Bubbling Up

The latest in a long line of excellent trade packages from Too Many Verlanders.

The year already feels like it's slipping away from me, so I know that it's well beyond time that I finish up some posts about trades I've received in 2025. I really don't want to head in 2026 talking about something I got, like, last summer. Since the vast majority of what I add to my collection has been coming from TCDB for the past few years, the bubble mailers full of surprise goodies have been something to savor. This particular one came over from TMV back in June, when things were finally starting to heat up here in Portland. Of course, we're now well into November and I've been looking for breaks in the gloomy weather all week to just to have a few moments to sweep a bunch of leaves off of my deck.

Anyway... cards! David Freese cards! While Randy Arozarena's 2020 playoff Babe Ruth act wrecked a lot of Freese's postseason records, he was pushed down the lists a bit more by some prolific players this year.

Vintage Blazers?! Nice! I am fairly certain that a bunch of these are going to end up being upgrades over what I already owned when I finally crack open the Blazers binders again.

A Bol Bol rookie rookie? I'll always take these! He may not have spent more than a blink at UO, but I'll always be fascinated by him.

It's a 20 year old parallel of a Hall of Fame Cardinals player? You can't knock that.

Three Blazers, er, legends all signed this slab of wood, or so the scan would have you think. They actually signed clear stickers that were affixed to this wood-like card-shaped object. I did like Jarrett Jack for a time, but he was made expendable when Brandon Roy came around.

Dion Jordan seems to have a ton of "hit" cards from his rookie year, or at least I seem to own a disproportionate amount of them. I will never mind this as he will always remind me of the tremendously fun Marcus Mariota era.

I think Jalen Reagor was supposed to be a speedly slot receiver type when he came to the NFL out of TCU, but he didn't seem to progress beyond a third option to pass two and made some costly errors on the field in his two seasons in Philly. It looks like he is out of the league now. I kind of like the design on this relic card, however, or at least the placement of the Eagles logo.

There's that man again (and his signature!) 

Jordan Matthews played more football for the Eagles than Reagor. However, after being a heavy target early in his career, he eventually became more of a guy you call up on the phone when you run out of healthy players.

The early 2010s will always be a special time for me and watching Oregon football, even though Chip Kelly is kind of a turd. Kenjon Barner was a huge part of that, and it was fun to hear him join the broadcast during a Ducks game earlier this year.

Jimmy Baseball! Now that he's been off the air for a full season, it's easier to enjoy his baseball cards and playing career.

Arik Armstead is with the Jaguars these days, and has certainly come along way from his days at Oregon when he was a two-sport player (football AND basketball... both kinds!)

The last one up is certainly the most special one, at least for me. As I continue to contemplate how I want to spend my card budget dollars, I know that excellent cards of the Wizard need to take precedent over any random blasters I decide to buy on a whim.

Thematically Connected?

 

Another stellar batch of goodies from a Canadian friend. 

 

Just as soon as yet another big package of stuff arrived from Sportscards From The Dollar Store, his turn for a mailing sent back in January was up to the front of the queue. As always, this is another fantastic collection of stuff from all four major sports. Yeah, even that sport.

 

 

It's a bit of a strange color clash to see the redbird team on a very green card like this one, which hails from the 2016 Topps Tribute set. I can't say I've seen many high end Topps cards manufactured in the last year or two. I wonder if Topps is still as committed to these products under Fanatics as they once were. I might just be a bit more disengaged with the hobby as a whole these days.

 

 

I really like the canvas feel from the 2008 Triple Threads set. This is a technique that I wish they would do more often, especially if they insist on making cards this chunky.

This is a really nice looking autograph of former Card Stephen Piscotty, who has spent the past couple of seasons in AAA.

(Side note: I'm trying to move from using Chrome primarily as a desktop browser to Firefox, and I'm having a really difficult time formatting these posts. Has anyone else experienced this?)

 

Unlike the Schoendienst card above, this later Triple Threads release just has a smooth card surface, which makes it less exciting to me.

