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An attempt to find one of the contest prize winners, plus a bonus collecting dilemma. 

 

I've had a lot better luck about people claiming their contest prizes this year, but I'm still looking for one more person to step up. If you submitted your March Radness bracket as "J.D. Drew", please get in touch with me soon as I owe you a third place prize.

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Here's a one card wonder for today. This rainbow foil parallel Topps from last year wouldn't ordinarily fit in my collection, but I received it in a TCDB trade recently. As you can see, for all intents and purposes this is an Aaron Judge card. However, Matt Carpenter is also in the photo off to the right. Someone must have tagged Carpenter in order for it to be added to my want list, as I try to collect all of Carpenter's cards regardless of which team he's with.

You see, the thing is that I have never dared tread on the slippery slope that is what others often call a "cameo" card, as in a cameo/guest appearance on someone else's card. I suppose I could could cave in and finally do this -- and one compelling argument is that I'm not likely to acquire many other cards of Carpenter's stint with the Yankees. (I think his only real appearance on a card with them is one of those Topps Now things.) If it was just a base card, I might toss it back in the trade box and pretend this never happened, but I would feel a bit weird about ignoring this card.

How does everyone else feel about "cameo cards" when it comes to your PCs?

Bootleggin' with Panini, Part 4

A Panini Instant basketball tribute to the 1988 Donruss set. 

 

Previously on Bootleggin': Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Towards the end of my last post on this topic, I remarked that there probably wouldn't be any more posts in this series in the foreseeable future, as the first (?) set of Panini Instant Retro Rookies based on old baseball designs carried a hefty price tag for the three single cards that I wanted.

Fast forward a couple of years and the prices have come down to the point where I was able to snag one of the cards. There's also an affordable Troy Brown Jr. for sale online, but I'm holding out for a cheap copy in better shape. As for Anfernee Simons, he's probably going to have to wait as long as he remains a starter in this league and continues to be one of the Blazers top scorers.

That leaves us with Gary Trent Jr., whose card prices exploded in 2020 following his performance during the NBA "bubble" tournament action. He was since shipped off to Toronto, where he's been a part-time starter and productive scorer, if not the type of guy you're going to invest a lot of money in his collectibles.

As far as the design of these goes, the player name font on the front is a little off. It seems like they just picked something randomly that would fit and went with it. The backs are, like the '19/'20 (1989) version, a bit sad. There's also no print run printed on these, unlike the later cards.

It looks like they did not make this set again after the 1991 tribute. It seems like a bit of a wasted opportunity, especially this season with Victor Wembanyama out there just waiting for more cards. I get the feeling that Panini Instant isn't very popular, especially in the NBA. In my searched, it did look like there was a similar concept out there for the NFL. I wonder if those cards were more popular.

Benefiting from a Purge

 

Rolling the dice on an unseen Blazers lot. 

 

A blogger who I've sent some basketball stuff to in the past, CaptKirk42, has been in the process of purging some of his collection. I happened upon his efforts to ditch a bunch of basketball cards earlier this year, and rolled the dice on a couple of team lots for just a bit of shipping fees.

Out of a lot of 70-ish Trail Blazers cards, I was able to find a home in my collection for 7 of them. Honestly, that was a bit better than I was expecting. Still, it was fun to dig through a random assortment of cards and get the extras listed up on TCDB.

Marcus Kennedy actually never played in the NBA, but he was a Blazers draft pick as mentioned on the back of the card. I don't usually go seeking out college cards for my pro team collection, but I will include them in my binders if one that fits happens to fall into my lap. It does help if my favorite team is mentioned somewhere on the card, as it does on the back of this one (barely.)

Several of the cards I kept were from various international versions of Collector's Choice cards from the '90s. Unlike the other big North American pro sports, basketball has a massive following in many other countries, so the idea of making Italian, Spanish, and French sets (to name a few) back in the day was pretty smart.

PJ's Party? Sounds awesome. This is referring to the team's head coach at the time, P.J. Carlesimo.

Those SkyBox Emotion cards were a bit over the top.

Here's the fourth Uncle Cliffy card of the lot. It's an Electric Court parallel from the 1993-94 Upper Deck SE set.

I also snagged the Raptors for a certain blog trading pal, and I believe the ratio of keepers-to-traders there was much more successful.

Birds and Such

It's another group break round-up. 

 

It's been pointed out a number of times that I seem to collect a lot of bird teams. Both pro bird teams were heavily represented in the latest round of group breaks I opted in to from Colbey's Affordable Group Breaks. These mostly represent, well, let's call it Q4 of 2023.

I don't buy a lot of football, so most of my Eagles acquisitions are random base cards that I feel like adding to my want list over at TCDB. It's always nice to get some newer stuff, especially since I'm not such a hardcore Eagles fan that I always remember a ton of players.

I certainly don't remember these guys, but I love a clear acetate sports card. This is from some sort of 1996 Collector's Edge set.

There weren't many exciting photos to choose from in my haul from the 1996 Upper Deck Silver Collection, so I ended up just choosing my favorite player of the bunch.

