Sunday Funday PWE Round-Up

Catching up with chunky cards from @sanjosefuji and more! 

 

I don't even want to get into how far behind I've fallen in card stuff here or what led to this situation. Let's just look at some cards! The first bunch came over from The Chronicles of Fuji. Fuji managed to cram a sweet stack of memorabilia cards and relics into a small envelope way back when, and I'm excited to finally show them off to you all.

Oooh, even Joey Heisman thinks these cards are pretty sweet!

Of course, Harrington only finished in 4th place in 2001, but he and his school managed to raise his profile enough that he went on to a decently sized (but not terribly successful) NFL career.

Here's a blast from the past -- it's Josh McRoberts, or McBob as he was affectionately known during his short time around here in Portland. This is one of those neat looking letter patches that I own so few of. It's even autographed! It's just a manufactured patch, of course, but it definitely resembles the lettering on the Blazers jerseys at the time during the Adidas days.

The Blazers hits just keep on coming. This signed sticker auto comes from decorated Spanish star Sergio Rodriguez, who spent the latter half of the '00s in the NBA before resurfacing stateside for a season about six years ago. He's still playing professionally these days.

Zach Collins is the NBA's only living and breathing vampire (that we know of.) He's currently a key member of the Spurs after starting his career with Portland.

I think we all know this guy, for better or for worse. There's kind of a strange cut-out for the jersey piece on this card to go along with the wood theme.

Ha is still apparently the only player from South Korea to play in the NBA, which is kind of a cool distinction as he otherwise didn't have much of an impact on the league. He tantalized with his size, but I don't know that the league had as much structure in place twenty years ago to develop raw talent that they do now.

I really liked Gary Trent Jr. while he was with the Blazers and it felt like his trade to Toronto was the beginning of the team's downward slide, even if we didn't know it at the time.

Next up, we have some goodies from long time PWE trader (and Dodger fan) gcrl. A couple of the online exclusive Topps Mini cards were on offer, including this insert from the 2017 set.

This one is even more special as it's numbered to just 25. Ponce de Leon has bounced around a few organizations after his last appears with St. Louis, but he hasn't resurfaced in the big leagues yet.

I also snagged some Allen & Ginter set filling needs from gcrl, including a couple of base cards and this Randy Johnson insert. Will we see a normal late summer release for this year's Allen & Ginter set? I haven't checked the calendars in a bit because my budget for cards has dropped off dramatically of late.

Here's a few more inserts from last year's Ginter set. I kind of want to burn the card at the top.

Lastly, I claimed a few random set fillers from The Angels, In Order back in the winter. (Yeah, it's been awhile!) Those Royals jerseys definitely scream early '00s to me.

The 2014 Topps Heritage New Age Performers design is one of my least favorites. It squishes the player photo over to the side unnecessarily. I get how they were trying to make this look like it should with with the 1965 Topps theme, but it doesn't work for me.

I also claimed this slightly smaller ("mini"...ish) parallel card of Mike Sweeney from the 2005 Bowman Heritage set. I've managed to add some Bowman Heritage cards to my meager set builds since I started trading on TCDB, but that area could still use plenty of work.

Thanks again to everyone who has sent me envelopes of all sizes!

A Victory for El Maestro

 

Diego Valeri enters the Portland Timbers Ring of Honor. 

 

A couple of Saturdays ago, I went down to Providence Park to watch the Portland Timbers beat the Columbus Crew as the home team honored one of the greatest players in club history. The opponent was no coincidence, as it was the Crew that lost to the Timbers in the 2015 MLB Cup, a game which featured a memorable goal by one Diego Valeri mere seconds into the start of the first half.

Valeri was also named MVP of the league back in 2017. Attendees received this commemorative ticket (Erin also bought a special Valeri scarf made for the occasion.) It's been a rough season for the green and gold, but they're now unbeaten in their last three matches, including a win this past Saturday night in the inaugural Leagues Cup. Hopefully the fun we had on Valeri's big night is a signifier of better days to come for the Timbers.

The Bootleggiest

Thoughts on 2023 Donruss featuring cards from a @Nachos_Grande break. 

 

When Panini lost their MLBPA license at the end of last year, it remained somewhat of a mystery as far as to whether they would continue making baseball cards at all. We'd already seen what the company can and can't do with no MLB license (lack of logos, less promotion, etc.) What happens when you take a knockoff brand and remove all of the active big league players from it?

