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!

A Thursday Night PWE Round-Up

Some extra-stuffed white envelopes leads off with some @BoRosny miscellany. 

 

Tonight we have an envelope from October, one from November and one from December. I'm finally starting to get through the backlog of stuff I have to post about, which means I'll probably get itchy and start up a bunch of trades again.

First up is some more good stuff from Bo of Baseball Cards Come to Life! I always think that I finished off 2003 Topps ages ago, but I do still need a few more. The Nomar card put me a little bit closer.

Here's a nice color-appropriate Eagles card from the 1999 Topps set. In some years Topps used the baseball design in their football set, but in other years -- not so much.

Hey, it's a Portland Beavers card! You don't see those every day. I believe this is from the 1989 AAA All-Stars set. I don't know if these sold as well as the team sets, but I remember seeing them once or twice at the Beavers games back when I used to go.

Here's a few more minor league guys. These are all Cardinals-affiliated, if you hadn't already guessed. 

Bo also set some vintage Cardinals cards, which are always appreciated, like this trio from 1968.

There's been more Curt Flood cards on the blog of late, and that's definitely a good thing.

I'm not sure a card from a Tigers victory in the 1968 World Series belongs in my collection, let alone one where the Cards were walloped 13-1. However, I'm not in the habit of tossing out cards from the '60s, so my binders might have to give this one a chance.

Next up is another batch of the good stuff from gcrl (cards as i see them). Along with a new Waino from 2021 Topps Update, there was another healthy grouping of set needs.

It had been so long since I added another card to the 2012 Topps Archives 3D collection that I had almost totally forgotten about it. For a few years there, Topps was putting out little batches of lenticular cards in one fashion or another, but it seems like they've dropped that for the most part. I'm sure they're not cheap to make.

The rest of the envelope was dedicated to 2012 Allen & Ginter. At some point, I need to make it a priority to finish off all of these A&G insert sets, but I've been more focused on Heritage inserts of late.

This is easily the dumbest and less essential insert set in the whole Allen & Ginter line, but for whatever reason I still decided to make a list and keep them. I suppose it's telling that Topps hasn't really tried anything this elaborate in the years since.

I really have no idea what happened here. I'm sorry about that.

Last up is a big batch of Philadelphia Eagles cards from Elliptical Man. Graham has spent his whole career (12 years and counting) with the Birds and has already played for four different head coaches (interims not withstanding.)

Brian Westbrook was a favorite of mine back in the day, when the Eagles had the triple threat ground attack of Westbrook, Staley and Buckhalter.

More Westbrook! This was right after Panini took over the Donruss brand.

The aforementioned Duce Staley checks in with this overly busy metallic version of Upper Deck's Victory brand.

I should become a Jeff Feagles supercollector. I wonder how many cards he actually has. He was the Eagles punter in Tecmo Super Bowl, which automatically makes him a legend. Plus, his name was  Eagles with an F in the front.

A couple of cards in this Eagles stashed were actually numbered, which is really cool. Donovan McNabb was QB1 for the bulk of the Andy Reid era, and while that never led to the ultimate prize, they were a fun team to watch.

The other numbered card is this Zach Ertz Longevity parallel from the 2017 Panini Rookies & Stars set. It's really nice and makes me wish that Ertz had been able to stick around.

Cardinals! Blazers! Football Guys!

Three PWEs from @collec_sport run the gamut of the big three sports. 

 

I'm back from an unplanned layoff... nah, let's just call it a short period of inactivity for the blog. I hadn't intended to take the entire holiday week off, but that's how things played out. I may have had a different title for this post if life had gone differently (I'm Thankful for PWEs?) Tonight I'm taking a look at three envelopes of the plain and white kind sent from The Coffee Card Guy (aka Sport Card Collectors aka Cards Over Coffee.) These were some seriously loaded envelopes as you'll see shortly.

