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.

Good Luck Ducks: Stay Safe and Healthy

 

Filling the void with help from @forgotaboutblay and more. 

In the original timeline, the Oregon Ducks would be facing off in their first game of the season against North Dakota State today. Instead of posting a scan of a cool Ducks card and writing a few words about the new season and the new quarterback and what have you, I'm just going to show off all the cards I was holding back for the season that won't be. I'm also going to show off a bunch of Ducks stuff I got more recently from Dennis of Too Many Verlanders

In fact, for these first four cards, I'm not entirely sure who sent them since they were sitting in an unmarked stack specifically for this series. Dennis and Doug (buckstorecards) are the primary outside contributors to my Ducks collection, so chances are these could have come from either of them.

It's raining autographs! See, I was hanging on to some good stuff here.

This is probably a good time to mention that I won't be watching any college football this season. I was all for canceling all sports in 2020, but I still have kept an eye or two on the teams I follow in other sports. College sports, however... I just can't watch young, presumably health unpaid athletes risk so much for so little. The decision to play shouldn't even be in their hands, honestly. The Pac-12 season is still a no go at this point, which makes not watching even easier for someone like me, but I'm going to continue to act as if the sport doesn't presently exist for the time being.

Next up is the stuff from Dennis. Arik Armstead's signature is pretty simple, you guys.

More Byron Marshall. Here he is on a nice looking blue parallel of his Prizm Draft card.

¡1 of 1 ALERT! I never expect anyone to drop a printing plate on me, but here it is! Something I've realized while accumulating Ducks cards is that Dion Jordan has a lot of football cards. This is from the 2013 Panini Black set. It's also signed, because what else are you going to do with a printing plate? Print more cards?!

The autographs just keep rolling in. This time Jordan's in a Ducks jersey instead of one of those pro ones, but Press Pass was careful to crop the logos out.

Here's one of the most recent Ducks cards that I own, and it's a doozy. Leaf is one of the more mysterious companies out there making cards, so as a result I don't own much of their stuff. They seem to specialize in prospect sets and creepy cards of 16 year old baseball kids. This is one of the nicest looking things that (current era) Leaf has done as far as I've seen, though.

LMJ is wondering where his ink is.

We'll end things here with Ifo, one of my all-time favorite Ducks.

The rest of Dennis's bubble mailer (non-Ducks edition) will be featured next time. In the meantime, if you want to make me slightly less sad about the state of college football (and the country in general), here's a link to my Ducks page in case you have something you are able to contribute.