Not Forgotten

A baseball-heavy pile o' cards.

I almost never post about my TCDB trades, but one that came across my desk around Halloween time included a bunch of bonus stuff that made me want to recognize it here properly. This generous pile came over from Marc aka Remember The Astrodome. I've lost track of what was part of the actual trade and what was considered a bonus, but that doesn't really matter for the ol' blog purposes, does it?

What follows is another image-heavy post that hopefully makes up for the lack of verbal content over here lately. 

I bought several of the Megabox-only Panini Crusade product last year and it's proven to be a reliable source of trade bait. There were (and still are) a number of Cardinals needs from this set, so it was nice to get a little stack of these.

I'm guessing Marc either opened as much of this stuff as I did or somehow got saddled with the Cardinals in a group break. It's not a popular choice these days. Saggese here is one of the silver parallels. Some of the inserts in this set are actually pretty nice looking, unlike some of the junk Topps is doing these days.

I snagged a ton of minis from this deal, but Sonny Gray gets to stand alone in my Cardinals pile.

I've been adding some of these not-quite-minor league and not-quite major league prospect sets to my individual wants on TCDB lately, but only as I spot them. I'm not going to go after every college card of every player that was drafted by the Cardinals, but it does become more of a "want" if St. Louis is mentioned on the card. Similarly, I'm hanging onto/occasionally adding Ducks baseball cards if they are in Ducks uniforms like Adam Maier at the top of the post, even though I don't have a formal UO baseball collection.

I can't imagine anyone thinking that a photograph from Frankie Frisch's playing days would be used in this kind of way.

Here's the rest of the lot 'o minis. Gold border variations are highly represented here!

This is one of the few non-baseball cards of the bunch, and it's an interesting one. (I also received a couple of Eagles cards that are not pictured.) This is one of the actual cards from the now-defunct Panini NBA Sticker album release, a one-per-pack insert in their sticker packs. Panini is still making NBA cards, sans license, but the stickers are no more. (There is a forthcoming Donruss release ostensibly for the 2025-26 season.) Clingan has looked really good on the court in his second NBA season, becoming one of the more valuable core players on a team that has gone through the usual issues with injuries and attrition.

It's back to baseball with this insert from the 2024 Panini Crusade release. I don't remember as much about the 2024 release except that the base cards and chrome-finished Crusade inserts were pretty similar in look to the 2025 release.

It's becoming increasingly difficult to get ahold of inserts from 10+ years ago now, so I was really pleased to knock off another Ozzie Smith card. It looks like this is from the 2014 Topps Archives release. It's a puzzling idea, because while Topps more or less used this same template for their All-Star insert cards for eight years, it was long gone by 1995. They could have easily used a different photo  from a more appropriate year for this, but this at least fits into the "designs that never were" category, I suppose. Of course, there were then-current players in this set who never even played in that era.

Bru has done a bunch of custom cards, and I believe I own a few of these "Big League Bloodlines" that feature players that were related to each other. It's a fun concept. I wasn't around for Julian's playing days, but I definitely remember Stan from my original card collecting days. I always appreciate people's hard work in designing custom cards (and getting them printed!) and keep them in my team binders just like any other official card.

2010s inserts and parallels may be getting hard to find, but '90s parallels can be a tough find as well. All three of these fit the latter bill.

Here's another curious trio of Cardinals-affiliated minor league cards. Grichuk at last check was still a free agent, as a number of people have wondered if he could come back to St. Louis to give them some veteran help in the outfield. (I don't think the Cardinals are going to be spending money on anyone for awhile, but a minimum deal on the other hand...)

This last trio is a chrome-d up group from 2025 sets. The first two are "Raywave" Topps Chrome refractors, while the Saggese card is a Panini Donruss "Optic" parallel somewhat confusingly known simply as "Circles".

This last group heads to my Heritage binders, with five of these being color border parallels. I would love to finish off more of the insert sets like the Rookie Performers set that Zac Gallen appears in, but people in trades are usually more willing to dump the more common parallels that Topps has cranked out in the past couple years.

