Canadian Football and a Big Contest Update

 

Who will win the annual college football contest? Plus, cards! 

 

We're getting really close to kickoff in the final college football game of the longest season of our lifetimes. Who is going to take this one? More importantly: who is going to win the big Cards on Cards contest? It looks like the top prize is down to two competitors, based on their total points accumulated and the maximum amount of points still left on the table: Ginko-5 and EternalSigh (Elliptical Man). I won't be watching the game because I don't really want to watch either team win, but I will tune in later to check out the final standings.

On an unrelated note: cards! Actually, I received cards and a really nice signed 8x10 photo back in late November from Sportscards From The Dollar Store. This package sneaked in right before the big Canada Post strike that threw mail deliveries between Canada and USA in all sorts of upheaval during the busiest time of the year.

The signed photo is of Oregon Ducks QB Vernon Adams Jr., who is shown with the Saskatchewan Roughriders, meaning that this must have been taken during the 2017 season. I really don't have a lot of stuff like this, so it was a really nice addition to my collection. 

Of course, this package wasn't all Canadian American pro footballers (not to be confused with Canadian-American pro footballers, as Adams is from California.) Brian Westbrook is not Canadian and was not a CFL player, of course, but he does wear green! This is one of my first looks at the Topps Composite set, their apparent answer to Panini Chronicles.

I've actually been spending all day watching pro basketball and ignoring the real world. Here's a pro basketball player that I collect. Chris Duarte hasn't yet seen a ton of action with the Bulls, his third team in four seasons.

Speaking of not seeing much action, Jusuf Nurkic might be on his way out of the league after being removed from the starting lineup in Phoenix, a steep fall for someone who was essentially moved in exchange for Deandre Ayton and Toumani Camara. (Of course, there were other factors and players involved, but this was mostly what Phoenix got out of it, give or take a Grayson Allen and a couple of guys who aren't there anymore.) While people have been trying to run Ayton out of town since as soon as he arrived, Camara looks like a keeper to say the least.

Here's another Duarte card. I like that this is from the hobby release of Select. Too many times, people have traded me the retail versions of these cards when I already have them. (Those ones are blue.)

Payton Pritchard, one of the greatest high school players to ever come out of the state of Oregon, has taken on a much more consistent role for the defending champion Celtics. Boston is never going to be my favorite team, but seeing Pritchard do well there is a good enough reason for me to not to change the channel when they're on.

Josh Huff is another Duck who also became an Eagle.

I swear that I have about 100 different versions of this card with its unnecessarily closely cropped photo, and yet I didn't have this gold one apparently! I've made some good progress in collecting the various gold Cardinals parallels that Topps has put out in the last 24 years in their flagship sets.

I might not be the biggest hockey fan, but I definitely know who Keith Tkachuk is! This is a really fun looking jersey card from Pacific of all companies. Tkachuk spent the bulk of the last decade of his career with the St. Louis Blues and now has two sons in the league.

Thanks again to buckstorecards and everyone who entered the contests this year!

Panini Points, Redeemed

The much-maligned redemption system has its occasional perks. 

 

People who open a lot of Panini products like to complain about Panini Points. They like to complain a lot. The idea is that a "points" rewards card is inserted into a box in lieu of a "hit", which allows the company play fast and loose with the number of big cards a given box is expected to yield. (Remember, these companies liberally throw around the term "on average" to get around sounding like anything is guaranteed.

 

I've actually ended up with Panini Points twice in my collecting life, and both times ended up finding some worthwhile things to redeem them on, at least for my weird collecting needs. One of the biggest complaints is that Panini charges a significant amount of shipping to send these cards to you once you've made your selection, making it feel like you're just buying the cards instead of making a redemption. The main way to combat this is to find something in the store you might already buy (a box, perhaps?) That way, the shipping charge difference between buying the box itself and adding the Panini Points redemptions is negligible. At least, that's how I sell it to my brain. (If you're curious, I bought a Donruss baseball "mega box".)

My Points this time came from a failed redemption that I submitted more than two years ago. It was supposed to be some sort of Milwaukee Brewers autograph of a lesser known player, if I recall. It was pulled for me in a box break. I knew I'd much rather have a card or two for my personal collection than the random Brewers player, and while it took a bit of work to get there, I ended up with two cards I'm happy to own. I'm always looking to add new Wesley Matthews cards to my collection, and the Josh Huff rookie autograph checks both the Oregon Ducks and Philadelphia Eagles boxes for me.

You can see what I ended up with during my last trip to Panini Points Lane (scroll to the end). I think I went one for two on that trip, with a signed card by a late Blazers great and jersey card of a guy who once said some regrettable stuff.

Football Upstages Everything

Baseball cards take a back seat in this @forgotaboutblay hobby delivery. 

