Yep! More Group Breaks

Cardinals cards and more from earlier this year.

We've somehow already entered the final quarter of 2026. Leaves are starting to drop and everything looks like death outside. Isn't it... fun? 

I'm dropping in here with another batch of cards from several rounds of box breaks. These come from Cardboard Collections Affordable Group Breaks, of course, one of the longest continually running breakers in our weird little corner of this increasingly ridiculous hobby.

I never once saw a box of the 2025 Topps Chrome Platinum (Anniversary?) on any shelf this year, virtual or otherwise, so I was happy to get in on a couple of spots for this. Apparently it must have been very popular? This "don't stare too long or your eyes will cross" parallel of former Card Brendan Donovan ended up being my best card from this round.

Even after losing their NBA and NFL licenses, Panini is still cranking stuff out, with sadly a more diverse lineup than the actual licensed company is willing to provide. It's still hard to get used to unlicensed Blazers cards even after Topps was doing them for a couple of years, but I can at least add a few of these to my binders.

With the company presumably having to secure individual rights to players rather than having the backing of any single organization, the checklists can be a little strange. For the Blazers, this primarily means some big stars of the past and a couple of G-League players. Panini, as we see, prefers to American-ize Yang Hansen's name by putting his family name last. (Is this a Texas company thing? I mean, we never saw "Ming Yao" cards as far as I can recall.)

It's back to baseball, something Panini has been doing in this style for about as long as they've been in the American card market.

Thomas Saggese featured prominently in this package. This is a holo yellow foil card which matches up well with the Future Stars logo inspired by the 80s. It's numbered to 399.

I'm always glad to see more new Jim Edmonds cards. Someday I will hopefully forget that he was ever a broadcaster.

One of the breaks featured a hobby box of 2003 Bowman Heritage. This being a set I'm still working on, I picked up several of the spots and was able to put a little bit of a dent in my needs. I'm not going to plaster this wall with a ton of base cards, so here's just a selection of the Cardinals I added. Tyler Johnson on the left is a foil parallel.

I wasn't really quite sure what to make of the apparently licensed Uno football sets that have been popping up on my TCDB trade matches, but I ended up with a healthy stack of them in this break. I assume they are affordable and can be purchased at big box stores that carry games and toys? It looks like each set is produced in many different color variants, with some of the more difficult ones to pull being holofoil cards like this one of Jordan Davis. Davis is a large man who could barely be contained on a regular sized card.

I think Topps either needs to commit to Stadium Club being a full-fledged premium product or put it to rest. The much delayed half-effort they've made the past couple of years just doesn't give it an excuse for existing. These photos aren't even interesting, and Saggese's card at least must be using his Photo Day photo in front of a green screen because his jersey doesn't have a number on it. (It's either that or it was heavily Photoshopped for unknown reasons.) These are the blue retail parallels.

Topps did do a good job on the 1991 tribute insert cards this year, however. They do look nice.

Good Luck Ducks, Week 4: California Bound

The Ducks open conference play in LA.

After being left for dead just two weeks into the season (ha!), Oregon took out their frustrations on a Portland State team in disarray, scoring more points (84) than they had in over a century. I suspect that the coaches were more pleased with the shutout than anything else, and that the squad was able to escape any additional serious injuries must have been the icing on top.

USC is up next on the docket as the Ducks enter the real part of their season schedule. Oregon comes in to the old Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum as an underdog, a rare thing in the Dan Lanning era. (I should note here that I stay far far away from sports betting, and while I've seen reports both saying that Oregon was favored and that the "line" has since shifted to USC, I'm going with the fact that USC is ranked higher AND are playing at home. Let's also just not get into the whole thing about how rankings are worthless now...) While USC still hasn't been totally relevant since the days of Reggie Bush and Vince Young, they do look like they might have some things going for them in 2026. 

The Trojans are kind of a grifter's team, not only in the sense that they were a big name way back in the day (uhhh O.J. Simpson? I guess?) but also that they had a head coach "on the rise" who used a storied program like Oklahoma as a stepping stone to go to LA to a mediocre school to rest on a pile of cash or something. Also, something something Caleb Williams. While not all of that worked out as planned, I'm sure, they are in a good position as of today with a 4-0 record and their sights set on breaking a streak against an Oregon team chock full of a lot of question marks. As usual in September, I have no idea what will happen, but I'm hoping things stay the course.

