From B1G Country

All bird teams here.

Late July brought in another fantastic batch of surprise cards from Dennis of Too Many Verlanders. Dennis is deep in the heart of Michigan Wolverines territory, which will eventually put our respective college teams on collision course come mid-November. For now, though, everything is totally cool, so let's just check out the nice things he sent my way.

J.J. Arcega-Whiteside was a rare Spanish (American) football player, but he failed to make an impact in the NFL. It was a widely criticized draft pick at the time, but at least we've got a snazzy looking card with three separate memorabilia chunks here.

I only have a small amount of cards that could be considered 1 of 1 in my collection, of course, but three (!) of them are Dion Jordan cards. If I was up for doing more research into my collection on TCDB, I could probably tell you what kind of percentage that represents, but it's late on a Friday right now.

Leaf is by far the least annoying of the annoying lesser known manufacturers of unlicensed college/draft/prospect/creepy teenager sports cards, mostly because they don't crank out hundreds of thousands of "1 of 1" cards for every cycle, at least as far as I can tell. (I'm looking at you, Wild Card.) This is a pretty solid looking card with a wave pattern that retains most of the all-green Ducks look despite the lack of logos.

Now that Topps/Fanatics has taken over the NFL license for the foreseeable future, my days of occasionally buying somewhat affordable football packs are probably over. I keep adding this kind of stuff to my want list, but I know that I can't really reciprocate with the same kind of stuff in return.

Yadi just recently got inducted into the Cardinals Hall of Fame during a ceremony held inside Busch Stadium. I made it to St. Louis for the 2022 ceremony, which was held outside the stadium in Ballpark Village and included Matt Holliday. It would have been pretty amazing to see Molina and Pujols this year.

Brycen Mautz appears here on a parallel from the 2022 Panini Prizm Draft set as he coincidentally made his MLB debut this season, making a short start and a handful of relief appearances.

'90s parallels are always appreciated here, as some of them can be pretty tricky to track down.

Dexter Fowler is probably remembered better as a likable Cardinal than a big contributor on the field, even though he spent four seasons in St. Louis. This is the black parallel version of his 2018 Topps Series 2 jersey card.

Here's a nice pair of Dillon Gabriel cards. Gabriel led the Ducks to a huge season during their first B1G campaign, but they ultimately didn't have enough to beat the dreaded Buckeyes a second time.

Oh yes... remember what I said about '90s parallels? That goes even more for certain insert cards, especially from the latter half of the decade. McGwire has a ridiculous number of cards from this period, but even though I own a big pile of the, I've probably barely scratched the surface.

Welp, it's almost football time... once again. Happy weekend!