Contest Reminder and a PWE Round-Up

Cards from little envelopes.

Before I get into today's crop of cards, here is your final reminder to go and sign up for the College Football Postseason prediction contest. It's Year 16! Can you believe that? It's time to start getting those picks in as the first game kicks off around 9:00 AM PST tomorrow morning.

It's now time for a year end recap of PWEs (Plain White Envelopes!) received in the second half of the year, or thereabouts. First up is a single Victor Scott the Sequel purple Chrome refractor parallel from 2024 Topps Heritage High Number, courtesy of Matthew of Number 5 Type Collection. It feels like it's been a few years since I've bought one of those hot box blaster things that contains those purple parallels, assuming that's still how these cards are distributed. With the 2025 set just around the corner (I think?), I'll have to figure out the best (cheap) option for opening some of those packs for myself.

Next up is another fine envelope from gcrl of cards as i see them. Pittman is the younger brother of Colts wide receiver Michael Pittman Jr. and was a strange case of someone whose on-field contributions never quite rose to his talent level. I don't normally collect Oregon players who transfer out and finish school elsewhere, but Pittman is in a Ducks uniform, so it works.

In addition to the nice autograph above, I also received this Jake Woodford card that's headed to top loader status.

This shows why it gets a top loader. It's one of those odd "Advanced Stats" parallels. I like the different approach to the stats here, but I don't like that all of the player bios are replaced with a boilerplate explanation on what advanced stats are.

Purple Topps flagship parallels are a rare bird, at least around these parts, where we don't have the stores that supply these exclusives (Meijer, I think?)

I completely missed out on the Topps All-Star Game set and am not entirely sure how they were distributed (at ballparks?), so it was nice to snag a few inserts from it. These cards look like they're die-cut or acetate or something, but they are just extra shiny and have a lot of dead space around the design.

I haven't checked lately, but I think Albert Pujols is still in the lead for having the most unique cards in my collection, even though I've never really sought out his stuff. At least it's one of the game's great players and not, I don't know, J.D. Drew?

This may have been the first year since 2009 where I did not open even a single pack of the new Chrome set, so it's been nice to slowly pick off some of my needs from the base set. I'm not against Topps Chrome, it's just that it's priced itself out of my budget.

Like many of his teammates, Nootbaar's name has been discussed in the trade rumors circle, but it would definitely be a "sell low" situation and I've been told that you generally shouldn't do that.

The Hamm King also delivered more Hamm! Excellent.

The third envelope just contained one single item, but it is a great one that has been affixed to my refrigerator since September. This really cool stadium giveaway comes courtesy of Baseball Cards Fan (and great blue heron enthusiast) Peter.

The final envelope of the bunch comes from Night Owl Cards and includes more Cardinals and set needs. The Jesse Haines card is from the 1961 Fleer Baseball Greats set, which caused a bit of a stir from Topps and their monopolistic ways back in the day. The design is excellent, but you already knew that.

Speaking of excellent design, I've said this before and I'll say it again. These Rookie Performers cards look great. I rarely praise modern Topps stuff, especially in the Fanatics era, but I always enjoy what they do with their insert designs that are inspired by the main set and era they're paying tribute to.

Here's another four-pack of minis from a few different Allen & Ginter sets. This year's A&G set is finally out, but I've yet to see any blasters anywhere.

Panini's continuing legal fight with Fanatics has been in the news this week. Everything I've read about it has made my eyes glaze over (to be fair, most details of court cases will do this to me), but it's clear to me that at least Panini tries to do different things with their products, even if both hands are tied behind their backs over the whole licensing thing. Topps doesn't even try anymore.

Here's the kind of oddball food-related baseball card that I really love. Apparently this known as the 1997 Wheaties set, even though the cards come from all sorts of different cereal brands. When is the last time there was anything interesting to cut off of the back of a cereal box?

We'll end things here with a triumvirate of 2025 Topps Heritage short prints. I swear I'm going to focus on putting some of these Heritage sets fully to rest one of these days.