We do have another contest coming up just around the corner, and I may gather an informal poll as far as what the prizes should look like this time. We'll see!

Contest Results... Bring on Baseball Season!

Congratulations to the winners!

Another football season is in the books, and we have a group of winners to celebrate. If you're in the list below, please reach out to me with your mailing address if you haven't already done so.

• Taking 1st Place (as well as the Mayo Bowl prize) is Jason K (BOWL SZN), who established a big enough lead at the end that the last couple of games didn't factor into the final tally.
• In 2nd Place is Brendan H (EternalSigh) with an excellent pick list that finished in the top 98 percentile of all ESPN entrants.
• Taking 3rd Place is Brandon L (leiber88 entry), who finished just ten points out of 2nd.
• And finally, there can't be a 1st without a Worst, and that "crown" goes to Timothy H (ESPNFAN7043205575). (We had one entry with a lower score, but unfortunately two of the games were not picked in that entry.)

Thanks to everyone for participating!

New Year, Old Cards

A big bunch of cards to peruse.

I think I've hit a first here at the blog where I busted on past Blogger's built-in character limit for tags. I like to tag each individual player whenever I show off a card that's notable (typically anything serial-numbered, signed or containing a memorabilia piece of some sort), but there was no way to do that with this bunch of cards from buckstorecards that I received back in September unless I broke this up into several posts, which isn't something I typically do. As daunting as it was to post about this massive, impressive batch, it would have been even more unwieldy to deal with it in multiple parts.

Off we go, sans tags for the Ducks cards (the bulk of these)...

I don't recall "PRESS PROOF" actually being stamped on any other so-called "press proof" parallels from Panini that I've seen before. Tots is still a free agent somehow. I wouldn't mind seeing him come back to St. Louis to be in the outfield mix.

Nick Foles cards are always going to be welcome in my collection, as he helped the Eagles to their first Super Bowl title.

Much more after the jump!

Good Luck Ducks, Playoff Semifinal Edition: Peachy Rematch

Oregon takes on the only team that has defeated them this season in the Peach Bowl.

The Ducks did a rare thing last week in their second CFP game this season in holding Texas Tech to zero points. Patrick Mahomes had to wear a Ducks jersey. It was glorious! The defense definitely turned things around after easing up against James Madison in the second half. Unfortunately, things are about to get significantly tougher with Oregon facing off against the only undefeated team in the FBS this season, one they fell short against just a few months back.

Quite a bit has changed in the nearly three months since the Hoosiers beat the Ducks in Eugene. Late breaking news today mentioned that Oregon is down to just a few scholarship players at tailback, a position of tremendous wealth back in September. With starter Noah Whittington questionable tonight and Jordon Davison declared out due to injury, the Ducks have had a couple of players from the defensive side practicing at the offensive position of need. (The postseason transfers of a certain two experienced players here certainly haven't helped.) Oregon has won eight straight since the Indiana loss, however, and there's still a lot of reason for optimism coming off of two strong playoff wins.

This is one that the pundits have overwhelmingly sided with the Hoosiers, and why wouldn't they? It's a team of apparently no weakness, who rolled through their playoff game (albeit against a 3-loss Alabama team that shouldn't have been there.) Most of these people would have you believe that Indiana blew out the Ducks last time, even though the game was tied 20-20 until Indiana took the lead for good with just 6:23 left in the game. My immediate impression from that game is that Oregon just didn't play well. It felt like they had played their worst game, in fact (though that was yet to come, unfortunately.) But when you look at what the Hoosiers have done since, it's hard not to give them all the credit for that win. No one really expected Indiana to be what they are, and that has a lot to do with why they are where they are. It's up to the Ducks to meet them at their level and see where it takes them.