Notes:

• It's the first prime time game of the year. With (generally speaking) a week to prepare for these games, I don't think start times are as big of a deal to the participants as they are to the watchers like you and me, but I feel like in some respects the Ducks are going to be a little more comfortable playing in an early evening game on their coast than some of those pesky early starts.
• Opponent fun fact: With condom jokes, terrible human mascots, O.J. and Reggie Bush... it's hard to come up with anything else "fun" here. I mean, it's not like the Trojans won the war.
• Opponent history: Here's where USC prevails so far. They are 38-24-2 versus Oregon all-time, although the Ducks have won the last 4.
• Game time is 4:30 PM PDT on NBC in Los Angeles. Go Ducks!

From B1G Country

All bird teams here.

Late July brought in another fantastic batch of surprise cards from Dennis of Too Many Verlanders. Dennis is deep in the heart of Michigan Wolverines territory, which will eventually put our respective college teams on collision course come mid-November. For now, though, everything is totally cool, so let's just check out the nice things he sent my way.

J.J. Arcega-Whiteside was a rare Spanish (American) football player, but he failed to make an impact in the NFL. It was a widely criticized draft pick at the time, but at least we've got a snazzy looking card with three separate memorabilia chunks here.

I only have a small amount of cards that could be considered 1 of 1 in my collection, of course, but three (!) of them are Dion Jordan cards. If I was up for doing more research into my collection on TCDB, I could probably tell you what kind of percentage that represents, but it's late on a Friday right now.

Leaf is by far the least annoying of the annoying lesser known manufacturers of unlicensed college/draft/prospect/creepy teenager sports cards, mostly because they don't crank out hundreds of thousands of "1 of 1" cards for every cycle, at least as far as I can tell. (I'm looking at you, Wild Card.) This is a pretty solid looking card with a wave pattern that retains most of the all-green Ducks look despite the lack of logos.

Now that Topps/Fanatics has taken over the NFL license for the foreseeable future, my days of occasionally buying somewhat affordable football packs are probably over. I keep adding this kind of stuff to my want list, but I know that I can't really reciprocate with the same kind of stuff in return.

Yadi just recently got inducted into the Cardinals Hall of Fame during a ceremony held inside Busch Stadium. I made it to St. Louis for the 2022 ceremony, which was held outside the stadium in Ballpark Village and included Matt Holliday. It would have been pretty amazing to see Molina and Pujols this year.

Brycen Mautz appears here on a parallel from the 2022 Panini Prizm Draft set as he coincidentally made his MLB debut this season, making a short start and a handful of relief appearances.

'90s parallels are always appreciated here, as some of them can be pretty tricky to track down.

Dexter Fowler is probably remembered better as a likable Cardinal than a big contributor on the field, even though he spent four seasons in St. Louis. This is the black parallel version of his 2018 Topps Series 2 jersey card.

Here's a nice pair of Dillon Gabriel cards. Gabriel led the Ducks to a huge season during their first B1G campaign, but they ultimately didn't have enough to beat the dreaded Buckeyes a second time.

Oh yes... remember what I said about '90s parallels? That goes even more for certain insert cards, especially from the latter half of the decade. McGwire has a ridiculous number of cards from this period, but even though I own a big pile of the, I've probably barely scratched the surface.

Welp, it's almost football time... once again. Happy weekend!

Good Luck Ducks, Week 3: Expectations

Oregon looks to regroup on a short week against an in-state FCS opponent.

I'll be honest. I didn't actually watch last week's debacle at Oklahoma State. A team that the Ducks clobbered by 66 points a year previous was more than enough to take them down this time. The early start time combined with the game not being available on TV at my place (I refuse to give ESPN money, which also might mean my days of watching the MLB package are numbered) made it difficult to see, so I followed along with the radio broadcast through nearly every wince and groan.

The thing is that the warning signs were already there. It's become a disturbing trend in the Dan Lanning era where there are lapses... sometimes game-long lapses. They sounded bad, and this time certainly looked bad for a good chunk of the game against Boise State as well as at times during the last two seasons. The other thing is that in today's sport, you really cannot carry with you any kind of expectations from year to year. Last year's OK State team did not play anything like this year's team, but they also have a new QB, new coaches... new just about everything, I'm sure. And the same thing goes for Oregon. You can stack up all the talent in the world, but coaches are going to come and go and so will the players. 

