A Chilly Monday Night PWE Roundup

A trio of small envelopes from @Lost_Collector and more. 

 

Someone flipped the switch from summer to winter here in Portland rather abruptly, as it's been pretty chilly all of a sudden. Still, there are cards to post about back when we were deep into the swing of hot weather. First up is a plain white envelope from AJ of The Lost Collector. I have come across zero of Topps cards at any of the nearby Walgreens locations this year, which is only one less than the number of boxes I found at the drug store chain in 2019. Fortunately, AJ was here to help me out with a yellow Waino Walgreens parallel.

Also in the parallel department is this older Hoops card of Robin Lopez. It still shows him in his New Orleans Hornets (remember those?) uniform, freshly adorned with the now retired Blazers logo. I wasn't much of a fan of that particular logo.

gcrl has been very active in the card blogging world with his current project, cards as i see them. (I respect the lack of caps.) This is yet another parallel card that I needed, with this being the blue variation because it has a blue background. That's how they get ya.

If it's from '84, it must be that I've had this on my want list for decades. 1984 Donruss cards can still prove to be elusive.

PWE #3 comes from a neighbor to the north of Portland in The Diamond King. This one envelope definitely gave a boost to my Rasheed Wallace collection, as you'll see in a bit.

Most of the contents were of the basketball variety. Here's a nice Ozzie Smith insert to break up the run of hoopsters. I believe I own two copies of the memorabilia cards that this design was used for, but not the plain old non-memorabilia insert card. Until now!

That's Clyde the Glide. Real close-up like.

We back away from Drexler's face a bit here on this classy looking card from 1995-96 SkyBox E-XL.

A big Sheed slam brings the post home! This is a gold refractor, numbered to just 99. I like it!

A big thanks once again to everyone who has kept my mailbox busy through this messed up year.

Supersized Supertrade!

The want lists take a beating again thanks to @sanjosefuji and some huge goods from two sports. 

After complaining for years about having no A's fans to trade with, I unloaded a pallet full of Oakland-based cards on a couple of people this summer, with Supertrader Fuji taking a healthy share. While I'm not sure a ton of it will fit in his collection, I am hoping it was at least an interesting lot to sort through. Meanwhile, he responded in kind with a ton of Cardinals needs -- and a few non-Cardinals surprises.

Any time you can add an Edmonds to my collection, it's a huge occasion. This is one of those classy sets that Fleer put out, probably as a one-off, that looks better than a lot of the junk we've been seeing recently.

This year's Stadium Club set ain't no junk (nor joke), however. Here you get a small Randal with one L against a large backdrop. The Arch, Coca-Cola, and absolutely no signs of any adult beverages.

I don't recall ever seeing any cards from this set, which appears to be one of Topps' 50 year tributes they put together in 2001. They Chrome'd up the "entire" 2016 (Series One and Series Two) set this year, but it would be interesting if they randomly chromed up a set from the '80s for no real reason.

Fuji sent a lot of Cards cards from the 2014 Topps Museum Collection set, which was really nice because I'm sure these packs (or boxes or whatever) are way out of my price range ordinarily.

Ah yes, Jose Oquendo. This was one of the many failed attempts at melding baseball cards and card games into one sort of thing. Topps is still forcing these ideas on people today, only they are people with smartphones. (Also known as just phones.)

Also nice? This Topps Traded set rookie card of current Cardinals broadcaster Ricky Horton. I believe I'm down to just needing one of the Cardinals from the 1984 Topps Traded set if I'm not mistaken. Yes, I still need cards from the '80s.

Aside from that glorious end of 2013, Michael Wacha hasn't quite made it as a star yet. He's had some struggles with injuries, one of those things pitchers like to struggle with.

I'd never seen this USA Baseball card of Kolten Wong, who is listed as an OF/C on the back. This card came out a year before he was drafted by the Cardinals, but Topps must have had some sort of rights to make cards of players on Team USA before they actually turn pro. I don't understand how these things work. I am pretty sure that the Cardinals told Wong to donate his catcher's gear to a good cause when they drafted him, because of this guy...

Yadi!

Fuji also sent some glorious Blazer memorabilia cards, like this one of fallen hero Brandon Roy. Well, he's not actually "fallen", he just can't play basketball anymore because his knee turned to dust.

The artist also known as McBob wasn't a Blazer long, but while he was he was that 12th guy off the bench that people would cheer for.

Travis Outlaw had some good years with the Blazers after being drafted out of high school and developing into a stretch four, before that terminology came into wide use.

I love throwback jerseys. I love throwbacks in basketball. I wish the Blazers would use them more, but they've gone to more of a fauxback jersey in recent years instead. It still looks good, sans sleeves of course.

SHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEED! And we have reached our final destination.

O!

Celebrating a Blazers playoff win with a Listia win. 

I picked this 'Sheed card up off of Listia (yeah, I still use it) the other day, and it was waiting in the mailbox for me tonight when I got home from watching the Blazers/Clippers playoff game down at the local watering hole. The Blazers have now won three straight playoff games for the first time since this guy was the star of the team.

