Recapping a mega card package and an embarrassing contest update. And yes, it's about that time!
Before I get into the cards (probably why you're here) from Too Many Verlanders, it's time to fess up to a major blunder. I always spend time whining about people who enter my contests and fail to complete certain requirements, especially filling out their entire brackets or actually filling out their game predictions. Well, guess what? That was me this year. While the college football contest doesn't require you to lock in all of your picks before the first game starts like the basketball one does, apparently I screwed something up because none of my picks actually saved. I also didn't bother to go and check on this until the better part of a week had passed since the contest began. Fortunately, it really doesn't matter what my picks actually are because I'm the one hosting the thing, but I still feel very stupid about it. It also means I have basically zero rooting interest in any of these football games outside of the ones that are legitimately important to me (i.e. the Duck-based ones.)
In any case, with a week down and twelve games already completed, Ginko-5 is currently at the top of the table, although many others are in very close pursuit in looking at everyone's maximum possible points. Everyone's records look really good right now, which makes it all the more embarrassing that I'm not really taking part this year. Although it's still fairly early, it already seems likely that this could come down to the championship game about a month from now.
It's high time to check out some cards. Dennis sent over a bunch of stuff from a bunch of sports teams that I follow, and I made no real attempt to organize these by squad or player. First up is a "gold minted" parallel of The Yadier Molina from the dearly departed Topps Fire brand (okay, well, maybe just "departed".)
The Honeyman was a recent Cardinals draft pick (2023), and his name is very close to Honeypot, which makes me chuckle.
I'm still getting used to the whole idea of current college players having trading cards (aside from the stuff they used to give away for free for people heading into the stadium back in the day), but I definitely like it. I've never bought fully into collecting NFL cards, but I could see myself buying blasters of college football cards if they ever came up with a decent set at an affordable price point. (Sage brand cards are too dollar store for me, and the Topps stuff seems too expensive... it would be nice to have a middle ground.)
A.J. Brown could just about put the whole Eagles squad on his back and drag them to the Super Bowl as long as they could find someone who would consistently throw it to him.
Speaking of that guy, well, it really sucks that Jalen Hurts got hurt today. I hope he will be back soon, but it's hard to tell with concussions. Yikes.
Here's Hurts again, apparently scoring on Brown's former team.
Rookie year Smitty!
This is a very classy Matt Carpenter jersey card. I hope that Carpenter's 2024 season isn't his last in MLB. I know that the Cards are not into spending money anymore with dwindling attendance in a league that is now basically just a few major market teams and a couple dozen bottom feeders, but I would love to see him hanging around the clubhouse in some capacity. There's no way he wouldn't take a minimum salary deal, right?
I know that this group of cards is kind of all over the place and not very well organized. This card is... well, I'm not really sure what this is. It's not a jersey swatch or anything, but it claims to be an "official 2004 NBA Draft Ticket" which is... what is that, exactly? Is it supposed to be a cut up piece of an actual paper ticket that someone would have used to gain entry to the draft, which was probably free? And it does say "VIP" on it, which is kind of fancy. Anyway, Sebastian Telfair always seemed like the floor as far as what Scoot Henderson could be, and I'm hoping he will greatly surpass those fears. He could definitely use a better head coach right about now, because Chauncey Billups is dreadful to put it mildly.
Baseball had Sweet Spot, which made Sweet Shot Upper Deck's NBA equivalent. A signature on a basketball swatch definitely pops.
Dennis sent me two of these David Kopp Bowman signatures. This one is the refractor version. I didn't scan the base version, but it looks remarkably similar. Kopp topped out his playing career at AAA, but he's spent most of this decade as a coach at the University of Florida.
It's our second Pauly D jersey card of the post. This one has a much more interesting design than the rather plain white looking "full-sized" relics of past Allen & Ginter sets. It also comes with a Victory Blue jersey bit.
I didn't buy a lot of 1992 Score packs, but I do remember how difficult it was to get any of these The Franchise inserts. I believe this is the last one of these Musial inserts I needed for the set. To be fair, I apparently didn't buy much of anything from the 1992 season. It was a weird downturn in my early collecting days. I came back briefly in force the following year as the 1993 Upper Deck set was amazing and had all kinds of cool inserts to drool over. And then I stopped for more than a decade.
He wasn't an Eagle for long, and I doubt there are a lot of T.O. jerseys floating around the Philly area, but for a short time it all came together with Owens and McNabb and all of the great talent around them. Until it stopped.
This is one of the more interesting additions to my Randall Cunningham collection, as he appears here (Milhouse voice: "in pog form!") with future Eagle Ricky Watters.
I wouldn't say I slept on 2023 Allen & Ginter, but I made a definite call not to collect it. That doesn't stop me from admiring the game-used memorabilia designs.
This isn't even a card, but it's a really cool mini Cardinals pennant! It has found a home in my home office space.
I remember these fancy looking Legends Memorabilia books (or magazines? book-a-zines?) kicking around the old card shops and malls back in the day. There were also those Ballstreet magazine things that came with cards like these that you were supposed to cut out as well. They were all just as unlicensed as the janky bootleg cards old dudes would try to sell you for a buck or five, like the ones with Bo Jackson or Bart Simpson, or Bo Jackson with Bart Simpson. These just looked more legit because they were fancier and shinier and printed on more expensive paper, I guess. In any case, I love this. Some jerk would have probably charged me at least $5 for this in Portland in my teens, which could have bought me lunch at Wendy's twice!
I haven't tried Googling Legends at all because it seems unsearchable, but I suspect that this brand was also affiliated with a mall store we had in the suburbs of the same name. It's also very possible that someone else had an idea to call a mall store with sports memorabilia "Legends" because it's a pretty common word applied to sports stars of a certain stature.
We're winding down here, but not before we check out the two largest card things in the package. Sidney Wicks was one of the leading scorers of the first era of the Trail Blazers franchise, essentially passing the baton off the Bill Walton who led the team to their first title. He was before my time, of course, but made the All-Star team four times despite never making the playoffs. Typically there's a very anti-non-playoff team bias when it comes to selecting players for these honors now.
The last thing to show off in this impressive collection is another Legends thing. It's not one of their cut-out standard sized cards, though, but a postcard of Stan the Man. I love stuff like this, and if anyone out there has something weird or non-standard that you think might suit my interests, feel free to fire away.
Happy Holidays everyone! Don't forget to make your picks!
