A Holiday Gift

 

Baseball and football cards -- just the way you like them!

Christmas in sports cards form came late, but that's because I was out of town. I usually end up with a pile of packages and trades around the holidays, mostly because I figure that people are in a giving mood and also maybe have a little extra time off to do the card thing. I'm also out of town for a bit around these holiday maybe every two out of three years, so I was greeted with an avalanche of envelopes of all shapes and sizes once mail delivery resumed after the first of the year. At the top of the pile was a generous holiday package from Dennis of Too Many Verlanders, which is always a welcome sight.

Let's look at the football guys first. This is one of the blue mirror parallels from 2018 Panini Certified and is numbered to just 50 copies. I know some people dropped a lot of money on cards of the Heisman Trophy winner Mariota early in his career, and I've benefitted lately on picking up a few of his nicer cards now that the shine has long worn off.

Here's another Ducks QB in his pro uniform. I think Justin Herbert is going to have to shed the stigma of being a Chargers player entirely if he is going to elevate his status in the NFL, but certainly having Jim Harbaugh around could eventually change things a bit. We'll see.

Of course, this is another card for my Oregon collection, but it reminds me of how strange it feels that I actually rooted for the Chiefs at one point. Like... this decade. Kind of.

It's kind of incredible that I now own two distinct versions of this fairly obscure auto/manupatch card of late oughts Ducks running back Jeremiah Johnson. You can see the other one here. (Same card, different patch!)

For every Jalen Hurts, Donovan McNabb or Randall Cunningham in my time following the Eagles, there's been a couple of Kevin Kolbs and a couple of Detmers. Well, maybe just one Kolb. Anyway, it was a great year for the Eagles and you'd think I'd have more to say about it, but the Super Bowl was kind of surreal... in a fun way!

I'm not a full fledged Eagles team collector in the same way that I am with Cardinals (baseball) cards, but I do have a couple of boxes set aside for them. I did add a bunch of base Duce Staley cards to my want list on TCDB since he was a favorite from the past, and serendipitously ended up receiving this numbered "Premiere Date" parallel from Dennis around the same time. It's great!

Jevon Holland is a really good player, and a free agent. I could certainly think of another bird team whose uniform he'd look pretty good in if you ask me.

Here's another Duck! Ed Dickson is showing off the underrated late '00s Ducks look here.

Of course, the package wasn't all pigskin pushers. (That's a thing, right?) Dennis sent over a nice little stack of baseball parallels and inserts from sets I dabble in from time to time. These two Bowman Heritage cards are both chunky one-per-pack parallels with facsimile signatures. This era used to have a lot of thick cards that would theoretically throw off someone trying to search for similarly thick coveted memorabilia cards.

This trio of lesser known baseball players are featured on mini parallels from the 2005 Bowman Heritage set. Chris Volstad is the only name I remember here. It's possible that the other two never made it to the bigs.

Last up from the set stuff is a 2005 Turkey Red red parallel for the meta collectors out there, and a '74 Highlights card from the 2023 Topps Heritage set. They don't really fit together at all, but what the hell, I was saving some space.

The last card featured here is a Cards card (hey, that's the blog!) Kolten Wong had a decent run with the team and will always been linked with the Mike Matheny era, for better and for worse. I think most of us would welcome something on the level of the Matheny days right now, considering the current state of the team (ahem: mediocrity.)

Takin' Some Shorts (Prints)

Cardinals and Heritage needs, including a stupidly elusive card. 

 

The latest (well, as of November) mailer from the one and only Night Owl Cards was heavy on some harder to get cards from a certain set that I collect. Before we get into that, however, it's to give the Cardinals some due. I don't know who invented the X-Fractor, but that particular shiny Chrome design still amuses and delights all these many years later. Chrome was the first and easiest thing for me to make fun of when I started collecting cards again almost twenty years ago, but it didn't take me long to get suckered into liking these, at least when they suit my team collecting interest.