Notes and miscellany:

• The one-sided Orange Bowl exposed something very uncomfortable in the current configuration of football conferences in that you can be a Power Four school and the best in your conference, but you might not measure up to some of the teams in these superconferences. It's yet another reminder of what was lost when all of the schools started making their moves. Ultimately, like most things these days, so much of it comes down to money and how much resources a school has.
• I never in a million years saw Fernando Mendoza as a future Heisman winner when he was getting obliterated by Oregon (63-19!) with Cal as a freshman two seasons ago. Most of these people talking glowingly about what they saw in him back then are probably lying.
• Opponent fun fact: Since I didn't touch on this during their initial match, Indiana's new mascot is Hoosier the Bison. Apparently they brought it back after it was some sort of unofficial student supported mascot in the '60s. In practice, it just looks like some guy found a wooly mask at some sort of Halloween store.
• Opponent history: It's at 2-2 now after Indiana win back in October.
• Game time is 4:30 PM PST on ESPN in Atlanta. Go Ducks!

Pre-Semifinals Contest Update

With just three games left to play, let's check out the leader board (and some random cards.)

The annual college football pick 'em contest is about to come to a close, and according to the numbers, we may already have a winner. I'm not sure if this has happened before with a few games left to play, but Jason K. leads all entrants in total points, and no one has enough "max" points as it stands to catch him. Jason also won the Mayonnaise contest, so we may also have another unprecedented event as I don't recall anyone winning both contests. We still do have a few people jockeying for position to make it to the podium, with Brandon L., Elliptical Man and Dominic J. currently holding spots 2, 3 and 4 respectively.

I thought I'd throw up some cards (well, not literally!) for you to look at while you're here and selected the last 5 cards I've scanned. If I'm not scanning something for a blog post, it's almost certainly because it's a card I added to my collection in TCDB that was missing image(s). These are mostly football cards, with a Jalen Hurts bronze parallel and a 2022 JOGO CFL Alumni card leading things off. Jim Evenson is a Portland native who played at UO in the '60s before embarking on a pro career mostly north of the border.

Most of the cards in this post came to me in recent TCDB trades, but this one -- a Topps Season Tip-Off parallel, was plucked from a massive lot of cards I came home with from a card show last weekend. This heads to my Ducks binders as it features Chris Boucher. It's also the lone basketball card I scanned most recently.

Here's another Duck in a Ducks uniform. I love that. This is a red parallel from the 2024 Score football set.

Last up is a card from one of Panini's final releases, the 2025 Mosaic set. They still have a few more releases scheduled even though the calendar has flipped to 2026. I'm assuming the Topps license will only go into effect for the start of the 2026 season, or maybe shortly after the draft.

Enjoy the games (both collegiate and professional) this weekend!

Good Luck Ducks, Playoff Quarterfinal Edition: Seeing Red

Oregon heads to Florida for the next round of CFP action.

The Ducks are back in the spot where they found themselves last season before it all went terribly wrong against the Buckeyes. This time, they'll face a different opponent in the Texas Tech Red Raiders, the champions of the Big 12. After opening up a 34-3 first half lead against James Madison, Oregon put it in cruise control and coasted to a decisive win to set them up for the Orange Bowl today.

The Ducks welcomed the return of a couple of their receivers in the first round game against the Dukes as they seem to be getting healthier at the best possible time. Once again, the speculation turns to whether or not it will be Dante Moore's last game in his short Ducks career, as many draft projections have him going near the top of the draft. Personally, I feel like he's got a good shot at staying put if there's anything short of a championship victory, but nothing would really surprise me. With the imminent departure of the offensive coordinator (Will Stein) who lured him back to Oregon, I could also see him thinking that it's time to move on.

Texas Tech retooled its coaching staff after a 8-5 season and found their biggest ever success as a member of the Big 12, finishing at the top of their conference. The Red Raiders are led by QB Behren Morton, one of the few players who was on the roster the last time these teams met in 2023 (he did not play.) Both teams are very similar in that they have explosive, powerful offenses and stellar defensive play to boot. This game truly feels like a toss-up, but one team will definitely be sent home feeling disappointed.