The Ducks will have a chance to work on some things tonight as they go up against a Portland State Vikings team that aren't in the same class. As with any FCS squad, I'm sure the Viks (the preferred spelling of their shortened nickname for some reason) will be all kinds of fired up to succeed against these guys with all of their fancy facilities and NIL money. Unfortunately, it may be that they are facing Oregon at the worst time, with the whole team hopefully angry at last week's results and ready to take it out on whoever is in front of them. I don't think we can typically take a lot away from a game like this, but it's certainly possible that the Ducks coaches will try out some different plays and player combinations that they might not have otherwise gone with had last week turned out differently.

Notes:

• Scratch what I said about Dante Moore last week. He's got some glaring issues that have been exposed early this season that probably have him and others wondering what he might have passed on by not entering the draft after last season. He's got a reputation for not liking to get hit, and with the struggles of this year's offensive line, he's going to need to figure out how to adapt and soon. Indiana was really the only team that was able to put consistent pressure on him last year, and we all saw how that turned out.
• There's probably a case to be made for paying your top coordinators a lot more and maybe taking a chunk of that money out of the head coaching salary. Is there something else that could be done to keep these people around year after year? It doesn't seem that the coaching turnover this year is working out well at all.
• Opponent fun fact: PSU's campus is only a few miles away from where I live, but it's always been more of a commuter school with a significant population of older students. It is interesting that they continue to field a football team to compete at the FCS level, likely owing more to their past successes (former Cardinals QB Neil Lomax is one of their most famous alums) than interest in the current teams. They don't even play their home games in Portland anymore as they were forced out to Hillsboro Stadium which is more than 13 miles from campus.
• Opponent history: The Ducks are 6-0 all-time, with an 81-7 victory in the most recent game (2023).
• Game time is 7:30 PM PDT on the Big Ten Network in Eugene. Go Ducks!

Good Luck Ducks, Week 2: Cowboy Hunt

Mighty Oregon heads to Cowboy Country.

Despite the significant changes made to the sport over the last few years, it seems like the early season close nonconference win hasn't completely lost its relevance, at least in the public discourse. The days of a single early season slip-up ruining an entire season are gone now, but people are still free to dump on games like the one Oregon played against Boise State last week. The Ducks came away with a win and, unlike a couple of years ago, didn't quite need a final field goal to decide it. Nevertheless, it still apparently caused a dip in the public perception of the Ducks season, even though their opponent was the consensus (reconstituted) Pac-12 favorites.

It's time to turn the page, as is the usual procedure in sport, as Oregon looks on to their next opponent. It's Oklahoma State. When these teams last met, it was Dante Moore and the Ducks going nuclear on one of the other OSUs in a 69-3 win which would prove to be one of Mike Gundy's final games in his 20 year run as Cowboys head coach.

We're not in Eugene this year, and neither is Gundy. Oklahoma State brings in fresh new QB transfer Drew Mestemaker, who had an outstanding year for Mean Green UNT before making transfer portal moves as the sport expects these days. Mestemaker is suddenly a big-time NFL QB prospect, and when you combine that with the fact that Oregon will not be playing in friendly territory today, I wouldn't expect a repeat result on the scale of last season's debacle. The Cowboys did lose to Tulsa last week, however, so it's not clear how close of a match this should be.

Notes:

• It's hard to put any Week 1 struggles on the shoulders of Dante Moore, who looked just about how we would expect to look. I'm never going to claim to be an expert or anything, but a lot of the opening game weirdness could probably be traced back to yet another new defensive coordinator and another new offensive coordinator. They still have some more time to get things right, fortunately.
• I'm not sure what a 9:00 AM west coast start time serves exactly, especially when it's a 11:00 start in Oklahoma. It was a very long time ago, but I never went to any home football games that started before 12:30. (I mean, I know who it serves: the television audience companies.) It's hard to see a lot of students getting up for this.
• Opponent fun fact: This building is called Old Central. It's probably haunted, right?
• Opponent history: The Ducks hold a 2-0 edge in the series. Aside from last season's debacle, Oregon beat Oklahoma State and Dez Bryant (ugh) in the 2008 Holiday Bowl.
• Game time is 9:00 AM PDT on ESPN in Stillwater. Go Ducks!

PWE Round-Up: All Night Owl Edition

Three envelopes. One sender.

It's once again time to do a little round-up of some Plain White Envelopes that I've received in the mail. This time, all three envelopes are from Night Owl Cards. Since sports card shows locally have been completely overtaken by Pokemon, TCGs and the like, this is practically the only way I can add something unexpected to my collection these days.