I ended my quest to collect all things Allen & Ginter with the 2022 set, but that didn't stop me from buying a couple of blasters of the most recent product. They make decent trade bait, after all. This year's design is fine, but it's not at all what drew me to A&G in the first place. This black bordered Ozzie Smith mini isn't a bad look, but it's just not Ginter to me. (I am still collecting those sets from 2006-2022, by the way. I rarely give up on anything, to a fault.)

This one is a regular bordered mini, with the A&G logo thing on the back. You'll just have to imagine what it looks like, or do a Google search or something.

This is one of those cards that I could have sworn I owned at least five copies of, but apparently I did not. The 2009 Bowman design was pretty far away from what Bowman sets look like these days. I mean, these had black borders. Black! Can you imagine?

This is certainly an oddball, which means I totally love it. It comes from some sort of Willie Mays Story set from 1983, which means it was probably pretty far off of my radar. I don't usually comb through checklists of sets that feature a player that isn't from the team that I follow, so this was a really cool find.

Topps did a boneheaded thing (can you imagine?!) with the 2024 Heritage set, where they decided to make the first 100 cards of the set short printed instead of the usual last 100 cards. Well, almost. There's a Nathan Eovaldi card in the first 100 that is actually not short printed (but is often listed as such), while Leody Taveras (card #407) is actually short printed. The most annoying thing is that this is typically one of the most expensive cards in the whole set. My theory is that this card isn't any more rare than the other 99 SPs and just received extra attention from people who couldn't fill that hole in their base set, but the current (low) population of the card on sites like COMC would suggest otherwise.

Night Owl ended up having a bunch of extra Heritage SPs to trade off, as he is the '75 guy and ended up with a lot of extras in set build, so I was more than happy to be one of the lucky recipients of a pile of these pesky cards. Short printed cards from newer Heritage sets are still pretty affordable (Leody Taveras notwithstanding), so I am tempted to fully put this thing away before time gets away from me. Alas, almost immediately after I put what I have of this set into a reasonably sized binder, I heard the ugly rumors that a High Number series is still forthcoming. If that does come to fruition, at least it should be cheap!

Contest Results (and More)

The results are in! And... let's also check out some Cards cards.

The big football contest is in the books. The winner is none other than Ginko-5, who will win a blaster box of the new Topps Series 1 set plus some extra. Coming in at a close second place is Elliptical Man, with Pete L rounding things out in third place. Meanwhile, the worst place "prize" is heading to Dean K.

It was a fun, but bloated season, with a first-ever twelve team playoff that only really produced a couple of really interesting games. Unfortunately, the Ducks were on the wrong side of one of the numerous blowouts and found their undefeated season go up into flames before making it to the semifinals, which is certainly a possibility when a single loss can end it all. I'm sure more changes are on the way eventually, but at least it was better than the BCS, I guess?

 

If you're here for the cards, well, we've got some cards. Cardinals cards, to be exact. This latest batch comes from a bunch of Nachos Grande Discord group breaks. Masyn Winn is at the front of the line of the next generation of Cardinals stars, so I'm quite glad to see a few more cards of his heading straight into my collection.

I've never been a big fan of the velocity/laser parallel design that Panini rolls out frequently as it looks really busy. The pink and red border doesn't look so bad on a Cardinals card, though. This one is essentially a parallel of a parallel, numbered to just 79 copies.

Brendan Donovan is another one of my newer Cardinals faves. He's probably never going to lead the league in any major statistical categories, but he can play almost any defensive position well, is a smart base runner and is an extremely tough player to get out at the plate.

Foil Filagree! It figures that just as soon as I stopped collecting the Allen & Ginter sets (I still want all those goodies from 2006-2022), they finally came up with a flashy parallel that I actually really like. I'll just keep these for my team collection, though. I saw that they brought these back for the 2024 set as well.

Here's some more Masyn content. This is of the die-cut variety. I'm hoping someone eventually comes up with a good nickname for him, because it feels a little clunky to call him Winn or Masyn.

