Contest Update!

An update before the Final Four and a bunch of Christmas cards.

We're in the home stretch of the latest edition of the March Radness contest, and it all came crashing down for me on Sunday when Duke was felled by the shocking end to their contest with UConn. Huskies alum (and member of the back-to-back title teams) Donovan Clingan was just about to take the floor at halftime of the Blazers game we were at when he found out about the wild ending. While Jeremy sits in 1st place currently, I'm unsure of a path to victory for him as his predicted winner (Florida) is long gone. It all looks like it will come down to who takes the real title to determine our winner, with Trevor riding high with Michigan, both Brendan and Emily in play (Arizona), and Dominic lurking with his Connecticut pick. (Nobody tell Erin that she has clinched the worst bracket this year.)

Speaking of Michigan, we've got a ton of great cards to show today that came from big Wolverine guy Dennis of Too Many Verlanders over the holidays. Incidentally, the namesake of his blog is back in Tiger Town for what could conceivably be his final stop on his MLB tour.

I am pretty sure I have more "fancy" cards of Jeff Ayres (fka Pendergraph) than any of his normal base cards, but such is the way of the young hooper that doesn't blossom into a starring role in the pros. This one comes with a free mystery substance. I'm not going to forensically analyze this exactly, so let's just call it dirt?

I believe I have a lesser copy of this chunky jersey card of the one-time Cardinals closer. This one is a silver (or gray?) version numbered to just 149 copies, though.

Travis Outlaw was a bridge between the "Jail Blazers" era and the good vibes of the B-Roy/Aldridge days. Fun player! This is a fun card as well.

It's sort of amusing that this is called "Color Guard" when there is a distinct lack of vibrant color on it.

Here's a couple of other significantly more obscure Blazers on a signed card (or signed things affixed to a card, at least.) Portland certainly had some misadventures in the draft before landing Damian Lillard. Williams and Babbitt were a pair that didn't work out so well.

One of the things I like the most about Panini's draft sets is that they show players in the fully licensed college uniforms. This insert idea distorts the coloring and patterns of Franklin's Ducks uniform beyond recognition, unfortunately.

Hey, it's picture time! Encased cards don't scan so well, you see.

Here's a quick six-pack of cards from the various teams that I follow. Pacific really had some goofy designs.

And here's a nine-pack of all Ducks! I think my favorite here is the combo Freeman/Mariota card in their college uniforms.

I was fairly ambivalent about the Diamond Kings brand, but I do miss their framed parallels. This one is numbered to 99.

Blog favorite Ugo Amadi checks in here with a silver Prizm autograph from the much beloved Panini Prizm Draft Picks set.

And now we head all the way back to 1982 for a gander at a Garry Templeton Fleer stamp. I still have a lot of needs in the stickers and stamps areas.

The ticket motif that Panini Contenders is based on doesn't always work, but I like this design. The green foil helps as well. (Does anyone use paper tickets anymore? And they certainly aren't perforated, are they?)

It's baseball season! I hope everyone has been enjoying the first week of the long MLB marathon.

Canadian Catch-Up Post

 

The catching up continues with another multi-sport package from north of the border. 

 

I am just a few posts away from being totally caught up and ready for the big move. This latest edition features cards from Canadian friend buckstorecards. And as fate would have it, the very first card I wanted to show off is, in fact, a Canadian one. (I do find it interesting that Upper Deck CFL cards have their California address on the back but state that they're printed in Canada.) Vernon Adams Jr. was with the Ducks for just a single season, but he had enough highs and lows to be remembered for quite some time.

Onterrio Smith will be remembered for a long time as well, but for a much different reason.

I couldn't quite get a good scan of this chunky die cut J-Stew card, but suffice it to say that it's a good one and it looks great in hand. It's numbered to just 15.

This is quite a bold card design. The former Eagles start TE is married to soccer star Julie Ertz, who recently announced her retirement from the US National Team.

Switching sports over to the one with the big round ball, I have to say that I pretty much never see Panini Recon cards. I'm guessing this is typically a hobby-only product, and Panini's price points for their hobby basketball card boxes don't ever make sense no matter what your budget is like.

I've managed to accumulate some impressive Ducks football jersey cards, but it's much more rare that I come across a Ducks hoops one. I'll have to try to watch more Ducks basketball games this coming season, although I think I say that every year. Some years it just works better than others.

I don't always scan every card when showing off these larger packages, but I absolutely have to show off every Goodwin Champions card I get because they are so ridiculous.

From wonky Drexler art to a fancy Prizm auto, we get a look at a key cog of the Ducks team that went to the Final Four back in 2017. Dorsey has mostly played professionally overseas, but did get into a couple of NBA games last season with the Dallas Mavericks.

Finally, we switch over to baseball with a card from the 10 Most Wanted list.

I don't officially collect Ducks baseball players, but autographs of players in Oregon uniforms? More of these, please! Anthony Hall was a 4th round pick in 2022 and is currently in A ball in the Yankees system.

Oh, there is more! Josh Kasevich was a 2nd round pick of the Blue Jays last year and spent this season in the Northwest playing for the Vancouver Canadians. Nice!

