A Menagerie of Minis (and More)

Set needs and Cardinals needs in another @nightowlcards delivery. 

I think I've just about made it through July's trade packages to be featured here. The problem is that it's already November somehow. The year is pretty much almost over. I might have to do something I mostly try to avoid and double up on the trade posts (i.e. two packages, two traders, one post.) We'll see how that goes.

In the meantime, look at all of these glorious minis! You can click if you want to see them for real. These, of course, came from super blogger Hall of Famer Night Owl Cards. Most of the ones near the bottom feature the late lamented Old Planter on the back, whose likeness Topps apparently executed and didn't leave a trace of the body sometime back.

Night Owl sent other, larger Ginter set needs as well as this old need from the 2014 Topps Heritage set. I wonder if Topps Heritage 2065 will feature an Election Interference News Flashback card.

In the team collection department was this "cloth" sticker version of Paul Goldschmidt's 2019 Topps Heritage card. I put "cloth" in quotes because the material they use for these is even more suspicious (and possibly caustic?) than the original stuff. I feel like the original cloth sticker cards tend to turn weird colors over time, so it would be creepier if nothing at all happened to their 2019 counterparts.

Finally, here's a short printed Matt Carpenter, on top of the world. He was coming off of a monster second half in 2018 when this photo (presumably) was taken and signed a lucrative contract extension early this year. It did not go well for him in 2019 and it's felt like it's time to move on for awhile now. However, there's that pesky contract to be dealt with, and it's certainly possible Carpenter has some sort of bounceback year... right? Let's hope so.

All Four Sports

All that's missing is something from the MLS? 

Doug aka buckstorecards sent along another fun package over the summer that included cards from the four major sports, as he is wont to do. I picked up some more Oregon Ducks football guys (one will be featured in an upcoming post), as well as pro football guys, hockey guys, basketball guys... maybe even a Cardinal?

Hell yes there was a St. Louis Cardinal! This year's Panini Leather & Lumber product was an interesting gamble, and a couple of others fortunes have turned into my fortunes via trades. I bought a discounted blaster myself and it was definitely fun to look at, but didn't end up with one of these cool baseball chunk signatures. Daniel Ponce de Leon's future with the Cardinals still remains a bit unclear, but it seems like he's got the upper hand on a 26(!) man roster spot next season even if we don't know what his role will be yet.

On the pro football side of things, I really like the design and overall look of this Panini Legacy set. Alshon Jeffery may unfortunately be recently known for a huge dropped pass in last year's playoff run, but I still like what he's done with the Eagles overall. He's a big guy and is usually sure-handed. Usually.

Doug always sends over St. Louis Blues cards, none of which I've ever seen before. I just don't usually look at hockey cards. Backes was the longtime ex-Blues player who had the misfortune of being on the wrong side of the improbable Stanley Cup win in St. Louis.

There were Blazers basketball cards as well! Of course there were. This is Jermaine O'Neal in his rookie year (he was 17!) in the SkyBox Z-Force set. This was a set where they forced Z's into the names of all of their inserts. This is a Zebut. It looks like Z-Butt to me.

I decided to scan this one in the sleeve it came in mostly to make fun of Qyntel Woods, who was a mostly ridiculous person who also did something reprehensible (dog fighting... seriously?!) I also want to believe that someone (obviously not Doug) was actually was trying to charge $10 for this card at one point. Sure, it's numbered, but it's uh... Qyntel Woods. I wouldn't normally scan a Qyntel Woods card. In fact, Michael Vick is the reason I stopped watching the Eagles altogether for a few years and I definitely don't want his cards at all.

I started things off with a bang and I'm ending them with a bang, too. Here's a rookie year autograph numbered to 99 of a Ducks star who is logging quality time in the league now. He's in a bit of a time share at his position, but I feel like he's definitely proven himself as an NFL quality talent at this point.

Thanks again to Doug for all of the sports!

Good Luck Ducks, Week 10: Under the Microscope

Oregon heads to the bright lights of the big city to take on Southern California. 

Taking a moment away from the ridiculousness of sports here, Southern California has been on fire lately. And not the good kind of fire. No emojis here. I can't even imagine how difficult it would be to care about a game of college football at USC right now with all of the things that actually matter that are happening right now. It's scary stuff.