As you can probably guess, this one is a numbered purple parallel of the same card. I probably didn't have any 2024 Topps Finest cards before this, so I think I did well snagging these two insert cards.

Wacha Wacha Wacha!

My scan doesn't do it justice, but this is a silver/holo parallel of the Optic parallel from the 2024 (Panini) Donruss set. A parallel of a copy of a knockoff. I'm hoping Panini pulls even a slightly better design out of their collective hat for 2025, because this one was truly dull. Even having a full league sanctioned license in the NFL didn't really do it any favors.

Thanks again to everyone who participated in the contest. Next up is... well, you know what it is! It's just weeks away!

Canadian Football and a Big Contest Update

 

Who will win the annual college football contest? Plus, cards! 

 

We're getting really close to kickoff in the final college football game of the longest season of our lifetimes. Who is going to take this one? More importantly: who is going to win the big Cards on Cards contest? It looks like the top prize is down to two competitors, based on their total points accumulated and the maximum amount of points still left on the table: Ginko-5 and EternalSigh (Elliptical Man). I won't be watching the game because I don't really want to watch either team win, but I will tune in later to check out the final standings.

On an unrelated note: cards! Actually, I received cards and a really nice signed 8x10 photo back in late November from Sportscards From The Dollar Store. This package sneaked in right before the big Canada Post strike that threw mail deliveries between Canada and USA in all sorts of upheaval during the busiest time of the year.

The signed photo is of Oregon Ducks QB Vernon Adams Jr., who is shown with the Saskatchewan Roughriders, meaning that this must have been taken during the 2017 season. I really don't have a lot of stuff like this, so it was a really nice addition to my collection. 

Of course, this package wasn't all Canadian American pro footballers (not to be confused with Canadian-American pro footballers, as Adams is from California.) Brian Westbrook is not Canadian and was not a CFL player, of course, but he does wear green! This is one of my first looks at the Topps Composite set, their apparent answer to Panini Chronicles.

I've actually been spending all day watching pro basketball and ignoring the real world. Here's a pro basketball player that I collect. Chris Duarte hasn't yet seen a ton of action with the Bulls, his third team in four seasons.

Speaking of not seeing much action, Jusuf Nurkic might be on his way out of the league after being removed from the starting lineup in Phoenix, a steep fall for someone who was essentially moved in exchange for Deandre Ayton and Toumani Camara. (Of course, there were other factors and players involved, but this was mostly what Phoenix got out of it, give or take a Grayson Allen and a couple of guys who aren't there anymore.) While people have been trying to run Ayton out of town since as soon as he arrived, Camara looks like a keeper to say the least.

Here's another Duarte card. I like that this is from the hobby release of Select. Too many times, people have traded me the retail versions of these cards when I already have them. (Those ones are blue.)

Payton Pritchard, one of the greatest high school players to ever come out of the state of Oregon, has taken on a much more consistent role for the defending champion Celtics. Boston is never going to be my favorite team, but seeing Pritchard do well there is a good enough reason for me to not to change the channel when they're on.

Josh Huff is another Duck who also became an Eagle.

I swear that I have about 100 different versions of this card with its unnecessarily closely cropped photo, and yet I didn't have this gold one apparently! I've made some good progress in collecting the various gold Cardinals parallels that Topps has put out in the last 24 years in their flagship sets.

I might not be the biggest hockey fan, but I definitely know who Keith Tkachuk is! This is a really fun looking jersey card from Pacific of all companies. Tkachuk spent the bulk of the last decade of his career with the St. Louis Blues and now has two sons in the league.

Thanks again to buckstorecards and everyone who entered the contests this year!

Surprise Visit from the DK

 

...no, not the Donkey Kong. 

