Wednesday, September 12, 2018

Two Unrelated Things


Basketball cards from @ElCaminoBilly meet baseball cards from @flywheels in a blowout. 

Sometimes, I will get stuff in the mail from different people that still carry a thematic similarity. Other times, there's really nothing in common. This is one of those other times. Billy from Cardboard History sent over some Blazers cards from this past season's Panini Revolution set, one of those many Panini sets that comes and goes without me even noticing it, because I focus a lot of my attention on baseball.


It's a flashy set, as you can see. Like everything Panini, everything either is or resembles a parallel of something else. Nurk looks like he's about to be sucked into a pixelated void here if he's not careful.


Rookie Zach Collins gets a slightly different design because of his rookie status. He looks somewhat nonplussed about it.

Billy has done some great work on the basketball side over at TCDB. Check it out if you have some time.

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Meanwhile, on the other side of the sports spectrum, Colbey from Cardboard Collections hosted another Affordable Group Break. This time, 2003 Upper Deck 40 Man was featured, a novel idea that I wish someone would revisit one of these days. I always want baseball card sets to be as large as possible, because it's always informative (and fun!) to get a card of someone who is on the fringes of the league.


Izzy was never on the fringes, though. He was brought in to St. Louis to solidify the back of their bullpen, and did the job well on the whole. I don't think the Cards really had a steady closer after Lee Smith until Isringhausen came along. Also, I realize that I'm using the words "steady" and "Isringhausen" in the same sentence, so I want to apologize to my mid-'00s self.


Okay, fine. This isn't the greatest design. A lot of the photos are closely cropped.


Woody! Does anyone know what Woody Williams is up to these days?

If you're into the Facebook, check out Colbey's Affordable Group Breaks group on that platform. I'd link it, but I'm not really sure how that works -- but let me know if you want an invite or something. (All the breaks are posted on his blog, too.)

3 comments :

  1. Hope you actually needed those Blazers. They were dupes from the case debacle.

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  2. It's strange that Panini doesn't try to bring more of their basketball designs and sets over to the baseball side. This one can stay over on that side.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Tom Henke in 1995. Horrible team, but he had a 1.82 ERA and 36 saves. The Eck, Veres, Bottalico, Jeff Brantley years during the second half of the 1990s and 2000s were lean.

    ReplyDelete

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