Cards from The Lost Collector

Our favorite Yankees fan @Lost_Collector sends some Birds 'n Blazers. 

 

I finally busted out my Jack Flaherty shirt that I bought at Busch Stadium last summer yesterday, and Jack and co responded with a 2023 first: a series win. It's been a struggle so far in the young season for St. Louis, but hopefully the win over Colorado was a sign of better things to come.

This seemed like a good opportunity to show off a few things I received from The Lost Collector back around Christmas time. The holiday themed card would have made a seasonally appropriate post back when I first got these cards, but that is definitely a very busy time of the year.

It seems like Steven Matz has only been a Cardinal for a few months, but that's probably because he made 15 appearances with the team last season. He appears here on one of those gold-ish Topps cards that are becoming more and more difficult to come by as print runs spiral out of control.

A good chunk of the package was actually dedicated to basketball cards. I can always use more Bol Bol cards cards.

The Contenders Draft set gives us a throwback look at Dame Lillard.

This retail Absolute card of CJ McCollum gives us another glimpse of that awkward period where teams were playing in front of no fans.

We end things with a quad-pack of Bucks. All of these are Collector's Choice cards. The top two seem identical, but one of them is from the German set. There's also a nice "silver signature" parallel here.

Contest Winners and Cards from Oren

 

If you won something, say something! 

 

As of Monday, another college basketball season is in the books. That also concludes contest season here at Cards on Cards. Here is your big list of winners:

• 1st Place: bivlo (blitmeat)
• 2nd Place: rl16
• 3rd Place (tie): mds2942 (Chaos is a Bracket) and AngelsInOrder
• WoRsT pLaCe: mintxcore and josh.worley (Worley360)
• Championship Game Prediction: Brandon L (UConn 75, SDSU 62 - actual score UConn 76, SDSU 59)

If you are one of the winners (or "winners"), please get in touch with me as soon as possible so I can get your address and discuss your prize(s).

Meanwhile, here's another lovely batch of Cardinals cards from reader Oren. I was able to increase my Topps gold (the real gold) collection by a couple of notches with this package I got back in December.

Jack Flaherty has kept his ERA down over his first two (healthy, we presume) starts of the 2023 season, but he's been walking dudes at an alarming rate. Hopefully that doesn't become a thing.

Along with the tidy J.D. Drew autograph card is this striking blue insert from the 1999 Fleer Mystique set. I like it a lot.

More gold! Mooooore gooooold!

Tim Cooney made it to the big club in 2015, but my memory of this has more to do with remembering he has a card in Topps Update that year than of any recollection of seeing him on the field. Memory is weird that way.

Is this still the Players Weekend logo? Was it ever?

This insert from last year's Topps Chrome set leans a little too close to "Ben Baller" territory for me. It's always nice to get another Yadi insert card, though.

Last, but certainly not least, is this fancy encased Alex Reyes auto-patch card from the 2017 Panini National Treasures set. I wonder if Panini will continue to make sets like this in the future as they only have retired players and (apparently) minor leaguers to draw from now.

Thanks again to Oren and everyone who participated in my contests this year!

Another Contest? Another Contest!

Who is going to win the big game?

 

With no possible points left to score in tomorrow night's championship game, we already have a winning bracket in this year's March Radness contest. (Pre-congratulations to the winning bracket, blitmeat by bivlo!)

I did promise a separate impromptu contest that didn't require filling out a bracket or signing up with ESPN, and I just barely delivered. Tell me in the comments what you think the final score of the game will be tomorrow and how many points will be scored by the leading scorer. (Sample entry: UConn 80, SDSU 67, 24 points.) The winner will receive a new baseball or basketball value card pack of my choosing.

Make sure to get your guesses in before tipoff tomorrow (4/3) at 6:20 PM PDT.

Green Cards

 

Happy St. Patrick's Day! 

In honor of the day, here are a few selected green cards I've acquired over the last six months or so. One or two of these may have already made an appearance here. I am not keeping track of these things!

Watching the Blazers lately has made their fans turn a particular shade of green.

Mmm, this one is kind of minty.

The Mosaic patterns, when scanned, always look like the card is sitting in the shadow of some beaded curtains.

Here are those beads again.

Mmm, green donuts.

Flaherty is an Irish name, if I'm not mistaken.

This would have been better if Duarte was in a green Ducks uniform.

Boosh!

Enjoy your weekends, everyone.

Contest Reminder and More Feathered Friends

Eagles goodies and more from @forgotaboutblay plus a contest reminder. 

 

Do you like filling out brackets? I find that most people enjoy this weird process. Some people spend more time on this than actually watching the games. Everyone likes to come across as smarter than your fellow human, even when it turns out that you're really picking team names out of a hat. If this sounds like you and you also happen to like free sports cards, you should check out our latest March Radness contest!

