Baseball is Back!

 

Baseball cards are back as well, and they brought a few other sports with them. 

 

Let's hop in the wayback machine and check out some cards that Sportscards From The Dollar Store sent quite a few months ago -- last year, in fact. Yes, that means that I'm quite a bit behind in the blogging show-and-tell here, but I'm not going to explain myself or make any apologies for it. We're here to look forward, and forward we shall look!

Along with a really nice '78 O-Pee-Chee HOFer came a few Cardinals cards, including another one of those "so weird, it must be Panini!" cards that features a silver ink autograph on a leather swatch. If I'm not mistaken, this might be the one year (2019) that they brought typically high end Leather & Lumber brand to retail, which would also mean it was my first dip into the Panini Points realm.

Like many a pitcher with a rocket arm before him, Trevor Rosenthal seemed to burn hot quickly and then more or less disappear. Since departing St. Louis, where he was a full time closer, Rosenthal has logged big league innings for four other organizations but hasn't made it back to the big leagues since the cursed 2020 "season".

Well, I assume you all know all about Stan the Man's story, so let's just take a beat and enjoy a cool looking card. I'm sure that photo has to be colorized, but I don't care.

Moving on to tackle football, buckstorecards always finds me some really fun Oregon cards. Bonus points should be awarded for catching a Duck in Duck gear.

There's no gear here at all, and this weird Panini Day set seems to have a lot of unaccounted inserts in the TCDB files, which can be a bit frustrating. No, I don't really want to figure out my own checklist for this set. Panini can be a real nightmare when it comes to that stuff.

Haloti Ngata is a very large man, so it must have been difficult to fit him in the frame here,. They almost nailed it, but not quite.

I really like the design of this old Topps Finest Donovan McNabb relic. It has a honeycomb thing going on.

This one isn't bad, either. There's no honeycomb, but there's still a hexagonal jersey swatch.

On the other hand, I feel that this design is unspeakably awful. The glittery background almost reminds me of "snow" on an old TV set. This might have looked better with more of a television theme to it, but what do I know? They don't consult me on these things for some reason.

Here's a Turkey Red design that I don't recognize. Did they ever make tobacco cards that looked like this? (I mean, besides the sticker signature, of course.)

I'll always wonder what Joey Harrington's pro career would have looked like if he had started off with a better franchise that didn't rush him to the field because they didn't really have any other options. He was never a big numbers guy, but he was more of a leadership pro. In the right system, I wonder if he could have thrived.

It's the man of many nicknames, FredEx, The People's Champ, etc. (Most of these he gave to himself.) He only really had that one memorable play, but it was definitely a stunner.

Here's another "bonus points" Ducks card.

Here's the first of a pair of fancy looking Dion Jordan "material" cards. Jordan has a ton of cards, and almost all of them are with him wearing Dolphins gear. He didn't really get a chance to make an impact in the pros until he got to Seattle, though.

How long are these rookie photo shoots for the NFL? There are so, so many different cards out there and so many dorky poses that they have to make.

This counts as a little bit of a patch, doesn't it? I can see a little bit of color there that isn't white.

I wish the careers of De'Anthony Thomas and Patrick Mahomes had overlapped a bit more. I could see DAT getting utilized more as a gadget type player once Mahomes started getting more established.

Our last Duck of a very excellent group of Ducks cards is a "Gold Zone" Score parallel of Penei Sewell, numbered to just 50. You can still find some interesting cards in a lower end product.

There's even a basketball card in the mix. Al-Farouq Aminu was a consistent presence in the peak years of the Blazers "Dame Time" era.

Sports cards with no printed name or photo on the front are a bit weird. I can assure you that this is a Brian Elliott card, a longtime goaltender who was still active in the NHL as recently as last year.

I do love a good team photo, even a hockey one. This is apparently from a 1990-91 Kraft Singles set. I'm not sure if it was a regional thing or a wide release, aside from the copyright info on the back telling us it was a Canadian release of sorts.

It's All About Me

Cards I purchased that you didn't send to me. 

The vast majority of my posts here show off cards that others send me. When it comes down to it, the point of this blog for me is to acquire new cards that I'm interested and trade off ones I'm not. It maintains the trading "circle of life" so to speak to always give a nod to whoever sends me stuff and some of the things they send, and I am sure that most people enjoy seeing their own efforts acknowledged in a public forum. But for whatever reason, I can never get myself fully on board with blogging about the stuff I buy for myself. I'm not a huge sports card shopper, but I occasionally splurge for a small pile of cards that fit into some of my various collections. When I hit up COMC earlier this month, for once I didn't immediately catalog and file away the stuff I bought for myself.

My card shopping mantra, which extends beyond just the online world, is that I'm up for buying pretty much anything if it's less than a buck. I'm not entirely sure what led me to this, but I plugged in "Topps Black" and "Cardinals" into the search engine and ended up with a whole pile of minis. Somehow, a Gypsy Queen sneaked in there among all of the Allen & Ginters.

These black parallels from last year's Stadium Club set supposedly have a print run of 201 cards according to the internet. Because they aren't actually numbered, they seem to be extremely affordable. I wonder what's going to happen to "Topps Now" cards in a year or three...

I can't remember where I first saw this card earlier this year, but I knew I had to have it. It's modeled after the original 1991 Fleer Ultra set and features a vibrant (colorized?) photo of Dan Fouts with the Ducks. If Oregon was smart, they'd roll out this kind of throw back someday. Just don't do it this season, because I don't want to remember anything about this season.

Another entry from the "Topps Black" search netted me one of these harder-than-you'd-think to find Walmart parallels from the 2011 Topps set. Certain Series One blasters from that year could be found containing nothing but the parallels making those an easy get, but starting with the next series, they became much more of a rarity on par with the shiny foil parallels from the past few sets.

I bought Blazers, too. Imagine that! Maurice Harkless is beginning to emerge as a much needed third scoring option in Portland's lineup after being acquired from Orlando for the proverbial bag of beans (a late 2nd round pick from 2020+).

More Topps Black. Beyond Matt Holliday, there is just a dark void. Similarly, entering a Walmart store is like disappearing into another plane of existence.

I usually hold back the Ducks cards for a weekend pep talk gameday post, but it might be time to clear the deck with everything I've been holding back and start something new next season. I like this card. I need more shiny non-airbrushed or Photoshopped Oregon cards.

This guy is becoming a media giant. Massive shoe contract, State Farm commercials, hip hop album... he's ticking all the boxes. Oh yeah, also, he plays basketball pretty well most of the time.

Mason Plumlee is kind of fun center to watch, if you're into watching a modern unconventional style of center. He's going to get a triple-double before this season is out, just mark my words. This is a fairly low numbered jersey card that was very affordable, although the back of the card revealed that his jersey bit came from his time with the Nets.

Noah Vonleh! He's shown some flashes of being an NBA player. I just felt like I needed something of his with the Blazers because he doesn't have a ton of cards at this point.

Thanks for bearing with me. Next time, it will be about you again.