Sunday Funday PWE Round-Up

Catching up with chunky cards from @sanjosefuji and more! 

 

I don't even want to get into how far behind I've fallen in card stuff here or what led to this situation. Let's just look at some cards! The first bunch came over from The Chronicles of Fuji. Fuji managed to cram a sweet stack of memorabilia cards and relics into a small envelope way back when, and I'm excited to finally show them off to you all.

Oooh, even Joey Heisman thinks these cards are pretty sweet!

Of course, Harrington only finished in 4th place in 2001, but he and his school managed to raise his profile enough that he went on to a decently sized (but not terribly successful) NFL career.

Here's a blast from the past -- it's Josh McRoberts, or McBob as he was affectionately known during his short time around here in Portland. This is one of those neat looking letter patches that I own so few of. It's even autographed! It's just a manufactured patch, of course, but it definitely resembles the lettering on the Blazers jerseys at the time during the Adidas days.

The Blazers hits just keep on coming. This signed sticker auto comes from decorated Spanish star Sergio Rodriguez, who spent the latter half of the '00s in the NBA before resurfacing stateside for a season about six years ago. He's still playing professionally these days.

Zach Collins is the NBA's only living and breathing vampire (that we know of.) He's currently a key member of the Spurs after starting his career with Portland.

I think we all know this guy, for better or for worse. There's kind of a strange cut-out for the jersey piece on this card to go along with the wood theme.

Ha is still apparently the only player from South Korea to play in the NBA, which is kind of a cool distinction as he otherwise didn't have much of an impact on the league. He tantalized with his size, but I don't know that the league had as much structure in place twenty years ago to develop raw talent that they do now.

I really liked Gary Trent Jr. while he was with the Blazers and it felt like his trade to Toronto was the beginning of the team's downward slide, even if we didn't know it at the time.

Next up, we have some goodies from long time PWE trader (and Dodger fan) gcrl. A couple of the online exclusive Topps Mini cards were on offer, including this insert from the 2017 set.

This one is even more special as it's numbered to just 25. Ponce de Leon has bounced around a few organizations after his last appears with St. Louis, but he hasn't resurfaced in the big leagues yet.

I also snagged some Allen & Ginter set filling needs from gcrl, including a couple of base cards and this Randy Johnson insert. Will we see a normal late summer release for this year's Allen & Ginter set? I haven't checked the calendars in a bit because my budget for cards has dropped off dramatically of late.

Here's a few more inserts from last year's Ginter set. I kind of want to burn the card at the top.

Lastly, I claimed a few random set fillers from The Angels, In Order back in the winter. (Yeah, it's been awhile!) Those Royals jerseys definitely scream early '00s to me.

The 2014 Topps Heritage New Age Performers design is one of my least favorites. It squishes the player photo over to the side unnecessarily. I get how they were trying to make this look like it should with with the 1965 Topps theme, but it doesn't work for me.

I also claimed this slightly smaller ("mini"...ish) parallel card of Mike Sweeney from the 2005 Bowman Heritage set. I've managed to add some Bowman Heritage cards to my meager set builds since I started trading on TCDB, but that area could still use plenty of work.

Thanks again to everyone who has sent me envelopes of all sizes!

Red and More Red, But Mostly Blue

Adron Chambers hits a walkoff winner in the 14th, but the worst was assumed while writing this trade post.

It's been a rough go of it of late to be a Cardinals fan, not that I'm looking for sympathy or anything like that. They can't seem to beat the Pirates (the Pirates!) to save their lives, and we're deep into the season at this point. Hall of Fame blog Cardboard Junkie and Cards on Cards have exchanged cards a few times over the years, so why don't we take a look at some of the cards dayf sent of players from my two favorite franchises to cheer things up a bit around here?

Fan Favorites was Topps Archives done right, only about 10 years ago. This Willie McGee approximation is a lot more indignant looking than his original 1990 Topps counterpart.

Well, howdy there!

This is a really nice looking relic card. Yeah, I know, your pockets are flush with J.D. Drew memorabilia and you can't get anyone to swap you so much as a single Pixy Stix for any of it, but this looks like excellent design work if you ask me.