This is a piece of game-worn... (drumroll, please...)... warm-up jacket! If your guess was shorts, sorry, maybe next time?

All Numbered

These sports cards from Thorzul all have one thing in common.

This spring, Thorzul held a group break that consisted of the contents of a big all-serial-numbered multi-sports lot he purchased. Being both a sucker for grab bags, random chance and things that are serial numbered, I opted in and claimed my favorite teams. I even came away with two additions to my player collections.

Ozzie didn't spend his entire career with the Cardinals, of course, but he did retire a Cardinal and spent more than a decade and a half with the team. I guess that counts as Forever? I have really liked a lot of the Fleer Greats cards I've seen over the years, which makes me wish it was something that could be revived at some point.

Albert Pujols is back to doing Pujols things these days, which mainly involves crushing a lot of home runs. His power numbers are on par with some of the seasons he put up in St. Louis right now as we're more or less at the midway point in the season.

It's a rough time to be a Blazers fan right now, so here I can look back to brighter days with a couple of cards from former Blazer greats. With the team now in rebuild mode, there's a decent chance that the upcoming season will see Portland with their worst record since B-Roy's rookie season.

I've always been a huge Sheed fan. This card is very shiny, but the giant serial number detracts from the look far more than it adds anything.

There were a lot of Eagles cards to be had as well, but it was tough to find one to scan of a player I genuinely enjoyed watching. Brian Westbrook shared carries with Correll Buckhalter and Duce Staley over the years. I paid a lot more attention in the McNabb/Andy Reid era than I do now, but having Chip Kelly in charge does keep things more interesting than with most NFL teams these days.

Trade Don't Lie

Is it really almost basketball season, too?

Single game tickets just went on sale for the upcoming NBA season, and I ended up snagging some nosebleeds for the Blazers opener against Oklahoma City the other day. Buying NBA tickets in the 90+ degree summer heat really took me out of reality for a moment, though. In light of the upcoming season, I'm going to be contacting those of you who have signed up for the (Free-ish) Basketball Card Trading club. I plan on making some more of those kinds of purchases in the fall and will need some fresh mailboxes to dump those excess (non-Blazers, non-Ducks) cards. If you're interested at all in something like that, feel free to contact me and snag a team or some players. Don't worry if someone else has claimed something, because I will be clearing out some people who never responded to me with addresses or anything like that. (I have a lot of extra Suns and Pistons cards, to name a couple.)

Reader Brandon L recently swapped cards with me, netting me this high quality Sheed jersey card. Rasheed Wallace is one of my all-time favorite Blazers (and players, to be honest). His antics were always at least entertaining, and even if he didn't exactly ingratiate himself to the media (or some of his teammates), he was the center figure of some of the best Blazers teams in the history of the franchise. It feels like only recently that the team is finally stopping to gloss over the Sheed era, at least the parts that don't necessarily overlap with the Jail Blazers era. (They were kind of the same thing, but they were only "The Jail Blazers" in the media when they weren't winning.)

Brandon also sent me another really nice gem that you'll see here on Saturday morning. I'm sure you know what that means.

All-Star Break Blazers Report

It's been awhile since I've done one of these. I'm not really burned out on the Blazers so much as I just haven't known what to say about this team. I think it's safe to say that they've exceeded expectations in some respects while also being rather disappointing in others. Portland has gone 8-4 since I last posted, so I scanned 8 more cards from the lot of 50 that I bought at a game early in the season. If they reach 50 wins, which I feel should be a solid goal, I will happily be able to scan every card in the box. Right now they sit at 32-20 at the All-Star Break, which is slightly off the pace due mostly to an uninspired loss to Golden State on Thursday.

Let's start with the good. Brandon Roy has been good. Crazy good. Scary good. So good that he routinely gets team announcers to say "a quiet 30 points" and you don't think much of it. So good that you're already mentally running up the court to get back on defense as soon as he starts driving to the layup. The guy is an All-Star for the second straight year and should have received a lot more votes than he got, even in the West.

Lamarcus Aldridge has also been good. He hasn't quite been the All-Star that some were predicting prior to this season beginning, but he's good enough that he could have easily been an injury replacement had Shaq's arthritis flared up or had Pau Gasol been arrested for frightening small children with his face. Aldridge has been showing off more post moves than at any point in his career, even though he'll probably always be more comfortable away from and facing the basket. He's a serious weapon, and I would like to see him get more shots when the offense isn't clicking.

The rookies have all made serious contributions to the team as well, and it's something that definitely makes Portland unique in my mind. The Blazers start two rookies - Greg Oden and Nicolas Batum, and Rudy Fernandez is always one of the first players off the bench. Since the injury to Steve Blake, Jerryd Bayless has entered the rotation and single handedly gotten the Blazers back into games with his relentless attacks at the basket and constant movement on defense.

So what is there not to like? The team just isn't beating teams they should be. A good, solid playoff team does not lose to a team like the ex-Sonics. They don't fall behind by double digits in nearly every game in 2009. Winning always seems to be a struggle with this team lately, and the lossses are usually penciled in as losses in the first half.