Featuring Kevin Kolb

Ducks, Blazers, Eagles and maybe even one Cardinal card headline a package of things received in December. 

 

While I may not be buying new (Topps) baseball cards for the time being, there's still plenty of things to show off here on the blog. From the country up north came another great package from Sportscards from the Dollar Store that, as usual, featured cards from all the sports.

Second year cards of Justin Herbert have naturally been a bit easier to acquire, but I still don't have a ton of them. I stopped signing up for the Chargers in group breaks once Herbert had passed his rookie year, and the prices were starting to get out of hand.

This NBA Hoops Rookie insert of Jermaine O'Neal is really nice looking card for such a budget brand. The "rookie" lettering printed on the card is embossed.

Here's a pair of Bowman Sterling jersey cards from Jonathan Stewart's rookie season. The green parallel on the left is numbered to 299.

And yes, here is Kevin Kolb! If the black borders and block lettering seem familiar, it's because this is from a 2007 set, and Topps used the same basic design as baseball for the other sports. I honestly haven't thought about Kolb in quite awhile, but it's a fun card.

It's too bad that The Original Whizzinator will always be Onterrio Smith's legacy, because he was a terrific running back when he was actually on the field. It looks like the Whizzinator is actually still a thing. There's a website! (I'm not gonna link it.)

I'm going to have to remember to go back and try to fill in my collection with as many Penei Sewell cards as possible from 2021, because offensive linemen don't typically get a lot of cards beyond their rookie year. This is a really nice one, although all of the different colors tend to clash with Sewell's Ducks jersey. Look for Penei's brother Noah to join him in the NFL at some point. He's pretty good as well. I believe there's four Sewell brothers in all.

All of the stars and glitter give this one a bit of a holiday or winter feel.

Here's the lone Cardinals card of the lot, but it's a good one. I'm a big fan of high end base cards, which I know are the source of disappointment for anyone who likes to spend big money on boxes of just a few cards.

Finally, in his fifth season in the league, I have my first Chris Boucher card. He was a favorite of mine at UO. He never got a proper rookie card as he was still injured when he entered the league and went undrafted, and his first official card ended up being in a Panini Instant set that commemorated the Warriors title that year.

From the most recent Panini Chronicles Draft set comes this triple jersey card of the Blazers second round pick. It's a blue parallel that's numbered to just 99.

And here's the Blazers other rookie on a similar triple jersey card. This is the base version, so it's unnumbered. Portland entered the draft with zero picks, but ended up trading their way into Greg Brown, who is a raw prospect but a terrific dunker, and then signed the undrafted Trendon Watford. Watford played his way into the team's rotation before they ended up tearing almost the whole team down about a month ago. Watford even recently signed a long term contract, which is a huge deal for a dude that didn't even get picked.

Cards of Every Flavor

So many sports at once. 

 

This is the time of year when it seems like there are way too many sporting events competing for my attention. With the World Series only recently concluding, there's still way too many sports things going on for all of the free hours I have in my day. In the spirit of "too many sports", let's check out a bunch of cards from a bunch of different sports thanks to Sportscards from the Dollar Store.

The Blazers have been off to a bit of a rough start this season, but I still enjoy the older cards I received here. Court Kings seems to be more of a higher end set than its baseball counterpart (Diamond Kings), so I am always glad to get my hands on any of it.

This is what fancy basketball cards looked like almost a couple of decades ago. I wish Fleer/Flair was still around these days, especially for what they would do with basketball cards. I think Upper Deck still holds the license to the Fleer brand, which isn't very helpful.

There's always room for a little more Sheed around the blog.

In the American football divsiion, some Ducks alums and Eagles pros were added to my collection. Onterrio Smith kind of threw his career away over some weed nonsense, which probably would have been treated differently today considering that times have really changed. (Okay, maybe not, if you ask Josh Gordon.)

I really like that buckstorecards has access to CFL cards, because you don't exactly see them at the card shows in my area. This one is a special "blank back" variation, which doesn't seem to be cataloged in TCDB as of yet.

From pro Ducks to pro birds of another feather we go with this card of now former Eagle Zach Ertz. I was bummed to see that Ertz was finally traded (to Arizona) a couple of weeks ago after rumors persisted for quite awhile that he was headed elsewhere. He was a great Eagle, even if he bugged me as a Stanford Cardinal.

Duce Staley was one of my favorite Eagles of the Andy Reid days, and it's cool to see him involved in coaching. I was hoping that he was going to get the Eagles head coaching job, although I have no idea how that would have worked out. (I don't really know anything about NFL coaching, to be honest.)

I also seem to get 100% of my St. Louis Blues cards from buckstorecards. Here is my now annual admission that I've barely been able to watch any Blues games (there's also Portland Timbers soccer happening to distract my attention, and they're not even pictured here.) This Canvas style card is really nice. I'd probably collect more hockey cards if they were all like this.

Pietrangelo was one of the stars of the recent Stanley Cup winning team, but he moved on to Vegas around a year ago.

Barbashev was also one of the Stanley Cup winning guys. I suppose that I mostly scanned cards of guys that I had heard of.

I haven't heard of Klim Kostin, but this was too cool not to show off. This is an autographed hockey stick chunk! I definitely didn't have one of these in my life before.