You get... well... this! It's all retired players and prospects, baby. There are some positives about the set checklist, I suppose, like the addition of more Jim Edmonds cards for me to chase.

Instead of Rated Rookies, the Rated Prospect insert set becomes a subset in 2023. I believe this is my first Gordon Graceffo card.

Buybacks and oddball stuff aside, Ray Lankford's last appearance in a set was back in 2012, and that was on a Fan Favorites autograph card. Despite the brutal card design, the checklist is littered with old friends who hadn't been heard from in awhile.

Masyn Winn is one of the Cardinals top prospects and will likely be appearing in St. Louis before too long.

The white bordered cards are the base design, and there are plenty of colored parallels because it's Panini. They also added a take on the 1990 design. I'm glad they didn't colorize this photo.

New Vince Coleman cards? Yes, please! This red bordered parallel is numbered to the year (2023) as per usual.

I'm not sure if the Rated Prospect portion of the checklist is larger than the Rated Rookies typically were, but I know a number of players (see below) make multiple appearances on the checklist as Panini probably had a finite amount of prospects to play with.

Jordan Walker broke camp with the big league squad, so he is one of the few active players to wind up on the checklist.

Panini did the whole Juan Gonzalez reverse negative thing with this Walker variation. As with past Panini Donruss variations, I don't think this is any more difficult to find than its counterpart.

I probably won't buy any packs or boxes from this set, but I will continue to look at picking up the Cardinals cards that I need from it.

Have a Heart

 

David Eckstein gets a new baseball card for the first time in awhile. 

 

One of the nice things about the internet (there are, actually, a few of them) is that it helps me gain access to regionally produced cards that I would probably never seen in my lifetime. A new David Eckstein card is one of these. It looks like this was an SGA ("Stadium Giveaway") from earlier this season. The card design looks like it comes straight out of Eckstein's playing days, so it took me a bit to figure out that it was actually something new.

The card is for a good cause, of course. If this saves even a few lives by putting the word out there, it was all worth the while I would think. I wonder if there are any other cards like these out there in the wild in 2023.

In da Club(house)

 

Another big batch of Cardinals cards from @flywheels Affordable Group Breaks. 

 

While the Cardinals season continues to circle the drain, I have continued to focus on piecing together my card collection, even though baseball as a whole hasn't been all that fun for me of late. In April, I had another bunch of cards from Colbey shipped my way, and there were lots of goodies to behold!

A number of Panini products were involved, including the always flashy Prizm set. Certain configurations (Quick Pitch?) have these numbered "donut" parallels, and I was fortunate enough to land a couple of them.

Donruss Optic, of course, has all kinds of colored parallels including this blue Goldy numbered to 149.

More numbered Goldy! Goldy Donut Goodness. This is numbered to 199.

Panini's Mosaic set is sort of a knockoff Prizm set. The International Men of Mastery set has the player's national flag in the background and this is a "mosaic" parallel of the regular insert.

Colbey likes to open a lot of older stuff (how else can you consistently keep it "Affordable"?) which resulted me in picking up a couple of these fancy looking base cards from the 1997 Flair Showcase set.

More logoless Panini stuff here. Dylan Carlson has a billion cards on the market for someone who has only been in the league since the pandemic-shortened season.

Speaking of players who have a billion cards, I snagged a couple of J.D. Drew insert cards from the 1999 Pacific set.

I'm definitely grateful for breakers like Colbey, because not many people out there will go near Pacific stuff. How else would I get a cool die cut crown card like this?

The latest and greatest at the time was the 2022 Stadium Club Chrome set. I never managed to find any at retail, but I think there's only 3 cards per pack, so it was probably out of my price range anyway.

I ended up with at least a half dozen base card needs, but my favorite was this Albert Pujols card from his infamous pitching appearance last season. Last season was so fun! This season... yeesh!

Night Owl is All About the Shiny

Surprisingly shiny stuff from @nightowlcards includes a batch of Redbird parallels. 

 

When most of us think of Night Owl Cards and baseball cards, the '70s immediately jump to mind. (Specifically 1975 and minis.) Imagine my surprise, then, when a bunch of sparkly new Cardinals fell out of an envelope I received back from the Dodgers enthusiast back in February.

I've never been one to desire to "chase the rainbow" (we should really call this "Skittlesing") because I consider myself a team collector before a player collector. The conundrum is that a team collector like me still feels the need to hoard every version of every card of every player in that certain uniform.