If you're here to see cards, I've got some good ones for you. Dennis from Too Many Verlanders sent along a really nice Christmas gift that included a bunch of fancy Eagles cards (and more!) Let's check out a few of them.

I have to admit to being pretty excited about Jordan Matthews when he first came to the team. I'm not any kind of NFL talent evaluator, however. I seem to recall him getting off to a decent start, but he eventually found himself out of a job before resurfacing in 2018 as an emergency option for the Eagles.

There's a lot of jersey on this one! I'm not always a big fan of jumbo swatch cards because they tend to minimize the focus of the player, but this one was set up nicely.

Bryce Brown backed up LeSean McCoy for a couple of years. Those days already seem like a lifetime ago. I do like the hashmarks on the card border.

This Jason Avant card probably came from Dennis's stash of Michigan dupes. I doubt I have very many chunks of footballs in my collection.

Marvin McNutt was another Big Ten star, but he didn't make much of an impact at the pro level.

Dennis always manages to find some really cool Oregon Ducks cards, and this Kenjon Barner is certainly no exception. I don't think I've heard of this Quantum brand before, but I can't say that I pay any attention to what Upper Deck is doing since they lost their baseball license many years ago.

 

Last up is actually a basketball card. Due to the nature of NBA cards, at least in the Panini era, I never would have ended up with a Jared Jeffries Trail Blazers card if it wasn't for this Signatures card. Since any given set usually only includes a couple of a team's star players plus their current crop of rookies, role players and end-of-bench types usually end up getting shut out unless they find their way into an autographed checklist. Of course, this is likely due to Panini having a stockpile of signed stickers in their storage facilities. In any case, we got at least part of a photo of Jeffries, who made 38 appearances with Portland in his final NBA season.

Contest Time! March Radness XIV

 

It's Year 14 of our annual contest! Pick all of the NCAA tournament games for a shot at a prize! #MarchRadness

 

It's back! Pick the best NCAA bracket and you can win a cool prize. There are also runner-up prizes. I will also select one game for anyone, including those who don't want to fill out a bracket, to predict the final score of (game TBD.)

Rules for 2023: 

• Selection Sunday is March 12th, which means that is the earliest the brackets can be filled out. The games that actually count for the contest will start on March 16th.
• Default ESPN scoring rules apply. You must fill out the entire bracket, including the tie-breaking final score of the final game. There's some disclaimers in there about the possible cancellation of games and/or the tournament itself. I didn't read it, and hopefully it won't need to be addressed.
• First place wins a brand new blaster box of sports cards (subject to availability!) I will email the winner shortly after the final game to make the prize selection among the available products at the time.
• Second and third place prizes will consist of some team bags of cards from your favorite MLB and/or NBA teams.
• As always, the worst (honest) bracket will get something, too.
• Click here now to join, and follow the "Create a Bracket Now" link. Make sure to fill out your entire bracket prior to March 16th!

A Flock of Group Breaks

 

The latest batch of @flywheels box break goods shows off some interesting parallels. 

 

More fun stuff from Cardboard Collections Affordable Group Breaks hit the mailbox awhile back. This time around, I did pretty well in the parallel department with my chosen Cardinals selections. I also added a few more cards to my collection that represented another bird team.

The 2003 Fleer Box Score set features actual newspaper box scores as a background motif, although these games have nothing to do with the actual team represented on the cards. I snagged two of the 1st Edition parallels from the set, which feature an all-silver background and are numbered to just 150 copies.

Switching over to a much newer set, this final (?) offering of Panini Absolute baseball came with all sorts of parallels because, well, it's Panini. I'm told this is a Lava parallel, although I'm not seeing any indication of heat or fire here.

In the times following 9/11, the American flag was seemingly everywhere, and that included baseball cards. I landed a sizeable chunk of needed cards from the 2003 Upper Deck 40-Man set and also wound up with this patriotic parallel of one of the top players that I collect.

More parallel madness? Check out this Holo Silver card numbered 99/99 from the '99 Pacific Paramount set. I'm going to throw this up on eBay as true "eBay 1 of 1" and sell it for 99 thousand dollars. It will work. Trust me!

A couple of the football breaks were right within my sweet spot for the green bird team ('90s, pre uniform-change.) SkyBox made a lot of fun looking NFL sets right out of the gate, none of which I could really afford back in the day.

I still don't even really know what Collector's Edge was or why they felt like serial numbering every single card, even though they were printing them by the truckload like everyone else. I do know that these look cool as hell, comic book style font notwithstanding.