Notes and miscellany: 

• This will be the first Orange Bowl appearance for both schools, as the traditional bowl fixtures and alliances between conference have given way to... whatever madness this is. I think just about everyone wanted a true playoff system in FBS, including me, but this just doesn't feel like "it".
• Opponent fun fact: One of the Red Raiders mascot is named, naturally, Raider Red. He seems like a rough 'n tumble, rootin' tootin' stereotypically Texas style guy. There's also The Masked Rider, some Zorro lookin' dude who rides around on a horse. They like their finger guns, which is something that would almost certainly get a football player in trouble if one was to do it on the field at an opponent.
• Opponent history: The Ducks lead the all-time series 3-0, including the recent 38-30 win in 2023 in Lubbock when ex-Duck Tyler Shough (hey, that rhymes!) started at quarterback for TTU.
• Game time is 9:00 AM PST on ESPN in Miami Gardens. Go Ducks!

Good Luck Ducks, Playoff Edition: Home and Uncharted

Oregon hosts James Madison in the first round of College Football Playoff madness.

We're in uncharted waters here as the Fighting Ducks play host to a College Football Playoff game for the first time. In all previous years and versions of various postseason formats, Oregon has always found itself in ostensibly neutral ground, but often a hostile environment for various reasons. Today they'll host a Group of Five upstart in Autzen Stadium with hopes of advancing to the Orange Bowl on New Year's Day. Yes, we have the unprecedented event of football happening in Eugene in mid-to-late December. Madness! The closest thing I could compare this to is the earliest days of the Pac-12 Football Championship Game, when Oregon hosted (and won) the inaugural game as the top seed before it was moved to a so-called neutral site a few years later.

When last we saw these Ducks a few weeks ago, they were taking care of business up in Seattle, and they still had all of their coaches. Does this sound familiar? Oregon is losing it's offensive coordinator and defensive coordinator, and at least one additional assistant as other schools have already made their moves to snap up some of these guys. They should really consider a hiring/negotiating/no contact period for coaches until after all of the bowls and playoffs are wrapped up, but I know that would negatively impact recruiting and the NCAA barely has any power as an entity anyway. It's just awkward for everybody. Dan Lanning will have his work cut out for him in replacing these assistants, as Will Stein and Tosh Lupoi have had their hands all over the 2020s Ducks and their schemes.

The James Madison Dukes won the Sun Belt in an impressive season, with their only blemish being an early season loss at Louisville. They're led by standout QB Alonza Barnett III, who won himself a bevy of awards in a comeback season after he had ACL surgery barely a year ago. They're certainly good enough to shake things up and should give Oregon a test, but they haven't faced talent (or a defense) like the Ducks. It could be a long evening at Autzen for the visitors from Virginia, but you never know what is going to happen this time of year.

Notes and miscellany:

• I could complain here about the whole mess that is/was the CFP selection process, even though it didn't seem to adversely affect Oregon's situation. The thing is, everything in sports just feels a bit rigged these days, doesn't it? It's fun to shout "rigged!" at things in jest, but there's some truth to it. In any case, I'll say this: Alabama has no business being in the playoffs this year. Teams should be judged by who they lose to (or don't), not who they didn't play. I don't think Miami deserves a spot, either, but that might be because I have a middle finger (or two) up at Mario Cristobal at all times.
• Opponent fun fact: James Madison University was once known as Madison College, but there is a certain school in Madison, Wisconsin that is more associated with that name, I guess. For only having joined the FBS in 2022, the Dukes have certainly made it a quick route to the playoffs. Sadly, their mascot Duke Dog, is not actually a live mascot. I always prefer live mascots.
• Opponent history: These two schools have never met on the football field. In fact, I can't even find evidence that they've faced each other in any sport, but some of that data is going to be hard to find.
• Game time is 4:30 PM PST on TNT in Eugene. Go Ducks!