 

This Big Mac card is actually made by Panini (look, no logos!), so it's a bit of an outlier here among its fancy Cardinals companions. It's hard to get excited about anything Panini does these days in the baseball realm, but I've always been a sucker for Chronicles for some weird reason.

I always tend to get Triple Threads and Tribute (and Tier One, for that matter) confused, but this Tribute card from 2010 (blue parallel, I believe) is extra shiny and should stand out in any collection.

From baseball to football we go, with this die-cut Donruss Eagles from 2016.

Dakota Prukop's time at Oregon could be best explained like an answer to a trivia question. He transferred in from Montana State to win the starting job at Oregon, but was replaced after a few games by a freshman named Justin Herbert. I don't think he has many cards, so it was nice to end up with this one.

Jason Maas was best known as Akili Smith's backup at Oregon, but went onto a lengthy career in the CFL as a player and now head coach.

Another Duck (sensing a theme here?), and a very shiny one -- this Kenjon Barner rookie year card is numbered to just 10 copies. Barner can barely even fit on the card here, which is kind of amusing considering that he's not a huge guy.

Buckstorecards is always the best source for me in finding Ducks players who didn't get a lot of cards, with many landing in the CFL like Vernon Adams Jr. A transfer him, Adams was actually the starting quarterback that Prukop replaced and is still going strong in the CFL today, coming off of a career year in 2023.

Just one hoopster to show off today. It's a Bol Bol Revolution!

The Blues haven't quite captured my interest lately as they've not been very good, but it's always fun to get a nice card of a player from the Stanley Cup winning team. Those were good times.

Contest Reminder and More Feathered Friends

Eagles goodies and more from @forgotaboutblay plus a contest reminder. 

 

Do you like filling out brackets? I find that most people enjoy this weird process. Some people spend more time on this than actually watching the games. Everyone likes to come across as smarter than your fellow human, even when it turns out that you're really picking team names out of a hat. If this sounds like you and you also happen to like free sports cards, you should check out our latest March Radness contest!

If you're here to see cards, I've got some good ones for you. Dennis from Too Many Verlanders sent along a really nice Christmas gift that included a bunch of fancy Eagles cards (and more!) Let's check out a few of them.

I have to admit to being pretty excited about Jordan Matthews when he first came to the team. I'm not any kind of NFL talent evaluator, however. I seem to recall him getting off to a decent start, but he eventually found himself out of a job before resurfacing in 2018 as an emergency option for the Eagles.

There's a lot of jersey on this one! I'm not always a big fan of jumbo swatch cards because they tend to minimize the focus of the player, but this one was set up nicely.

Bryce Brown backed up LeSean McCoy for a couple of years. Those days already seem like a lifetime ago. I do like the hashmarks on the card border.

This Jason Avant card probably came from Dennis's stash of Michigan dupes. I doubt I have very many chunks of footballs in my collection.

Marvin McNutt was another Big Ten star, but he didn't make much of an impact at the pro level.

Dennis always manages to find some really cool Oregon Ducks cards, and this Kenjon Barner is certainly no exception. I don't think I've heard of this Quantum brand before, but I can't say that I pay any attention to what Upper Deck is doing since they lost their baseball license many years ago.

 

Last up is actually a basketball card. Due to the nature of NBA cards, at least in the Panini era, I never would have ended up with a Jared Jeffries Trail Blazers card if it wasn't for this Signatures card. Since any given set usually only includes a couple of a team's star players plus their current crop of rookies, role players and end-of-bench types usually end up getting shut out unless they find their way into an autographed checklist. Of course, this is likely due to Panini having a stockpile of signed stickers in their storage facilities. In any case, we got at least part of a photo of Jeffries, who made 38 appearances with Portland in his final NBA season.

Cards from Oren

We've got jerseys! We've got signatures! We've got parallels! 

 

Reader Oren contacted me for the first time last year and we worked out a really nice trade. Oren was back for round 2 last fall with another generous batch of cards from the various sports that I collect. Let's take a look at some of those in no particular order. I'm going to drift from sport to sport here.

