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.

Footballers, American

A package of bird team cards from @forgotaboutblay where most of the guys are wearing helmets. 

 

I don't set many goals when the calendar flips to January once again, but I am hoping to get through all of the cards that were sent to me from blog-reading pals in 2022 by... oh, let's say the end of the month. It would be nice to get through it all before the first 2023 set drops, but I have no idea when that is. This latest group of cards features mostly football players from Dennis of Too Many Verlanders. As usual, he sent me so many really nice Ducks cards that I'm holding a couple more back for a reveal during next football season.

Jevon Holland has put together a nice first couple of seasons in the league. While there are many Ducks on NFL rosters at any given point in time, not all of them get regular playing time like Holland.

The other green team, the pro one, is represented well here. This card is very cool to look at in person, as the "1309" is actually punched out of the card. (I'm not sure how well I'm describing this, but it basically means that you can see right through the card!)

I was having a discussion with a friend recently about all of the over-hyped quarterbacks that came out of USC from the Pete Carroll days. Matt Barkley's name didn't come up, but he was a Carroll recruit and played his first season with the now-Seahawks coach.

That's not to belittle Barkley or these sharp looking cards that Dennis sent. He's been a serviceable backup in the NFL for a decade, including two seasons in Philadelphia. How many of us can say that?

Donovan McNabb was certainly better than a backup throughout his career (well, maybe not at the end with that other team.) This card is certainly weird, though. It looks a bit unfinished. I'm guessing the "Gamers" insert also has a version where there is game-used stuff on the left side of the card, but whenever these sets (usually DLP brands in the '00s) would essentially copy-paste the same design to a basic insert card, it always looked weird.

Na Brown! There's a name from the past. I was playing a lot of NFL 2K back in those days, so I was more familiar with the Eagles receiving depth chart than anyone should have been at the time.

Hey, this guy isn't wearing a helmet! I can't bring myself to peel the coating off of these Finest cards, even if they are refractors and would look so much better without it. I also won't refuse peeled cards in trades or purchases, so what do I know?

A Thursday Night PWE Round-Up

Some extra-stuffed white envelopes leads off with some @BoRosny miscellany. 

 

Tonight we have an envelope from October, one from November and one from December. I'm finally starting to get through the backlog of stuff I have to post about, which means I'll probably get itchy and start up a bunch of trades again.

First up is some more good stuff from Bo of Baseball Cards Come to Life! I always think that I finished off 2003 Topps ages ago, but I do still need a few more. The Nomar card put me a little bit closer.

Here's a nice color-appropriate Eagles card from the 1999 Topps set. In some years Topps used the baseball design in their football set, but in other years -- not so much.

Hey, it's a Portland Beavers card! You don't see those every day. I believe this is from the 1989 AAA All-Stars set. I don't know if these sold as well as the team sets, but I remember seeing them once or twice at the Beavers games back when I used to go.

Here's a few more minor league guys. These are all Cardinals-affiliated, if you hadn't already guessed. 

Bo also set some vintage Cardinals cards, which are always appreciated, like this trio from 1968.

There's been more Curt Flood cards on the blog of late, and that's definitely a good thing.

I'm not sure a card from a Tigers victory in the 1968 World Series belongs in my collection, let alone one where the Cards were walloped 13-1. However, I'm not in the habit of tossing out cards from the '60s, so my binders might have to give this one a chance.

Next up is another batch of the good stuff from gcrl (cards as i see them). Along with a new Waino from 2021 Topps Update, there was another healthy grouping of set needs.

It had been so long since I added another card to the 2012 Topps Archives 3D collection that I had almost totally forgotten about it. For a few years there, Topps was putting out little batches of lenticular cards in one fashion or another, but it seems like they've dropped that for the most part. I'm sure they're not cheap to make.

The rest of the envelope was dedicated to 2012 Allen & Ginter. At some point, I need to make it a priority to finish off all of these A&G insert sets, but I've been more focused on Heritage inserts of late.

This is easily the dumbest and less essential insert set in the whole Allen & Ginter line, but for whatever reason I still decided to make a list and keep them. I suppose it's telling that Topps hasn't really tried anything this elaborate in the years since.

I really have no idea what happened here. I'm sorry about that.

Last up is a big batch of Philadelphia Eagles cards from Elliptical Man. Graham has spent his whole career (12 years and counting) with the Birds and has already played for four different head coaches (interims not withstanding.)

Brian Westbrook was a favorite of mine back in the day, when the Eagles had the triple threat ground attack of Westbrook, Staley and Buckhalter.

More Westbrook! This was right after Panini took over the Donruss brand.

The aforementioned Duce Staley checks in with this overly busy metallic version of Upper Deck's Victory brand.

I should become a Jeff Feagles supercollector. I wonder how many cards he actually has. He was the Eagles punter in Tecmo Super Bowl, which automatically makes him a legend. Plus, his name was  Eagles with an F in the front.

A couple of cards in this Eagles stashed were actually numbered, which is really cool. Donovan McNabb was QB1 for the bulk of the Andy Reid era, and while that never led to the ultimate prize, they were a fun team to watch.

The other numbered card is this Zach Ertz Longevity parallel from the 2017 Panini Rookies & Stars set. It's really nice and makes me wish that Ertz had been able to stick around.

Variety Pack

Buckstorecards is all about variety. 

Whenever I get something in the mail from Sportscards From The Dollar Store, I know that it's never going to be boring. Usually all three, and sometimes four, major sports are represented, and that was certainly the case with the stuff I got back in May. I actually got two packages from our friend within the span of a couple of weeks. I'll save the second one for a later post.

Plenty of Trail Blazers were to be had, included a whole stack of Panini Prizm Mosaic cards. I guess I can't fully blame Panini for the rainbow parallel madness that has affected some of their products because they probably learned it by watching Bowman.

The cards all have this diamond shaped design to them, and were made available as a completely separate set from the regular Prizm product. Necessary? Probably not. But they look good.

The base (?) card scanned the best. Biggie Swanigan looks good here. It'll be interesting to see if Swanigan can get more playing time this season with Ed Davis (sigh...) out of the picture.

Boom! From the present to the (not so distant past) with a low numbered Nic Batum card. Batum was one of my favorites in his time with Portland, though I usually find it easy to root for most Blazers. This one is numbered 24/25.

Back to the present we go with Big Zach Collins, or Big Zach as I like to call him. Or just Zach. I don't really talk about him much, actually.

Whenever new baseball prospect sets come out, I am always scratching my head over the player names. I don't know any of these guys! I ended up with a few of these Panini Elite Extra Edition cards, including this Aspirations parallel of a guy named Johan Oviedo. He's young.

Football! AHH! Football (college, anyway) is starting up this week, and I am super not ready for it. Jay Ajayi proved to be the final piece of the puzzle for the Eagles, who shocked the league and won the Super Bowl after, well, shocking the league by being the best team in the regular season.

Ducks... game... in... less than 3 days! I need to work on my breathing routines.

Finally, here's a cool shiny serial numbered Donovan McNabb card for my Eagles collection. When I think of McNabb these days, I mostly think of playing NFL2K, which was pretty great until someone ruined my fun and took their license away.