The Blazers aren't showing much resistance on the defensive end, especially around the perimeter. There are times when it just seems like they turn their defense on like a switch. When it's working, they are one of the toughest teams in the league to play. Most of the time, the switch doesn't seem to be on. Is that the coach's fault? Nate McMillan seems to suggest that he doesn't have players who are good defenders, but isn't he supposed to be a defensive-minded coach? Why isn't the team defense concept working?

About the cards:

• Mark Bryant is now an assistant coach with the former Seattle Sonics. His card is from the Topps return to NBA cards in 1992. 2008-09 will be their last officially licensed set, at least for awhile.
  
• Terry Porter is about to be fired just a half of a season into his first season as Phoenix Suns head coach. Tough break for him.
• I had to look up Dave Johnson's Wikipedia page, because my only lasting memories of him are on cardboard.
• Clyde Drexler is now an announcer with the Rockets FSN broadcasts. If you don't know who he is, then you're probably not reading this post anyway. I liked the hardwood floor design of Upper Deck's first basketball release.
• Rasheed Wallace. The Man, the Myth, the Legend. Not a great card design. It looks like the photo is being squashed by the borders and the borders are closing in on Sheed.
• Rod Strickland got a nice write-up in the local free weekly Portland Tribune recently. The card looks like some of the early/mid '90s baseball designs.
  

• Jerome Kersey was a ferocious dunker and competed in at least a couple slam dunk contests that I can remember. Back then there were a lot more competitors (at least eight?) before Jordan wimped out and others followed suit.
  

• Cliff Robinson ushered in the headbanded Blazer look (he was ahead of his time) and he was pretty much the key player that overlapped the Rick Adelman era and the Jail Blazers era.
  

Bonus: Last night during this season's NBA All-Star dunk "contest", Rudy Fernandez took off his own red Blazers jersey to reveal a Fernando Martin Blazers jersey in honor of the first Spanish player to play in the NBA before proceeding with his first dunk. Martin only played in a couple handfuls of games for the Blazers before returning to Spain to play where he was nationally famous. There were only two things wrong. First off, it always bugs me when a "retro" jersey isn't retro at all (the undoubtedly custom Martin Jersey was done in the current uniform style.) Secondly, the announcers kept pronouncing his name "Martin" a la Martin Lawrence instead of Mar-TEEN, the proper Spanish pronunciation. That, and I think the wonder about the mysterious jersey may have distracted people from the ensuing dunk as Rudy got completely robbed on his scores from the "judges".

Rudy's dunks, by the way, were both impressive and imaginative. It was pretty obvious that the affair was fixed (at least up until the final round), with the pre-planned "plot" that took place between Dwight Howard and Nate Robinson. I think I'd rather watch H-O-R-S-E, er, G-E-I-C-O.

(P.S. Bring back Franz bread Blazers cards!)

TWBP: Living by the Three, Dying by the Three

It's time for another Token Weekly Blazers Post. This past week the Blazers went 2-2, so you get to see two more cards from the 50-card box that I got at a game I attended a couple of weeks ago. The week began with a frustrating loss to Golden State where it seemed like Portland was positioned to win their 4th game of the long 5-game road trip, only to come up short in the final minutes. The Blazers followed it up with two blowout victories over Chicago and Sacramento before falling to Phoenix last night.

It seems that while getting used to involving the post more in the offense with the addition of Greg Oden, Portland's become even more dependent on the inside-out game. If baskets are coming easily, like in the blowouts against inferior teams, there are plenty of wide open 3-point chances to take and Portland has plenty of players capable of making them. Unfortunately, as we saw last night with Phoenix, when the opponent plays a swarming and physical defense those wide open 3-point shots suddenly become a bit more contested and frequently missed. It seems like this team has taken a step forward where they are able to beat the teams they should, but they need more quality road wins like the Orlando win earlier in the year to solidify their playoff chances. For the record, I still think they have a decent chance of winning the division that everyone was ready to hand to Utah before the season started, but we'll see. Right now Portland sits one game back of both the Jazz and Denver.

About the cards:

• I love the Rasheed Wallace Ultra card. It used to be that, outside of regional issues, home court pictures of Blazers were hard to come by. I think most of the NBA photography in the early 90's happened at Madison Square Garden in New York, so we got to see a lot of black jerseys. Meanwhile, #30 is being retired later this season for Terry Porter and Bob Gross but not for good ol' Sheed here. Personally, Wallace is still one of my favorite Blazers of the past, but he got on the wrong side of the media (obviously) and has an incredible legacy of "bad ideas" in Portland.
• I fondly remember getting McDonalds cards with my Value Meal (#1) during lunches at high school. The Drexler card is one of those cards, and Clyde is my all-time favorite player period.
  

Bonus: This arrived in the mail one day for me, as an enticement to buy season tickets. Now one of my CD racks is uncomfortably familiar with Brandon Roy's face.