If 2019 was a lost season for Jordan Hicks, 2020 was... well, it was kind of lost for everyone. Hicks was one of the first names to officially opt out of the season, but he was unlikely to pitch regardless of his status considering the combination of factors including his young age, his incredible velocity, and his long road to recovery from Tommy John surgery. I sincerely hope we're talking about him a lot in coming springtime, because he was fun to watch.

I do not have many (if any?) gold Chrome refractors, so it was really cool to land this Marcell Ozuna version from the 2018 Topps Chrome Update set. I haven't heard anything about there being a Chrome Update set for 2020, but considering how underwhelming the regular Update set is, that's probably for the best.

It's Big City time! I actually really like the way these Stat Line parallels scan, compared to some card that have a primarily foil finish.

Closing out the run of Cardinals cards is this Trevor Rosenthal gold parallel from 2015 Topps, the last year that Topps truly created a gold bordered parallel. These parallels have looked pretty unimpressive lately.
 

Each envelope had a theme, and the second one featured Trail Blazers cards. I really like some of the basketball designs that Panini used in the years where they were still figuring things out before they settled in to the mess that they are today. (Granted, it's a mess that clearly makes them tons and tons of cash.)

LaMarcus Aldridge went full Beast Mode in the first two games of the 2014 NBA Playoffs opening round, setting a tone for the Blazers to pull off their first series win in fourteen years. I owned the card from Game 2 of that series against the Rockets and now have a copy of Game 1. Even if we hate how Aldridge left the team, Blazers fans will always have fond memories of him for this.

Ah, more Aldridge. I think I said my piece already. Moving on...

It's back to one of the present stars of the team with this CJ McCollum "Lord" parallel from the 2016-17 Panini Excalibur set. It wasn't too long ago that you could find stuff from this set cheaply, including repack packs. Now, of course, you can't find anything basketball card-related cheaply anymore. (If you can, please tell me about it... and don't tell anyone else! Shh!)

This is a nice card of Sabas, one of my all-time favorites. It's a blue parallel from the 2017-18 Donruss Optic set (powered by Panini!)

Last up is the envelope from the Eagles/football guys envelope. De'Anthony Thomas was never an Eagle, of course, but he is a big part of my Oregon Ducks collection. In case you wondered about my football collecting hierarchy, it goes something like this: 

Oregon Ducks cards ---> Oregon Ducks alums in pro football uniforms ---> pineapple on pizza* ---> certain Eagles cards ---> getting run over by a bus ---> Michael Vick Eagles cards

I'm actually finally organizing my Eagles cards and adding them to my collection on TCDB, so I will have an updated Eagles trading page here shortly. I'm going to keep all of the cards in boxes, though, but at least they will be in some sort of order with the dupes filtered out. Speaking of dupes, let me know if someone out there wants any of my excess Eagles cards. I really don't have room for a lot of football cards in my life.

And speaking of uninspiring Topps gold parallels (I did... really, I did!), these football gold parallels from 2014 are sort of oddly colored. They strike me as more of a yellow/beige than a true gold. Both of these numbered cards are of players (Ertz and Foles) from the Super Bowl winning team, though, so that's a big positive for me. Again, watch this space for more on my NFL collecting quirks if you're interested.

If you had asked me who led the Eagles in rushing in 2018, I would have said, "who?" And if you had said "Jordan Howard", I would have said, "oh, that's weird, I forgot about him." But you would have been wrong, because he didn't lead the Eagles in rushing in 2018. He led the Bears in rushing that year. And now I still don't know who led the Eagles in rushing in 2018. It probably wasn't Darren Sproles because he was a myth.

Kenjon Barner was actually an Eagle for several seasons, but this holds a loftier place in my collection because it's a Ducks card. In fact, it's a Ducks card featuring a throwback uniform from the '90s, giving it several more cool points. Cool points are all that matters in cards. They're way more important to me than "slabs" and "grades" and "pop" and all that nonsense.

I may seem pretty ambivalent about Eagles cards at times, but I definitely need to get my hands on all of the The Champ Is Here inserts from that Super Bowl winning team. That was a fun team and a fun game.