Pick a Team

 

How many teams can Panini cram into one player's card? 

Wesley Matthews is one of my favorite ex-Blazers, and I continue to seek out his cards whenever it makes sense to. One of my recent pickups was this Panini Status jersey card from the 2018-19 season, via a TCDB trade. Matthews is pictured with the New York Knicks, but is listed as a member of the Indiana Pacers under his name. We also see the Panini standard verbiage on the side of the card explaining that the player has changed teams. I have no beef with this, and actually prefer it to the usual Topps practice of either using Photoshop when a player changes teams or just leaving the player with his old team until the timing is right.

On the back, we see the Pacers logo, but something else jumps out. If you zoom in closely, you'll see that the "game-worn material" was actually worn (allegedly) by Matthews when he was with the Dallas Mavericks. Now, I understand that there is going to be a lot of team-switching involved with the base card process, but I wish they would just align the player's photo and team designation with the memorabilia pieces.

Matthews has changed teams a number of times in recent seasons. In fact, the most surprising thing about this card is that Matthews only appeared in two games with the Knicks! This is almost like catching an appearance of Rasheed Wallace in a Hawks uniform. It's almost like it never really happened, but here we have real documented photographic proof.

Panini Points, Redeemed

The much-maligned redemption system has its occasional perks. 

 

People who open a lot of Panini products like to complain about Panini Points. They like to complain a lot. The idea is that a "points" rewards card is inserted into a box in lieu of a "hit", which allows the company play fast and loose with the number of big cards a given box is expected to yield. (Remember, these companies liberally throw around the term "on average" to get around sounding like anything is guaranteed.

 

I've actually ended up with Panini Points twice in my collecting life, and both times ended up finding some worthwhile things to redeem them on, at least for my weird collecting needs. One of the biggest complaints is that Panini charges a significant amount of shipping to send these cards to you once you've made your selection, making it feel like you're just buying the cards instead of making a redemption. The main way to combat this is to find something in the store you might already buy (a box, perhaps?) That way, the shipping charge difference between buying the box itself and adding the Panini Points redemptions is negligible. At least, that's how I sell it to my brain. (If you're curious, I bought a Donruss baseball "mega box".)

My Points this time came from a failed redemption that I submitted more than two years ago. It was supposed to be some sort of Milwaukee Brewers autograph of a lesser known player, if I recall. It was pulled for me in a box break. I knew I'd much rather have a card or two for my personal collection than the random Brewers player, and while it took a bit of work to get there, I ended up with two cards I'm happy to own. I'm always looking to add new Wesley Matthews cards to my collection, and the Josh Huff rookie autograph checks both the Oregon Ducks and Philadelphia Eagles boxes for me.

You can see what I ended up with during my last trip to Panini Points Lane (scroll to the end). I think I went one for two on that trip, with a signed card by a late Blazers great and jersey card of a guy who once said some regrettable stuff.

It's Baseball Season!

Cards from @pennysleeves to soothe those playoff blues. 

Unfortunately, things have taken a bit of a turn since my enthusiastic post over the weekend. The Trail Blazers dropped both of their first two games at home, and now face a 2-0 deficit to a New Orleans team that's being carved up by Jrue Holiday and a guy named Rondo, someone it feels like hasn't been relevant in almost a decade.

Still, there are always cards from around the country to drown my sorrows in, like this fine J.D. Drew Piece of the Game bat chunk sent over from Jon of A Penny Sleeve For Your Thoughts. This is a solid reminder that it's truly baseball season now, and... wait... did the Cards game just get cancelled again? Between an outbreak of injuries and a plague of PPD's, it's been really hard to get into the 2018 MLB season so far. Fortunately, we're just three weeks in, and I'm starting to see a lot of sunny icons in my weather app... in Portland, who doesn't have a team... yet?

Jon sent a ton of other non-baseball cards, which I'd like to show off here. Brandon Roy reminds us of that wonderful playoff 4th quarter against the Dallas Mavericks, bringing the Blazers back from the brink of elimination against the eventual champs. It would prove to be his last NBA hurrah, unfortunately.

Former Ducks star QB looks great on this mid-'90s refractor. Mid-'90s refractors don't exactly grow on trees, so this was especially cool to see.

I think this crazy laser (?) etched 1995 Stadium Club card of vintage Randall Cunningham currently holds the top spot in my theoretical list of Best Cards Received in 2018. I am actually afraid to touch this card, given how fragile the little notches in the card appear to be.

From tiny laser-etched notches to clear acetate, here's a card from Jim Jackson's brief turn in a Blazers uniform. "Trader Bob" Whitsitt caught a lot of flack for some of the players he put in Portland, but it sure made for some interesting basketball cards from the many years that I never looked at cards.