 

As jokes continue to swirl around the internet about the length of a certain professional football quarterback's retirement (it wasn't long), I thought I'd show off some stuff from another stellar batch of cards from Dennis of Too Many Verlanders fame. A good chunk of my football (Ducks, mostly) collection has been supplied by Dennis, so like how the long awaited opening of Spring Training ended up taking a backseat to the news of a certain former Michigan QB deciding to... whatever the opposite of hanging up your cleats is... the football cards are going to throw themselves fully in front of the baseball stuff for now.

First up, the Arik Armstead card from Panini National Treasures is an instant favorite. The design is pretty nice, but it's the throwback uniforms that really seal it for me.

This color parallel ends up clashing a bit with the Oregon uniforms, but there are a lot of colors that clash with their uniforms. (At times, their own uniforms have clashed with themselves.)

Speaking of Ducks uniforms, I actually really liked their jerseys from the Dennis Dixon era. It was easy to call out the crosshair pattern on the shoulders, but I kind of liked it!

Here's another look. This is from a Press Pass jersey card. Is Press Pass still a thing? I haven't a lot of college draft cards since Marcus Mariota turned pro, aside from the odd Panini Prizm thing.

DeMarco Murray won't be the most fondly remembered Philadelphia Eagles player, but the Donruss Dominator inserts look pretty nice.

Flipping over to basketball for a bit, this Panini Totally Certified design always annoyed me. It's great to have a large place for the player to sign, but they've cropped so much of the photo that it makes for a bit of an ugly card. The reason they did this, I imagine, is because they're using college photos due to the longer lead time needed to have these signed on-card. Totally Certified seems to have been banished to the Panini attic for now (it doesn't even appear in Chronicles), while the regular Certified brand lives on.

It's back to football here with an extra shiny Prizm Draft auto.

Here's one last football card before we let the baseball guys have a bit of fun. I did hold back a few of the huge stack of signed cards for a future Ducks post, as I tend to do.

If you're strictly a baseball fan and are still reading this-- thank you! Mid-'90s Score parallels/inserts are a favorite of mine, as they don't seem to be too expensive and yet I still seem to need a ton of them.

Dennis sent a healthy stack of 1996 Flair cards, which offer a high end look in an era of overproduction. They are fancy, but not all that expensive anymore.

Imagine returning to collecting baseball cards after more than a decade off and finding out that someone really made baseball cards like this. Well, that's exactly what happened to me. I found a lot of things  about card collecting (Chrome, in particular) to be really eye-rolling when I first got back into it, but this is the right kind of silliness.

This pair of Press Proof parallels from 1997 Donruss claim a print run of just 2000. That doesn't seem like a lot by today's standards, but I bet it would be a huge ordeal to put together a whole set of these.

Lastly, Topps Finest cards are always appreciated here. Two of these gems from 1994 are refractors. I bet you can guess which ones.

A Four-Sport Blowout

I'm not worthy! 

One of the unfortunate things for me about the global health crisis we're still living through is that I've received a few extremely generous packages from regular trading partners that I just haven't been able to fully reciprocate just yet. I am still waiting until it's safe to go to the card shows. Of course, in the grand scheme of things, this pales in comparison to almost literally anything everyone has suffered through, but it still bugs me. This latest example of generosity is one I've been sitting on for quite awhile: a big envelope stuffed full of eye-popping cards from buckstorecards. As usual, there was a generous share of stuff from all of the major sports.

Vladimir Tarasenko has had difficulty staying on the ice since his Blues won their championship. He returned to action for his first game of the season (and only fifth since 2019.) Apparently he has some serious shoulder issues that are threatening his career. This card is actually sort of a half-acetate look to it.

Next up is baseball and an Ozzie Smith card from the always classy Triple Threads - 2020 Edition. I should probably make more of a point of finding some of the singles from these sets of the players I collect.

Here's a strange case of a player who never appeared in a game with the Blazers (or any NBA team for that matter), and was undrafted, yet spent enough time on the roster to get his own card. Morgunov had a lengthy pro career, playing for more than two decades in Russian leagues and others.

Nassir Little is starting to look like the next young Blazers player to start to make some gains on the court in his second year, a la Gary Trent in the latter portion of last season. It's really cool to this jersey swatch from last year's Court Kings set.

No one else sends me CFL cards besides buckstorecards. You can't really find CFL cards in the US, of course. I wouldn't have even known that Josh Huff was still playing football if it wasn't for this card. It's really cool.

Another Duck appears! Actually, it's no mere Duck, it's the NFL's offensive rookie of year, Justin Herbert... on a green parallel, no less. Herbert's cards are often expensive now, so I don't expect I'm always going to be successful in prying them away from other people.

It's back to baseball. This David Freese card from the very first Prizm set doesn't seem to be listed in TCDB. Is it "cracked ice" or something? I'll have to do some more research. (edit: It looks like it might be a National Convention exclusive with a 25 card print run? Wow!)

