!

Good Luck Ducks, Week 10: Fundamentals

Stanford is up next here in just a couple of hours. The former Stanford State Indians bring a power running game and a fundamentally strong running game, led by smarty pants head coach Jim Harbaugh. I believe Harbaugh is a Tecmo Super Bowl player if memory serves me. Stanford now has a tree (seriously?!) for a mascot and their team nickname is some sort of non-pluralized wimpy version of this blog's namesake.

Joey Harrington had a much maligned NFL career, but as a Duck he just won, won, won. He also had something striking in common with current QB Jeremiah Masoli: he would get amped up and would be extremely wild with his early passes. While Harrington used to fire some balls straight into the ground before he caught fire, Masoli has been known to fire darts and put holes in the chests of his receivers. With a road game looming today, it will take a much more calm and focused Masoli to... er... chop down the tree. This will be another big test for first time head coach Chip Kelly, who gets a chance to distance himself from his predecessor Mike Belotti as a strong November coach. A strong November will certainly land the Ducks in the Rose Bowl... or better!

National TV today on FSN at 12:30 PST. Go Ducks!