World Headquarters Edition

Green football and loads of baseball. 

 

Awhile back, Dennis from Too Many Verlanders came into a bunch of cards and was generous to share some of the spoils with yours truly. As is often the case, the package came with an excellent selection of football guys I collect. You know, the guys in green! Nick Foles is near the top of my list of modern Eagles to collect as he led the team to the promised land not too long ago, so it's always great to pick up something fun like this rookie patch thing.

Green means Ducks as well (mallard green!) DAT was a fun player to watch, always a complete blur on the field. (Didn't they call the offense "the blur offense" at one point?) Many of my favorite looking Oregon cards were made by Upper Deck for some reason.

Patriots rookie (well, last season) Christian Gonzalez looks especially good here in a green parallel version. I'm glad this is from the draft set where Gonzalez is wearing his college gear, although I'm sure I'll eventually have a bunch of his cards where he's wearing that dastardly Patriots garb.

Marcus Mariota may not be wearing green here, but it's alright by me.

These playing card-themed inserts are pretty silly. I don't know that I've seen any other ones besides Gonzalez.

DAT is back again, this time on another Upper Deck card in acetate.

I don't think I have a clue about this brand. Pro Picks? It blends in with Wild Card and Leaf and Sage and whatever other small potatoes college brands are out there. I never really see this kind of stuff on shelves.

Akili Smith's son, also a quarterback, is set to join the Ducks next year. I wonder how much influence Smith Sr. had on his son's recruiting decision, considering how different things are at UO now than they were in the late '90s.

It's back to Eagles territory we go with a few more former Birds. The current team is set to open their season with the Packers in Brazil shortly.

I always thought Mack Hollins would make a much better name for a lineman, or at least not a skill position guy.

Jalen not-Hurts looks absolutely thrilled to be stuck inside this Christmas ornament. Does Panini release a holiday-themed version of their Donruss football set like they do with NBA Hoops, or was this just part of the regular set?

After all of those football guys to get your football weekend started (FOOTBALL!), here's a former Trail Blazer basketball pro. The backdrop of these cards looks like some cheesy computer generated graphic pattern that you could find in a Google image search or something.

The red bird baseball team can't avoid the green either.

Looks like mojo!

Elite Extra Edition is a weird and fairly janky looking product every year. It looks like this year, Panini got bored with their usual pink parallels and decided to unleash whatever the heck this is to the collecting world.

There needs to be a prominent set of round cards (or discs!) every year. It should be baked into every contract. I would actually order Slurpees if 7-11 ever decided to bring back their discs, and I never drink that kind of stuff.

We go from the circular to this die cut gem. I think these inserts are fairly tough to come by.

Speaking of tough to come by, I've run across these '90s Sportscenter themed inserts a bunch of times, but I'm pretty sure I've never seen a World Headquarters Edition parallel before. Nice!

Last, but certainly not least, is this huge pile of Topps Heritage cards (mostly short prints!) and Allen & Ginter minis that all checked off various needs from my various wants. One fuzzy picture from my phone can't possibly do this justice, but suffice it to say that I was very pleased with this overall.

Nothing but the Hits

 

Only the best from @walktheplank82 with some St. Louis style hits.

When the 2020 Topps Archives checklist was announced, one of the first tweets I saw from card collectors was the excitement that Bob Walk made it to the Fan Favorites autograph checklist. Of course, that came from none other than Bob Walk the Plank, who sent me a stash of stuff back towards the beginning of the summer. It's always fun when one of your key players makes it into a set like this. Not that the blog was named after him, but I'm doubting Brendan Ryan will make it onto an autograph checklist in, let's say 2030 Topps Archives.

It's also always fun to get a new Jim Edmonds card, like this very on the nose "Shirt Off My Back" jersey card from 2005 Leaf. Memorabilia cards are still very much a thing now even if they aren't as sought after, but they've tended to veer away from the wacky names for sets like these.

I like this one a lot as well, although I'm suspicious about these so-called dual jersey pieces. They look exactly the same! I'm not sure if I have any other cards of Ankiel pitching for Team USA.

I've never been much of a Gypsy Queen fan, but these on-card autographs look really nice. I'll probably never be a big Stephen Piscotty collector because his time with the Cardinals was cut fairly short, but he's a solid player and I'm glad he got the opportunity he did in moving to Oakland.

This one is a Browns card, so it doesn't quite fit into my usual collection... but... it's really nice looking! And it's a bat card of a Hall of Famer, so it really looks like a keeper. I'll have to read up more on Mr. Ferrell when I get a chance.

Thanks again to Bob Walk the Plank! I hope you're enjoying some quality east coast craft brews when you get the chance.

Mirrorful

It's business as usual (?) with another #CrackinWaxMailDay from @CrackinWax

Nothing about life has been business as usual for the past few months, but I've tried to keep the lights on here at Cards on Cards because it's been a readily available distraction. Once again, I picked up a few slots from the daily breaks at Crackin' Wax.

The most interesting product of the bunch (to me, anyway) was the 2005 Leaf Certified Materials set. These cards are by default, extra-shiny, and come loaded with a variety of even shinier parallels and inserts.

My scanner doesn't do justice to the "Mirror Red" cards (they're definitely a lot more red than this). They look really nice in person is what I'm saying. I picked up this Carlos Lee (numbered to 100) which is headed to trade bait land, along with the Scott Rolen jersey card (numbered to 250) at the top of this post. You can probably guess where that Rolen is headed.

These Gold Team inserts look pretty terrific as well. Along with Lyle Overbay here, I also pulled a dupe Pujols that's already been set aside for someone else.

The other interesting break of the week was another shot at 2013 Panini Select. I feel like this set has sparked a lot more interest all of a sudden due to Select's sudden reemergence in 2020 (more on that next week.) It looks pretty nice for an MLBPA-only set.

I also landed this tragic sticker auto of Oscar Taveras. Ah, what could have been.

Check back tomorrow for some more free things.

Gone

Trying to make sense of where the cruelties of life intersect with a game played with a stick and a ball.

I wasn't able to find the words to say about the awful car wreck that took the life of Cardinals prospect Oscar Taveras and his girlfriend yesterday, and I'm not sure that I've got them now. It's weird and sad... and embarrassing... and sad again. Embarrassing and weird when you're standing in line for ice cream and someone posts the screencap of Minor League Guy one last time and you start to tear up. Weird because you feel genuine emotion for someone you didn't know and never had any real connection with. But mostly, it's just sad.

It feels raw and cruel right now. This is the third time the Cardinals have lost an active member of their team in the past 12 years, and it was all the more shocking when it was a guy you just saw on the TV only two weeks previous. And when I read the chatter about what it means for his baseball cards and blah blah blah redemption status blah, I just roll my eyes. Yet I just know that when I see his cards in my Cardinals binders I'll probably get a little bit sick inside, because it will be a crummy reminder of this tragedy.