Ty Detmer may not have been the best Eagle, but he was a college star. This is an interesting photo choice, with the QB becoming the receiver, I guess.

Finally, here's an urgent Wesley Matthews, ready to bail me out of this sports funk. If only he was still in a Blazers uniform right now! I have no doubt he could pull this spiraling group together to pull of a win down in Louisiana.

Anyway, Cards/Cubs is supposedly happening tomorrow around the lunch hour. I'll be at work, listening to baseball, hopefully.

Great!

A greater than great set of cards from @Lost_Collector 

I like to say that every trade I've made through the blog over the years has been great, but certainly there are occasions where something I get back is a little more... great. This is probably one of those teams. Sometimes I struggle to find an overarching theme when I want to show off a bunch of cards I got in the mail, so let's just say this group of Cardinals and Blazers was G-R-R-REAT, Tony the Tiger style.

In his age 39 year, Carlos Beltran is still very productive when healthy, so he's been a name that's been bandied about in trade talks. I'd have to say that I wouldn't mind seeing him back in St. Louis, with his name tossed in Mike Matheny's daily lineup raffle.

It's easy to get wistful when you see a nice Brandon Roy card, but the guy did accomplish quite a bit in his brief career. The Blazers haven't had many 3-time All-Stars in their team's history -- only four others accomplished this in a Portland uniform.

Jim Edmonds was talking about injuring his unnaturally huge oblique muscles on the air during a game the other day. Talk about a humblebrag.

Meyers Leonard just re-upped with the Blazers for another 4 seasons, so the team that made the surprising playoff run will be largely in tact come next fall. This is a good thing. Hopefully this enormous 3 point shooter will stay healthy all season.

Here's a lefty swing even Jimmy could envy. I assume Stan's oblique muscles were made out of weapon's grade titanium alloy.

I've never been more tempted to buy a Topps Now card than I was this past weekend after Adam Wainwright threw a shutout on the day the entire 2006 World Series team (give or take a Carpenter) was in house to celebrate their tenth anniversary. Which is to say, I was just slightly more tempted than I am to walk out into the street in front of a speeding bus.

Obliques, Achilles... why do I know so much about strangers' limbs and muscles and tendons? Sports are weird.

Here's hoping that Wesley Matthews comes back stronger than ever next season, even though he'll be wearing the wrong uniform once again.

Thanks again to The Lost Collector, who may be intrigued to know that I own two distinct pairs of New York Knicks themed socks. Throwbacks, of course.

All the Ex's on Cards

Players change teams, but sports cards are forever. 

Postage fees are getting out of control to send stuff out of the country, but Sportscards From The Dollar Store always makes sending stuff to Canada worthwhile. Of the cards I picked out to scan today, I noticed a common theme in that most of these guys no longer play for the team I'm a fan of, like Nicolas Batum. Batum was traded away as the first bomb that was dropped on the Blazers after their frustrating playoff exist last spring at the hands of the Memphis Grizzlies. Batum's role within the offense had been stifled a bit of late, so it was almost a little relieving to see him move on to a new team (Charlotte) where he could produce.

Of course, everyone has to leave their alma mater, but Northwest native Jonathan Stewart is always a Duck. After years of sharing the backfield load with DeAngelo Williams, Stewart was finally the lone featured back with the Super Bowl losing Carolina Panthers this year. He had a nice season. I had to pick a Ducks card to scan after Oregon's basketball team snagged their first ever #1 seed in the upcoming tournament. (Wrong sport, I know.)

Lillard is the one guy here who didn't change teams. Dame has been thermonuclear lately, even while operating in Steph Curry's shadow. Our new franchise player put up two 50+ scoring games to become the first Blazer to do that since before I was born. I have a feeling he has another one in him before the regular season is over.

I think buckstorecards must have gone in on a box or a group break of the 2013 Panini Hometown Heroes set, because I got a bunch of this stuff. I love cards in disc form and Sportflics/Slurpee disc style cards, so I love this.

I ended up with the lion's share of the team set (should probably figure this out one day) and chose Scrabble as the one to scan. He wasn't around St. Louis long, but his acquisition played a key role in the 2011 title run.

Finally, here's my fave ex-Blazer with an on-card autograph. His numbers are down this season in his first with Dallas, but he suffered an absolutely devastating injury. I'm hoping that he's just not "all the way back" and will improve in time, even though he plays for the hated Mavericks.

A National Hero

An impressive collection of basketball cards sent my way included my new most prized possession.

