Donuts and Calling Cards

Another bundle of @flywheels group breaks features those elusive Panini donuts and some minutes to call your sweetie. 

 

Back in January, I requested another shipment of cards from some Affordable Group Breaks I had participated in late last year. I didn't expect this round of stuff to be so eclectic. I am often tempted by Panini Prizm's "Quick Pitch" boxes because they contain exclusive "donut" parallels. They basically have a circular background pattern and come in a variety of different colors. I think there's one per pack, but I almost never have luck with finding Cardinals in this variety. Of course, this Dylan Carlson numbered to 199 scoffs at that notion.

Speaking of shiny things with wild patterns, this Ozzie Smith Field Vision insert from Panini Mosaic is a bit of an eyesore. Unlike regular refractors, these Mosaic patterns only look good under direct light and never look anything close to normal otherwise.

Colbey breaks a lot of older boxes, which tends to keep things more on the "Affordable" side that the name suggests. Long before Panini was around to do their annual Chronicles sets, Topps had a similar notion when they put together this 2001 Topps Fusion set. It pays tribute to several of their higher end sets of the time. Like Panini, I'm not really sure what they were going for at the time, but it was a thing that existed, briefly. Basically, if you find these in a box and aren't paying close attention, you might miss that they belong to the same set.

Pacific had their own style of weirdness during the days. I don't even know what to say about this. The little Eckersley head is in a clear frame window, allowing you to see through that portion of the card. I think I've shown the backs of these before? Basically, you get a reverse-negative Eckersley head with the team logo airbrushed away so it just looks regular stupid instead of really stupid.

I don't often pick the Eagles in football breaks, but when it comes to the '90s it's really hard to resist (especially at these prices!) This is some weird football card/phone card hybrid set that actually functions (functioned?) for actual phone calls. (Unlike those fake credit cards in that 1995 Studio baseball set.) Remember phone calls?

Basically, you could take this card and use the minutes on it to call your girlfriend or boyfriend from another state that all your friends think you conveniently made up. Three dollars gets you, what, 15 minutes? I have no idea anymore. You can see that this does have an expiration date, so I am less tempted to scratch of the code and try to figure out if calling cards from the '90s still work today. On the football card side of things, this card is actually serial numbered. They printed a lot of these cards!

Action Packed was a fun time in the '90s as well. I also snagged the Eagles in an Action Packed break, and ended up with a healthy chunk of cards including Ricky Watters again (unfortunately in a 49ers jersey.)

This one is a much better looking card, and it's a Randall, of course. I need more Randalls. Give me all of them.