On the other hand, this is truly awful. But I love Scotty Rolen and his perpetual scowl. When healthy, he's one of the best, most complete third basemen of the last twenty years.

Meanwhile, it was a rough day for Portland Trail Blazers fans as well. The naming rights to the Rose Garden were sold to some health care company. The Blazers arena opened nearly two decades ago and was fairly unique across major pro sports as having no corporate naming deal. I will never call it anything but the Rose Garden and will dare not speak its ugly new name here.

Dayf sent a nice group of older Blazers cards (are basketball cards "vintage" if they're pre-Jordan?) including a bunch of 1980-81 Topps tri-paneled gems that I may have future plans for. Instead, I scanned the Lionel Hollins card above with a photo from the championship year.

This guy was into dogfighting before dogfighting was cool. You hear that, Mr. Vick? Oh wait, dogfighting was never cool.

Sabas was the best. Here's a card that can truly cheer me up.

Oh no, oh sorrow! Brandon Roy was part of the epic Greek tragedy that was the Portland Trail Blazers of the last decade or so. Well, he was pretty great before he tried to steal the Holy Grail, hit a booby trap instead, and watch his knee turn to dust. I do have to say that I really like the Murad set.

Sergio Rodriguez was a curiosity for a brief time, a Spanish pro ballplayer whose draft rights were bought by Paul Allen when he suddenly became interested in basketball again. Now that Allen's off promoting his new album and hitting the night clubs, he's apparently letting his cyborg team president do things like completely screw up traditional Blazers things that fans enjoy.

Token Weekly Blazers Post: LA Beat

Another week gone and another two cards from the 50-ct. box have been scanned. Two more notches in the win column, with a disappointing loss to Dallas sandwiched between, snapping the Blazers home winning streak.

The big stories of the week were the huge victory over the Lakers Monday, the hard flagrant foul that sent Rudy Fernandez to the inactive list, and Greg Oden's continued absence. The Blazers annihilated the Lakers, but late in the 3rd quarter Trevor Ariza sent Rudy flailing to the ground in a clip that was seen all over the sports TV highlight shows and YouTube. I dont' feel like linking it, but I'm sure it won't be hard to find. It was Portland's 7th straight home victory over the Lakers, who have only won 6 games in the Rose Garden since it opened in 1995. Meanwhile, Oden is supposed to miss another week and Martell Webster, previously declared out for the season, is now "back in April"... whatever that means. Last night the Blazers rebounded from the Dallas loss to beat the New Jersey Nets, who are a lot worse than they should be with some of the talent (Devin Harris, Vince Carter, Brook Lopez) that they have. Portland made 39 of 45 (!) free throws in the game.

About the cards:

• Hmm, what to say about Danny Young... He almost made a game-winning half court shot in the 1990 NBA Finals. It was after the buzzer, however. They would have reviewed it these days, at least. Plus, I believe that was right before they implemented the tenths-of-a-second timekeeping, so who knows how much time really would have been on the clock in this day and age. The 1991-92 Fleer design doesn't really hold up well. I don't see how using nearly a third of the card space for border is good.
• The Stadium Club Drexler card came out in Drexler's final season as a Blazer, which is sad. I do like how the gold foil swoosh thing runs right into the Blazer logo on Drexler's shorts, though.

Bonus: I warned you there would be three bonuses if the Blazers beat the Lakers. These cards came courtesy of Eric from The Pettitte Pursuit. He sent me yet another box of Cardinals cards and threw in a few Blazers. The Sergio Rodriguez card is my first of his. I would like to get a Blazer card of each player on the current team before the season is over. I doubt there are Shavlik Randolph or Michael Ruffin Blazers cards, though, so I'll have to settle for what I get. (Bring back Franz bread cards!) For Brian, there's a card of Cliff Robinson, this time with the red spandex instead of the black. And then there's Clyde, soaring above the Portland skyline, circa 1993. Great stuff.

Make sure you check out the Hoops contest below. You can win free basketball and baseball cards.