 

A few months back, I got a surprise knock on the door from local area not-blogger The Diamond King, who dropped off an incredibly generous selection of Cardinals goodies. I had included my childhood (H)akeem Olajuwon rookie in a mailer sent his way sometime in the past year or so, but certainly wasn't expecting anything in return. We're lucky to have a semi-monthly card show in the area where I suspect at least some of these cards were procured from, and it reminds me that I wanted to make a concerted effort to go to more shows this year (I've already missed the first one.)

Heritage seems like it has such a high print run these days, so I'm always taken aback when I run across a variation like this B&W Arenado, as I never seem to pull stuff like this out of packs anymore. It seems increasingly likely that Arenado will be around for at least the first half of the year with St. Louis now, but I wonder if this card marks his final All-Star appearance with anyone.

The goofy, AI-"enhanced" 2022 Topps Chrome Platinum Anniversary whatever is the gift that keeps on giving, apparently. They really went nuts with the parallels on these. This one is numbered to just 25. Carlson still hasn't caught on with anyone for the coming season as far as I can tell.

Here's another one of the wacky parallels. This one with the free flowing hair of Ted Simmons is numbered to 75.

This Bud Smith card has an imprint with the National Sports Convention logo on it and is numbered 2 out of 5. Rare stuff here! I've always wondered how "official" some of the past cards with stamps from card conventions on them are, but they've mostly been treated as such by the major publications and databases I suppose.

Angel Rondon may have only had a cup of coffee with the Cardinals, but he still makes for a nice looking autographed card. Of course, almost anyone would look good on an Inception card like this.

Daniel Ponce de Leon was once seen as a key cog in the Cardinals stable of pitchers, but he had some tough breaks along the way including a much publicized scary head injury. When standing next to a comparable Topps high end card, Panini's unlicensed warts are pretty visible, though this does contain a nice chunky patch-looking thing in it.

We're back to the AI set here with a more normal parallel pattern. I think this is gold? This will look nice in my Waino collection and is numbered to just 50.

The red ice(?) sky on Lou Brock's card makes this one a bit apocalyptic looking. It's numbered to 100.

Last, but certainly not least, is this pretty slick looking bat card from the 2019 Topps Tier One set. I can't believe it's already been six years since the Cards brought in Goldy. I hope he does well with the Yankees. The Cardinals are really going to miss his defense at 1B more than anything at this point.

If you've got some time, I'd definitely suggest checking out The Diamond King's blog especially if it's been awhile. It looks like he's been generously giving out some impressive stuff, so I'm sure he'd love to get hooked up with something of his own interest.

Good Luck Ducks: Rose Bowl Playoff Time

 

After a long wait, the Ducks finally get their shot at some playoff action against a familiar foe.

Oregon rolled through their season as the only undefeated FBS team, winners of thirteen games including their first crack at a B1G championship. They defeated three playoff teams along the way — 25% of the field! And yet, many are predicting the Ohio State Buckeyes to win today.

There’s not a lick of this that makes sense, with the idea that Ohio State has somehow “leveled up” since the last meeting in October, despite the fact that they recently faced defeat at the hands of the rival Michigan Wolverines… at home no less! Sure, they are the defending champions, but the win over the Buckeyes just barely gave Michigan a winning record this season. Can Ohio State be better than Oregon while also not being good enough to beat Michigan four times in a row? Both things can be true, some might say.

The Ducks enter the Rose Bowl (the stadium — it’s weird to call whatever this game is the actual “Rose Bowl” game) with most of their team intact after the initial transfer window period. There aren’t a lot of opt-outs with teams that have national championship aspirations.

Notes and such:

• Oregon is more or less back to the throwback uniform look they started the season with, along with a few tweaks as you would expect in a game of this magnitude.
• Do they have any history at all? It’s still a 9-2 edge for the Buckeyes after the close Ducks win earlier this season.
• Dillon Gabriel season review: It was really good! It’s tough to win a trophy when you’re competing against a guy that excels on both sides of the ball and rarely takes a play off.

Game time is 2:00 PM PST on ESPN and many other Disney-owned channels where you can usually find sports. Go Ducks!