More Than a Buck

A fresh bunch of Blazers, football players and hockey dudes. 

 

The always excellent Sportscards From the Dollar Store hit again with another bunch of goodies back in October. This latest bunch was heavy on (American) footballers with some other sports represented as well.

I won't rehash the story of the late Biggie Swanigan, but suffice it to say that it's one of the sadder ones. His last days in the league came in a reunion with the Blazers, who had originally drafted him. And then, unfortunately, the pandemic happened. Sometimes life really sucks.

Moving right along to better and brighter things, here are some Eagles past and present on the latest Panini Score design. I can always use more Brian Dawkins cards.

Did you all hear that the Eagles are in the Super Bowl again this year? Or, as some are calling it, the Kelce Bowl.

The Super Bowl also brings Andy Reid back to face his old Eagles team, which was led by Donovan McNabb for most of his time there. (See, I can make this batch of cards that I've been sitting on since October seem relevant today!)

A handful of St. Louis Blues cards always sneak their way into these packages as well. I feel like I always end up picking a Tarasenko card to scan out of the bunch to scan for these posts, so this time I brought along a friend for him.

Sportscards From the Dollar Store is my main (and probably only?) source of CFL cards. Of course, I'm only looking for CFL cards if they feature Oregon Ducks players, like '80s UO running back Tony Cherry.

A more recent Duck running back shows up here on the more modern Panini Prizm set from 2015.

I kind of like this year's Score design. It's distinctive, at least. Kayvon Thibodeaux still looks good in his Oregon uniform.

Speaking of Oregon players, this one is a real doozy. (Does anyone say "doozy" anymore?) I can count on one hand the number of printing plates that I own, so this was really cool to see. I'm not so thrilled that Troy Brown Jr. is a Laker these days, but unfortunately no one consults me about these things before allowing them to happen.

I wish I could add this one to the TCDB database, but Panini doesn't publish checklists for their plates as far as I can tell. Even more confusingly, these are often inserted into another product from another year, like National Treasures or something. Anyway, don't hate the card, hate the game.

All the Brown You Could Ever Need

 

Basketball goodies from @JustinMcMillen9 include a bunch of Ducks alum cards -- especially one guy in particular. 

 

I hope you like scans of Troy Brown Jr. cards! Back in July, I worked out a rare deal via Twitter with Justin to exchange some basketball cards. There are definitely a lot of questionable people and and card sales going on in the Twitter platform (and a lot of questionable people doing card sales), but Justin is definitely one of the good guys, as evidenced by the stuff you're about to see here.

Troy Brown was one of the one-and-done players that has become so fashionable of late in college basketball, so he didn't get a chance to really become a fan favorite of mine at Oregon. His NBA career looks promising, however. In his just completed second season, he increased his numbers all across the board, which is a good sign even while playing for a struggling team.

I'm going to run out of things to say about Brown. In fact, I'm already out. Let's just look at the cards.

Panini Mosaic was highly sought after this year, and I never found any in stores (a common story to hear.) The base design is pretty uninspiring to be honest. It's pretty much C-grade Prizm with the backgrounds taken out. The parallels are much more eye-catching.

Speaking of brands that I'll never see, check out this cool rookie jersey auto from last year's Select. Justin sent me no less than five of his autographs, which is super cool.

I actually bought plenty of Donruss Optic basketball before people completely lost their minds over all things basketball cards. I didn't find any of this year's stuff, needless to say, although I was able to pop in to a few breaks here and there.

For you baseball card fans who are still with me, just look at what Panini cards look like with actual logos on them. Not so bad, right?

When Troy posed for these shots on media day, do you wonder if he had any idea just how many different cards and parallels he'd be featured on? Panini is crazy, you guys.

Another thing I never see in the wild is Court Kings. It actually took me until this year to finally fully realize that Panini Diamond Kings is the baseball equivalent of Court Kings, and that Diamond Kings actually has nothing to do with Donruss Diamond Kings. Seriously. Look it up!

I wish Score existed as its own brand in basketball and baseball, and was priced accordingly. They have been cranking out cheap football sets under this brand for a long time now. Instead, this is from the confounding Panini Chronicles set, and on top of that is actually a parallel numbered to 49.

Believe it or not, there were even more Troy Brown cards. The next pair are Certified rookie autographs.

I actually didn't even scan all of the Brown cards that Justin sent me. This is a healthy representation, though.

Here's a classic Panini "player-worn material" card, which I've recently come to learn that it doesn't necessarily mean any specific player actually wore the material used for this card. Is that right?

I was able to buy some Threads retail stuff last season, but actually found it quite boring. The rookie cards look nice, though, with the player's jersey forming the backdrop. This one is another parallel.

Are you ready to look at some other guys? Justin also sent along a few Blazers, including a pair of Mosaic parallels from the Blazers #2 guy CJ McCollum.

This is, I don't know, pink camo? It's a very pixelated design.

It wouldn't be a top quality basketball card post without Dame, who shows up three times here. This is the same parallel design used in Panini's Dunk digital card app for their "Card Hunter" feature, which basically uses a scaled down Pokemon Go-style method to "catch" cards in the wild. Something like that. Apps are weird. So are fake cards.

They should call this the Christmas parallel, but they probably didn't.

This is another one of the Christmas variety, but it's also an insert. Every insert has parallels. All the parallels! Everything must be paralleled by official decree of Lord Panini.

We head back to another Duck for the final two cards featured here that Justin sent.

Dillon Brooks is a key member of the Grizzlies starting group, on a team that is looking increasingly dangerous with highly touted rookies Ja Morant and Brandon Clarke. I don't look forward to the Blazers facing them at least four times a year in the coming seasons.

Thanks again to Justin for making one of my rare Twitter exchanges a more than quality experience!