In less important news, Oregon heads into tonight's road game with a shiny new #7 ranking. Their high wire act continued for the second straight week, as they gave up a go ahead touchdown to their recent nemesis Washington State before managing to scramble down the field in less than a minute to kick a game winning (freshman!) field goal. It was stunning, and nerve-wracking, and all of the other descriptive words. With four games left on the conference schedule, the idea of competing for a playoff spot still seems a bit premature, but the microscope is starting to examine this team.

The Trojans pose a similar threat as last week's Cougars did in that they have a massive passing attack (supposedly a version of the "Air Raid" that Mike Leach favors) with an even more talented receiving corps. Of course, talent has never been an issue at USC. The question will be whether or not Oregon can prove themselves yet again that they're at the top of the class in the Pac-12 (and possibly the country.) It sounds like another nail-biter, but it should be fun to watch nevertheless.

• The Last Game: The Ducks continued their dominant running attack, but gave up a crushing late drive that could have given them their first conference loss. A quick strike put them into field goal position where freshman kicker Camden Lewis walked off with a huge win to break a four season losing streak to the Cougs.
• Know Your Opponent: USC wants to put the pedal to the metal, which make sense against the Ducks prickly defense.
• The Unis!: White with yellow pants and yellow helmet. Is it weird that I'm starting to prefer the usually boring road look?
• Mario Cristobal's "Crystal Ball: prediction: "This is the most important game of the year, because it’s our next game." Most likely.

• Luke Skyywalker's Crystal Balls say: Well, I can't really vouch for this website or this nine year old link, but let's just say that Luke has some interesting ideas about using Trojans. When I say S, you say E, when I say X, you say sex!

Game time is 5:00 PM PDT on FOX. GUS JOHNSON, Joel Klatt and Jenny Taft are on the call. Go Ducks... er, in Gus's case... GO DUCKS!

Yellow Gold

Weird parallels. 

Retail exclusives are nothing new, but this season's Walgreen's exclusive deal with Topps was weirdly executed. There's a Walgreen's in my neighborhood, and while I can't say I frequent it even once a week, I've definitely been in there quite a few times during the baseball card year. So it was a surprise today that I ended up finding a single hanger pack on the rack for the first time this year. With the Update Series having already come and mostly gone, it was also strange that this was a Series 1 pack, but I can't really complain. I haven't seen any of this.

If this is all new to you, and there's no reason it shouldn't be, these unmarked boxes sold at Walgreen's contain special exclusive yellow parallel cards. Target and Walmart used to have something like this, and Toys 'R Us had their own incredibly overpriced parallels for awhile until they went out of business (something called Meijer took over the expensive purple parallel business.) And here we have special yellow bordered cards, because Walgreen's and, I don't know, jaundice go hand in hand?

I won't have any trouble finding a home for this one. Baez is the one Cub that I could honestly say I'd probably be a fan of if he didn't wear the dippy duds of the north side Chicago team.

Are there any Orioles fans anymore?

Rafael Devers was probably the "pull" of the pack as far as these things go.

Somebody on the street told me the Washington Nationals won the World Series and I told them to stop smoking that rock.

I never figured out to say this guy's last name.

This is probably going in the Night Owl stack.

There were a few other interesting things in the pack/box, including the requisite inserts. One of the better things about this year's Topps flagship set are these Greatest Moments/Players/Seasons inserts.

Here's another parallel, but you don't have to shop at a certain retail outlet to get one of these.

Is this some sort of ad or... what? It has a card number on the back, so I guess not. It just seems incredibly stupid to show another baseball card framed (askew) on a card and then expect people to care about it.

I'm pretty sure this guy has been almost every pack I've opened since this time of the year in 2008. I'm pretty tired of it!

True Story

A redemption redeemed. 

It's an off night for the World Series and it's also a Monday, so a single card is all you're going to get out of me. On Friday, right on the heels of my Bowman Chrome Prospect redemption showing up, I got another mailer from the Scranton branch with my Trevor Story autograph. As you may recall, I took a rare dip into the hobby box pool earlier on in the year, and the Story redemption was my prize. (I'm actually not entirely sure I was promised a "hit".) Redemptions are always a bit of a head-scratcher for me when it turns out that the autograph is signed on a sticker. I can see a player promising to sign but not having time during the grueling season, but you would think that you wouldn't include someone in a set unless you already had the signed stickers in hand. This process seems like it should only apply to on-card items.

Oh well, it's a nice card of a good player. It's available for the time being, at least until I strike up a trade with a Rockies fan at some point down the road.

Update Time

Closing out the baseball card year with a #CrackinWaxMailday featuring Tommy Edman. 