These red ice (or whatever... actually, Cardboard Connection lists these as "red foilboard" for some reason) cards are serial numbered to just 199 copies. I'm not sure if I've ever pulled one personally.

Topps uses that "ice" effect on their base cards and a similar effect on their fancy Chrome Sapphire sets (see below), but the way they name these parallel designs is maddeningly inconsistent. Panini also does a version of this, and a version of the same pattern you see on X-Fractor cards like Jon Lester here (Panini calls these "building blocks" at times.) It makes me wonder if anyone has any original ideas anymore.

Acquiring a Chrome Sapphire card is a fairly rare achievement these days. I'm always appreciative when someone sends me one out of the blue. Otherwise, I seem to end up with a few of the cheapest ones whenever possible, similar to how I've treated Topps Now cards over the years. I really have a hard time bringing myself to spend more than one dollar on any single card.

I don't think I've seen this particular parallel pattern out of Topps before, but it looks like something Panini has used quite a bit on certain Chronicles and Revolution cards. (Go back to Pacific Revolution to see its origins, I think.) I'm not sure if this was pack pulled or one of those factory set parallels that must drive rainbow chasers closer to the brink of card madness.
 

Of course, we also have the familiar Stadium Club parallels to contend with. At least these are usually easy to identify, with mostly a foil color change here (red, in this case) or a chromium finish there. I'm glad we got one last card of Adam Wainwright as a batter, now that pitchers mostly don't bat anymore.

We're finally back to familiar Night Owl ground here with this four-pack of Allen & Ginter minis. My stack of unsorted A&G minis is getting disturbingly big at the moment, which means it's probably time to do some more of that dreaded organizing soon.

Thanks again to Night Owl and everyone else who has sent me some interesting parallels over the years.

More Affordable Breaks

Catching up with another bunch of @flywheels group break cards. 

 

My card purchases have nosedived in 2023, but I still have a cache of previously received piles of cards to go through before I'm all caught up. This latest bunch is from some Cardboard Collections Affordable Group Breaks that I signed up for late last year.

Panini used an awkward time to debut a brand new baseball product, Capstone, with their MLBPA license expiring at the end of last year. It's possible there will be another Capstone baseball release someday in the future, but I'm expecting Panini to scale back their baseball release calendar significantly now that they can no longer use active MLB players in their sets. (Minor league prospects, apparently, are still fair game for now.)

This was my first look at Capstone (I've since bought a blaster of it), and it's... well, it's okay. All of the cards are thick, and the most commonly found cards from the base set has this extra glossy sheen on them that actually clouds up the scanned images. (See the Nootbaar card for comparison, which doesn't use the extra gloss and instead uses an etched background.)

I really enjoyed receiving this card from last year's Panini Chronicles set. Obsidian is typically a high end brand for Panini in other sports, but it doesn't have its own separate baseball release.

I signed up for a few football breaks (go Birds!) as well. It surely must have been football season. This Wendell Smallwood parallel from the 2016 Donruss set made me wonder what Smallwood has been up to recently. He was last scene a couple of years ago on Washington's roster according to the internet.

The 1999 Fleer Tradition set adds the conference logo to each card for some reason. I received a bunch of these Eagles cards that were new to me, and picked and old favorite of mine (the Duce is loose!) for the scan.

It's back to baseball with the 2003 Fleer Tradition Update set. Again, I was able to fill a number of team collection needs with this one. This Eduardo Perez card is actually a glossy parallel numbered to 100, which is nice. Perez was a key bench guy for four seasons in St. Louis but is perhaps best known these days for being part of ESPN's Sunday Night Baseball announcing booth. (I rarely praise ESPN, but I really miss them having more baseball coverage. Now all we get are Sunday nights.)

This one has an insert-y look to it, but it's just part of the Update base set. I have so many Pujols cards, but I'm never surprised when I find one more.

I also believe I won some sort of giveaway during the breaks, as Colbey included a few extras. It's somewhat interesting that Bo's Topps football rookie card is significantly more expensive than his older baseball counterpart, but I think the general consensus is that there were vastly more Topps baseball cards produced than football cards in the same era. (Either that, or it's because the Raiders are cooler than the Royals?)

I was also gifted this Clint Frazier jersey card from the 2020 Topps Holiday set. I'll end up finding a new home for this one, I'm sure.