The first envelope showed up back in May, and included this really nice Nolan Arenado jersey swatch, presumably from one of his own "Victory Blue" jersey that the Cards have been wearing on Saturday road games in recent years.

Here's a trio of sparkly parallels from 2025 Topps sets. I've been one of those lamenting the proliferation of shiny parallels in Heritage products lately, but at least they make solid trade bait. Besides the Burly Heritage card, there's also a couple of holo foil parallels from the flagship set.

Last year, Topps Heritage did some sort of tribute to itself by showcasing (current?) players on previous Heritage designs, which of course were just a tribute to the first Topps sets. It's been tough to get ahold of almost any inserts in recent Heritage sets, so this was certainly appreciated even if the set was poorly executed.

Envelopes number two and three both showed up at the same time around mid July of this year. One of these envelopes was stuffed full of Allen & Ginter minis. There are enough non-sport collectors out there to make these a bit tougher to acquire than the parallel minis. The warthog throws off the whole landscape orientation synergy that is going on here.

The other envelope was all about the Cardinals. Yadi is the first of a trio of pink ice Panini Prizm parallels from 2025. That's a lot of P-words!

Masyn Winn just returned from a stint on the IL recently. His Gold Glove work was certainly missed in his absence.

This one looks a little off to me, and I don't think it's just the straight-on shot of Gibby's blank cap.

Drew Rom's time with the Cardinals was cut short due to injury. He was part of the deadline deal dump of Jack Flaherty a few years ago. This one is numbered to 499.

Rookie Nathan Church appears here on a holiday parallel. He's had some fleeting moments of success with the bat this season and continues to be their most impressively speedy outfielder.

We finish things up here with Waino and some shiny blue little rockets. For some reason, these have become one of the most prevalent Donruss parallels all of a sudden. I'm not really sure what the appeal is there.

Good Luck Ducks, Week 1: Student Orientation

Oregon begins another season with big expectations and dreams.

A new college football season is upon us once again! Dan Lanning begins his 5th (!) season at the helm of Quack Central with all kinds of expectations on his shoulders once again. For two years running, the Ducks felt like they were the best team in the nation for stretches only to find themselves unable to measure up to one of their own conference foes when things mattered the most (i.e. the playoffs.) Two seasons ago, it was the second meeting with Ohio State that clipped their wings. Last season, a second chance at Indiana was no more fruitful than the first one.

Nevertheless, Dante Moore, who some had pegged as a #2 pick had he decided to enter the NFL Draft even after some issues were exposed in the playoffs, has returned to lead a stacked Ducks team back to another hopeful playoff run. He's joined by a talented defense and some interesting offensive weapons as Oregon will make their season debut hosting Boise State of the new eight team Pac-12 Conference.

I have a lot more Boise State memories imprinted on my brain than your average early season nonconference opponent. We all know about the Smurf Turf, which they weren't allowed to bring on this trip. There was the glorious Statue of Liberty play, the hilarious Blount punch (not so hilarious for Blount, I suppose) and more recently a Raiders guy named Jeanty doing a modern day Bo Jackson Tecmo Bowl impression all over NCAA opponents circa 2024. This year's Broncos team is at least a couple of touchdowns of an underdog against the Ducks juggernaut in Eugene, but that doesn't mean that they can't make it interesting. After all, it was Jeanty's team a couple of seasons ago that really made Oregon sweat it out. It's difficult for me to have any expectations going into Week 1, especially in the era of shifting conference alignments, the transfer portal and the whole NIL thing.

Notes:

• Welcome back to football season, whether you like it or not! I took my now annual unplanned summer(?) vacation from regular posting here, but you can expect more activity around here this fall beyond the minimum of a post-per-Oregon game.
• With big success comes big coaching losses, and it will be interesting to see how Oregon deals with losing both their offensive and defensive coordinators. It's more than a bit scary to think about.
• Opponent fun fact: It may not be fun for the visitors, but weather here in the Willamette Valley took a strange turn this week when we were greeted with unseasonably cold and occasionally unstable weather. Our consistently dry season tends to run from the beginning of July through early October, so it's been strange. In any case, apparently Boise State's flight to Eugene was held up from landing multiple times before being redirected to Portland where the team had to wait for buses to show up to take them down to Eugene late last night.
• Opponent history: The Broncos lead the all-time series 3-1, with Oregon's lone win coming two seasons ago in a 37-34 squeaker at Autzen.
• Game time is 12:30 PM PDT on CBS in Eugene. Go Ducks!