Once Topps Update hits the shelves, it means that baseball cards are pretty much done for the year. Sure, there will be other releases before New Year's Eve, but it's mostly peripheral stuff. A retail holiday promotion here, some high end stuff there. There's nothing left that I would pay much attention to, personally.

As the final release in my group break Crackin' Wax subscription, Topps Update leaves a bit to be desired for the Cardinals fan. With virtually zero trade deadline movement, a single All-Star Game participant and only a few rookies that didn't make the cut for an earlier set, there are only 7 Cardinals in the entire 300 card base set.

Paul Goldschmidt finally gets a non-airbrushed card, but even his inclusion wasn't all that necessary. Lane Thomas suffered an unfortunately late season injury and Andrew Knizner was relegated to third catcher duties, meaning that we only see three other playoff participants in the set, along with the requisite Paul DeJong ASG card. It would have been nice to see Tyler Webb in the set, but fairly anonymous relievers get overlooked even if they become a key component of a team's bullpen. Randy Arozarena and (probably) long-time minor leaguer Rangel Ravelo will end up getting held over as RCs until the 2020 set.

Here's a "150 Years" parallel of Paul DeJong's All-Star card. There are far too many parallels in this year's set.

I'm a huge fan of the hobby-only Topps Black parallels from over the years, so it was nice to get this Tommy Edman card numbered to 67. Along with his base and rainbow foil parallel, I went from zero Edman cards to three. Not bad.

More Rainbow foil parallel action. I feel like Goldschmidt has a lot of boring looking cards.

Here's a foil parallel of a guy who should be a key member of the Cardinals staff for years to come. Since he's a reliever, however, we probably won't see many cards of his in the future.

The 1984 Topps love continues. Here's a blue bordered parallel of an insert.

There was only one Cardinal in this set's silver pack promotion - the aforementioned Lane Thomas. Hopefully he recovers well for next season, because he was exciting to watch in his limited appearances.

More 150 Years of Greatest things... like Bruce Sutter. The design is a little busy, but I still don't mind these cards. I just wish there weren't parallels of them.

Thanks for reading!

Good Luck Ducks, Week 9: The Cougar in the Room

Oregon looks to end a four-game losing streak to Washington State. 

There was a point last week where it looked like the Ducks were going to leave Husky Stadium searching for answers and facing an uphill battle towards regaining conference supremacy. Fortunately, this Oregon bunch looks like a completely different animal than has been seen around these parts in, well... ever? After trailing for most of the game, the Ducks quite confidently and calmly imposed their will against the smaller (?!!) Washington team and just ran right past their line. They bucked most conventional wisdom (and Pac-12 history for the most part) by running the ball when they were behind, even with a highly touted and experienced quarterback taking the snaps. It was an impressive feat to pull off, and it bodes well for the future of a program that seems to be in the process of being completely remade right before our eyes under their former lineman-turned head coach.

Next up are the pesky, dare I say it, dreaded Washington State Cougars. After seeing quarterbacks depart for the NFL for two straight years, it looks like the Cougars are down a bit this year. That doesn't make the four game losing streak to Wazzu any less imposing at this point, however. They're coming off a game where they hammered Colorado, which followed a very close loss to a good Arizona State team. It's a late night game tonight, and there's no doubt that the Ducks will be looking to put this team away early. Injuries and the recent transfer decision of senior Brenden Schooler have begun to limit Justin Herbert's passing targets even further, but they are still in good hands with the offensive line and the powerful running game at the moment.

• The Last Game: Oregon overcame a two touchdown deficit to come back and win 35-31 over their bitter rivals Washington.
• Know Your Opponent: Some are standing up for WSU's defense, which is an interesting position for a team that lost a game 67-63 this season where I swear there were no hoops involved.
• The Unis!: Nightmare green. Thanks, Nike. I guess this is close enough to Halloween, and I am definitely not clamoring for black uniforms to come back.
• Mario Cristobal's "Crystal Ball" prediction: "Complete confidence in them entering this football game." Concentrate and ask again.

• Luke Skyywalker's Crystal Balls say: Uncle Luke apparently coaches high school football now, which would give him unfettered access to Cougar Town. Of course, he's got to be older than most of the players' parents, which is whole different thing altogether. Hood rat, hood rat, hoochie mama 

Game time is 7:30 PM PDT on ESPN. Steve Levy, Brian Griese, Todd McShay and Molly McGrath are on the call. Go Ducks!