Jon of longtime website Community Gum was lucky enough to hit up the National this year, something I've scarcely even dreamed of doing. I'm more of a small potatoes card show kind of guy, but I nearly (nearly!) fell out of my chair when he reached out to me to ask if there's anything he should look for that I might be interested in. This is just part one of a multi-part post as I don't feel like writing about baseball tonight for some strange reason, so we'll just be looking at hoopsters here.

Upper Deck has carried on the Fleer line long past its expiration date in its basketball product, as it recycles old designs to show players in their college uniforms as Fleer Retro. It's a weird concept. Obviously, I'd be more interested in these sets if Upper Deck had an NBA license, but there's always room in my collection for The Glide as a Houston Cougar or Houston Rocket. This EX throwback uses a clear acetate meets die cut style that Upper Deck shouldn't be able to afford to manufacture at this point. Are they out of business yet?

These crazy Bread for Energy/Bread for Health inserts feature some Blazers of (recent) yore. I deduced that these were from the 2011-12 Panini Past & Present set by seeing this very set on Jon's want list, so he must have had some extras. Felton and Crawford came from a much loathed Blazers team, with Felton arriving to join the team for the first time completely out of shape and Crawford accused of quitting on the team midseason when it became clear that the playoffs were out of reach. I'm not sure who the guy on the far right is, but sources indicate that he's banned from the blog for the foreseeable future. (These still go in the Blazers binder, of course.)

Wesley Matthews was my favorite Blazers player, so last season I finally went out and did what any adult person should do with their disposable income: throw it away on a replica jersey of said player. Wes promptly went out and blew out his Achilles, sealing his team's fate for the season and threw a rolling chain of events his own fate with the team. Matthews supposedly wasn't tendered any kind of contract offer in the offseason as a result of some serious roster shakeup thanks to... (sigh)... moving on. Anyway, I'll be following Matthews' post-Blazers career closely and wish him the best. He will probably be added to my player collections at some point.

Congratulations! What did I win? A... draft pick redemption!

It's a, um, hmm... non-auto as the notes say? I'm guessing there's a story behind this one. Maybe Jon can explain it to me someday.

It's a nice looking card, at least. Leonard is one of the few Blazers that remain from the roster that made the playoffs the last two seasons and he figures to get a larger role in the offense and the much larger leap in playing time that comes with it.

Cool, Panini! Thanks for the "autograph"! (Actually, Panini should be apologizing to Jon, unless it's Meyers himself that is the culprit? I don't know how these things work.)

Here's the kicker - I felt really silly for even requesting this, but the only thing that came to mind when Jon mentioned the National was for him to look out for a good deal on a Clyde Drexler rookie. I have a weird history with Fleer's inaugural NBA set that I don't really feel like getting into at the moment. (Maybe I'll save that for a round of Late Night Blog Confessional?) In any case, I've never owned a rookie card of my all-time favorite basketball player and now I do. And it's in perfect shape! (I couldn't even bear to remove it from the top loader to scan it.) Not that condition matters all that much to me, but I was floored when I saw this card. I am forever in debt to Jon for tracking this down for me and will be keeping his want lists close at hand during my future wheelings, dealings and card show shopping. Even decades removed from Clyde's departure from Portland, his stuff (and all things Blazers) come at a bit of a premium around here, so I've always been hesitant to pull the trigger on one of these.

Thanks again to Jon!

Playoff Mode

It's hard to think about other things when there are playoffs to watch.

I took a journey over to COMC again while they're still in the middle of building a new database since Beckett took their ball and went home. I purchased some cards. I actually have a few cards available to purchase over there, but I don't like to talk about that here. I like to talk about trading here if anything.

So here's a card that isn't available for trade. It was one of my COMC purchases in honor of the Blazers playoff run. They got past the Rockets to advance to the second round in breathtaking fashion late last Friday and are currently up against the Spurs machine.

I'll post some of my baseball finds here at a later date. I chose the one Blazers card because I didn't really have a significant Wesley Matthews card. Year after year, I pick out a player on the team whose jersey I would buy if I was to decide to splurge on that sort of thing. It's usually an easy answer for me, but there are so many likable players on this year's team that it really would take some internal debate. I arrived at Wesley, finally. He's not the most talented player on the team, but he's the heart and hustle. And he's young and improving. He also did a tremendous job on James Harden during the previous series, holding the beard fetishist well below his season averages until the final game. Matthews was undrafted out of Marquette, but shined as a rookie in Utah. Portland threw countless sums of money at him and here we are today, with a deadly 3-point shooter who likes to post up and play defense.

Not everyone makes much of serial numbers around these parts, but I happened to notice a little something. 77. The Blazers won their championship in '77. Remember?