Contest Results and buckstorecards Cards

 

Genuine Coverage... Plus!

The 16th edition of the March Radness contest has concluded, and thanks to Florida's victory, there was a big shake-up in the final results. This also means that there was a new face on the top of the podium. Congrats to PSU wrestling dynasty (James C) for taking the top prize! In second place was fellow Cardinals fan Ray S, with Brian P taking third. Bringing up the rear and taking the mysterious worst place prize was none other than Bo Rosny. If you are one of these chosen few bolded names, please get in touch with me as soon as it's convenient so we can figure out the whole prize situation. As a side note, I still do have a couple of prizes to distribute from the winter bowl game contest, but that should get figured out here very soon.

As always, though, we're here to look at some cards. Today's offerings are from regular trader and all-around good guy Doug from Sportscards from the Dollar Store. The Blues have had a pretty incredible season which, heading into the playoffs, somewhat mirrored their 2019 Stanley Cup winning run where they fired their head coach about a month and a half into the season and ended up champions. This season they dumped their coach once again around six weeks into the season and turned things around. They were white hot in March leading into April, although it looks like they've dropped a few since their recent huge winning streak. Anyway, only Robert Thomas is still with the team. I do like the cardboard-y feel of these O-Pee-Chee cards and wish there was something like this in the baseball card world.

Here's a pair of champions from the 2024 Score NFL set. Score football is probably the best thing that Panini does, considering that it's affordable and typically decent to look at, while paying tribute to those old school Score sets.

Ricky Watters in his Eagles uniform came from the Tecmo Super Bowl III era, although seeing him in the modernized Eagles branding is a little jarring here.

I really like Jerami Grant (Portland native... technically!), but he really fell off a cliff this season. I don't have a lot of positive things to say about the Blazers in general right now, but I guess we shall see how this summer plays out.

Upper Deck's SPX sets are really a prime example of '90s sports cards excess.

Mookie Cook is a Portland kid but really just could not find much playing time in his time at UO. I hope he does well, of course, but him taking a bit of a half-step down to a WCC school (San Francisco) is interesting.

Here's a chunky Marcus Mariota card. Panini's "scope" parallels are kind of fun to look at with their circular patterns.

I know there probably aren't a ton of Jonathan Stewart megafans out there, but his career NFL totals of more than 7300 yards rushing and 1200+ yards receiving are nothing to sneeze at. The average pro running back's career is not a lengthy one.

*** PRINTING PLATE ALERT ***

Man, here's Mookie Cook again. Leaf did crank out a lot of cards of his. I wish this company or whatever it is would calm down and just put out a normal set or two with a few parallels, but it instead insists on driving anyone with a mere thought in their brain of compiling a checklist to the brink of insanity.

Bo Nix had a pretty impressive rookie season, so snagging a copy of his rookie card numbered to just 50 is a huge prize. I'm not sure that he's going to be a Hall of Fame type player or anything, but I think in the right situation he could prove to be pretty valuable at the helm of a good team for a number of years.

Rookie Johnny Wilson is also a Super Bowl champion. He's pictured in his college uniform as Score is always one of the first NFL releases of the season. He's a giant dude who I think could be useful in certain situations down the road.

The last card selection on offer is this Panini 'EEE' (as I like to call it) autograph of a St. Louis Cardinals prospect. Levenson was a 5th round pick in 2023 and is still at the A+ level of pro ball. There is a new Panini release ("Prospect Edition") that recently came out, even though it's branded '2024', that might be just a replacement for the Elite Extra Edition. I'm not really sure. I almost bought a blaster of it today, but I'm trying to temporarily save all of my cards cash for the back-to-back Topps Heritage sets this spring.