Carmelo Anthony's career as a Trail Blazer was brief, but thanks to Panini's parallel madness, he leaves a legacy of a ton of cards in the red and black. I have no problem with this really, but you would think that a player who was on the team for less than two full seasons wouldn't occupy such a large space in the binders.

I don't recall Earl Wolff's time with the Eagles, but after a few keyboard clicks it starts to make sense. His most significant playing time came in his rookie season, which was Chip Kelly's first with the team but also overlapped with Michael Vick's last season in Philly. I refused to watch any games with Vick on the field, so I might have just missed him.

Matt Holliday is one of the main players I collect, so it was great to see this All-Star jersey pop up. I don't have a lot of blue swatches in my collection, of course, so this is something a bit different. Holliday was set to be the Cardinals bench coach this year, but it was just announced today that he isn't going to be doing the job after all. Instead, Joe McEwing is joining the team.

Relative to my fairly small Eagles collection, I feel like I have a lot of Jordan Matthews cards. He left the team after a few seasons but came back during their Super Bowl run, which was fun.

Speaking of Super Bowl runs, do the Eagles have another one in them? If so, Kenneth Gainwell might have something to say about it. He's part of the Philadelphia backfield that includes 1000 yard club guy Miles Sanders and Boston Scott, who returned some kicks in that last big playoff run.

Mike Golic may best be known as a broadcaster these days, but he was a monster on the field in the '80s. I'm also not entirely convinced that he's not the same person as Jeff Garlin.

I bet you didn't think you were going to see two Nelson Agholor cards in today's post, did you? This rookie year card is an orange Chrome parallel.

Nolan Smith was a big star at Duke, but his skills did not translate to the pro game. At all. Fortunately, another rookie showed up in 2012-13 to take the point guard reigns for the next decade and beyond.

We end things on the best possible note with another Cardinals card. This is an always-appreciated gold parallel from the classic Gold Parallel Era of 2006 NLCS MVP Jeff Suppan. Nice!

The Rest of the Stash

Not just a hockey blog! 

Last week, we took a look at a few cards of the newly crowned champs after capturing their very first Stanley Cup. This time around, let's check out a selection of some of the great non-Blues cards I received from buckstorecards. All in all, this was quite a great lot, and I need to figure out how to get this things squared and still somehow avoid the high cost of international shipping.

I love that new Clyde Drexler cards are still being produced. This is an especially good looking inserts from this past season's Prizm set. The Glide is looking especially cool here doing some sort of midair move while some silly Lakers look on the in the background, dumbfounded.

Festus?! Yes, the dude that never played a minute, practice or otherwise for the Blazers, still gets cards in a Portland uni. I guess it's cool that he showed up for team photo day or something. Injuries suck.

Here's an Immaculate Dame. Rarely do cards from such a treasured line come into this household, so this was a nice surprise.

This past year's Court Kings set had several different tiers of rookie cards. Here's Anfernee Simons in Pissed Off Tier 1 and Super Happy Tier 2.

Along with Blazers cards, there was a flock of Ducks and Ducks alums. DAT's card from 2014 Bowman Platinum feature two pieces of player worn memorabilia. It would be funny if the players wore every single jersey they need to put on during the Rookie Photoshoot at the same time, and just peeled them off in layers. That's probably not how it works, is it?

Here's a couple of cool cards of the recently retired J-Stew.

Big super intense football close-up shot!

Here's another patch from a photo shoot. LaMichael is looking like he doesn't quite know what to do with the ball here. Are the balls differently shaped in the pros?

Doug was cool enough to send some Eagles cards my way as well, including this sticker auto of the team's on again, off again wide receiver Jordan Matthews.

Finally, let's end it on a good note, with a Cardinals cards. That's right, this is a baseball blog! This is a 1st Year card of the Cardinals uber-prospect Nolan Gorman. It looks like people are going to more or less hoard his cards for awhile, so any chance to get one of these is good for me.