A Panini Flip

I've already managed to flip one of my unwanted cards from my Panini Limited Box/Pack break and I'm quite pleased with the result. I was able to turn a low numbered Sam Young jersey/auto thing into a Dante Cunningham card, also autographed, thanks to fellow Blazers fan G_Moses over at The (Excellent) Basketball Card Blog. He sees something in the Grizzlies Sam Young that I don't see, although I tend to let my hatred of the vast majority of all non-Blazers NBA players get in the way of evaluating talent. I really like Cunningham card, even though you barely get to see Dante and with the knowledge that patch logo was made specifically for these cards.

There's far more of these out there than the print run of 5 Sam Young cards, but that's okay with me. I like the font on these cards for some reason. I can't decide if it reminds me of the '80s or something glitzy and more modern.

I also hit the card shop last weekend and found that they had discounted a ton of their Blazers team sets as everything seemed to be $1. I'm sure I've passed these up many times before, but suddenly $1 doesn't seem to be all that much to fill some gaping holes in my collection. I think all of the discounted team sets were from sets that did not contain any current Blazers.

I ended up buying two of the team sets - the 2004-05 Fleer Tradition set was one of them. It contained, among others, my first Blazers cards of Nick Van Exel and Shareef Abdur-Rahim. Van Exel was, randomly, a college favorite of mine while Abdur-Rahim's career pretty much fell off the cliff from the moment he became a Blazer.

I also bought the 1995-96 Hoops Blazers team set, mostly because this incredibly hideous looking Arvydas Sabonis rookie card was showing on the front. I know I had nothing previously from this set.

Gary Trent wants BRAINS!

Before P.J. Carlesimo was known as the guy that got choked by Latrell Sprewell, he was the screaming coach of the Blazers. He bridged the gap between the successful playoff runs of Rick Adelman and Mike Dunleavy.

And finally, for no reason other than that his team's game was on TV when I got home from work tonight, here's a Channing Frye card I pulled from a 2009-10 Topps pack recently. Frye's still a Blazer in uniform, obviously, but the card is labeled with his current team, the Phoenix Suns. This still goes in my Blazers binder because it's Blazers-related.

If anyone has any extra Blazers cards they want to get rid of, or if something other than Sam Young strikes you from my box break post, feel free to drop me a line.