It's tough to tell the difference between Triple Threads and Museum Collection at times, although I feel like Museum Collection's design varies wildly from year to year (at least in baseball.)

Now that Jalen Hurts is apparently the Eagles #1 quarterback (until the draft, I guess?), it'll be interesting to see what happens. If he had a good group of veterans around him, I'd certainly think he has the talent to succeed, but it looks like the team is pretty much in full rebuild which doesn't bode well for a young, smaller QB.

The last one was too big to contain. I could have scanned this, but its hugeness wouldn't have translated. That fancy new card stand can barely hold it, even. It's basically an 8x10 signed photo with official Panini branding and all that.

Throughout the past year, I've tried to pay it forward as much as I can with some giveaways and PWEs. Hopefully we'll get back to a place where I can send out larger packages with better content on a regular basis soon.

Stacked with Ducks

A stack of Ducks from @realwesmore from a Twitter swap a few months back. 

 

You may know him as The Pancake King or perhaps by another name, but often times the cards from super trader Wes come randomly and by surprise. This was different, however, as Wes offered up a ton of cards from various sports for blind trades. I ended up picking out a few -- all for my Oregon Ducks collection. I could have held off on showing these until next football season, but maybe this will motivate me to add even more Ducks cards to my collection before September arrives.

This is a really nice looking Josh Huff card from a 2014 Upper Deck offering. It includes a two-color jersey swatch and is numbered to 125.

This one isn't signed, but it was my first Jake Breeland card. I have... let's see... two now!

I guess back printing plates are a thing? It's kind of amusing to me that they would make these for a set with such boring backs like this Press Pass product from 2008, but it's a plate nonetheless. I don't have many of those.

Here's the proof of the stacking!

Birds of a Feather

They flock together. Just ask @forgotaboutblay -

Mega Michigan fan (and Detroit Tigers, don't forget!) Dennis of Too Many Manninghams/Verlanders may have outdone himself this time. In this latest (let's just pretend it's recent) package was a nearly constant parade of autographed cards, something I'm still trying to adjust to now that it's been a couple of months. There were quite a few Ducks alums in the batch, and these usually get held over for a future "Good Luck Ducks" post. Since we're getting closer to year-end, I thought I'd do a blowout on these and show off all the scans that I made so I can start fresh next season. (I did hold out one card from this stellar package for the Rose Bowl.)

Josh Huff was a great all-purpose player (i.e. he was really fast) in his time with the Ducks, and it was cool to see him suit up for my pro team of choice. He got into some legal trouble in recent years, but is still playing professionally... just not in the NFL any longer.

Jeremiah Johnson is always going to remind me of the late '00s college football video game franchises that sadly no longer exist. He played second fiddle to Jonathan Stewart for quite awhile, but he was really good in his way. Since people are actually seriously talking about opening up compensation for college athletes now, I suppose we could eventually see licensed college sports video games become a thing again... maybe?

LaMichael James! I just wish the 49ers didn't instinctively make me feel like throwing up my dinner.

I don't remember James wearing #17 at any point, especially considering that it's more of a wide receiver number. Is this some other guy?

This is a very intricately designed card. It's actually hollow in the middle, apparently. I should probably have more of these, even if (non-college) football isn't really my thing.

I don't really want to talk about what's happened with Mariota and his pro team at this point, so let's check out this really cool die cut insert that features him as a Duck. I was never a huge fan of the feathers on the helmet (uniforms are one of the only places where I turn into a traditionalist), but this card makes them look good. This is a sneaky candidate for my favorite card of the package, despite the fact that it's one of the few that isn't numbered, signed or embedded with some piece of a thing.

Rolls Royce! I wish there was an NFL Red Zone type channel that catered specifically to players from my college of choice, because I just don't care that much about the actual games. (I say this, and yet I'll probably watch my share of playoff games anyway.)

And with this Jack Clark Starting Lineup card, we are officially done with football (for this post, anyway.) Is everyone okay with that? Do you even think this is a baseball card blog anymore?

Here's one for the more-bang-for-the-buck Panini Leather & Lumber set. They sold blasters of this stuff which only contained something like 10 cards for the normal $19.99 price. For this reason, I am going to covet the base cards I need, like this one of Matt Carpenter.

I hadn't seen any gold minis from the 2016 Gypsy Queen set before, but there's always a first time for anything. With Marcell Ozuna's imminent departure, the Cards could certainly use a guy like Piscotty again.

Shiny Waino?! Is it really Christmas? (No, it --was-- October.) This is great, though.

Finally, we swing back to that same Panini Leather & Lumber set, with what Panini came up with as a suitable replacement for those old Upper Deck Sweet Swatch autographs that always used to fade into oblivion. Hopefully Panini got these guys to sign these chunks of baseballs with better pens... or maybe these aren't really baseball chunks at all. In any case, these look really cool (despite the lack of licensing and tiny photo) and I hope to track down more like this soon.