The smaller, redder birds were well-represented as well. The 2002 Topps Super Teams set comes from an era where sets featuring exclusively retired legends could actually exist. I knocked off a bunch of cards from my want list here, including a pair of serial-numbered foil parallels.

Speaking of foil parallels, the 2003 Bowman Heritage break was also fruitful for me. It mostly looks like Haren's regular "knothole" style card, but there is a rainbow foil finish to it.

And speaking of parallels in general, I landed a thick black Pujols parallel, complete with facsimile signature. Not bad!

Last, but certainly not least, is this Albert card from the 2007 Bowman Heritage set. It's a card that I swear I've seen several dozen times over the years, and yet didn't manage to own a single copy of until recently. I own most of this set, so it's a bit strange that Pujols has eluded me so long.

Big Time

A look at the new Topps Big League set. 

 

In the current production schedule, there aren't a lot of new baseball cards to look at this early in the season. For this reason, I'm grateful for the arrival of the now annual Big League set, even if it's never really going to be my thing.

As a replacement for Opening Day, this isn't a bad idea. The design is fairly eye-catching, though the cards are printed on the same somewhat cheap feeling card stock of years past.

It's that tiered rarity system for the base yet that Topps revived for last year's set. I'm quite confident that nobody likes this. The rare set collector probably won't even bother with this product, and the team collectors (like myself) get mad about having to track down rare cards whenever their team lands on that portion of the checklist. These are two foil cards from the most common short printed tier. The cards in the higher tiers will probably stay on my want list for years, just like last year.

Here are some more Cardinals. We get Large Lad Luken, currently back with Memphis for the third straight season, plus a few more well known guys from the active big league roster.

The card backs look similar to the flagship set. It's not a bad template.

Of course, there is the usual crop of inserts to be had. Good Vibrations would probably make more sense in a Heritage or Archives type set instead of something modern like this. I think Ozzie is the only retired player on the checklist, but I'm certainly not complaining about another card of the Wizard in 2024.

Topps Big Leaguers is the most redundant insert set name of the year. These Big League Big Leaguers come in a few different design that look like something out of an '80s children's magazine. (Highlights, anyone?)

Topps did port over their Mascots inserts from the defunct Opening Day set to this one. These are definitely for the kids, and kids at heart.

Orange parallels can only be found in blasters now. Previously, you would find blue parallels in blasters and orange elsewhere. They're still called "electric orange" despite just having a bit of plain orange on the borders. The more common foil cards also come in this orange variety, only, you know... foil.

No one openings Big League packs expecting hits, but I actually landed two autographed cards in the same one blaster that I opened. It feels like the Orioles have had a plethora of prospects run through their system of late.

Both autographs are headed for the trade box. I haven't been able to add this one to TCDB yet, as someone needs to upload a checklist first. (That someone could be me, I suppose.)

March Radness Contest Results

Another contest is in the books! 

 

The 2024 basketball tournament has come and gone, and along with it we have concluded another March Radness contest. It was a tight race this year, with AngelsInOrder taking first place on the tiebreaker. In second place was TDK, with (the real?) J.D. Drew rounding things out in third. The Diamond King also won the pop-up contest during Final Four weekend, with espn36697562 finishing in last place.

If your name is in bold here, please contact me with your mailing address so I can send out your prizes. Thanks for playing!

Three Yadis and a New Contest

A new contest is upon us, and this one is easy to enter!

 

To go alongside the annual March Radness contest, I promised a quick and easy one for anyone who didn't have the time or patience to fill out a bracket. And even if you did fill out a bracket, stay tuned for the end of this post (or skip to the end if you don't like a certain legendary Cardinals catcher.)

Today's cards are from Cardpocalypse, and all three of them are Yadier Molina cards that I've never seen before. (This was a big reminder that I need to reach out to Tim and send him some stuff soon. He's probably really excited that NC State is in the Final Four in both the men's and women's tourneys.) 

Along with the numbered jersey card from the 2019 Topps set came a pair of Stadium Club parallels. The 2019 Chrome parallel above is actually a refractor, but I don't have the kind of scanner that can easily show the difference between refractors and otherwise.

The last Yadi of the trio is this rare Rainbow Foil parallel from 2017, which is numbered to just 25. (It's actually 25/25!) These are terrific editions to my still growing Yadi collection. Between Erin and I, there are quite a few cards of his in our house.

And now... the contest! This is for anyone to join, whether or not you filled out a bracket this year and are participating in March Radness or not. Simply comment below with the NCAA men's team that you think will win it all on Monday night, and tell me how many points that team will score.

• A valid entry example: NC State, 99
• As a reminder, Saturday's games are UConn vs. Alabama, and NC State vs. Purdue. You'll need to pick one of those teams.
• Deadline to enter is Saturday 3:09 PM PDT (6:09 PM EDT)
• If you're unable to comment here for any reason (sometimes Google can be a jerk), feel free to reach out to me via e-mail or direct message somewhere and I'll add your prediction here.
• The winner must pick the winning team and having the closest total number of points scored by that team in the championship game. If no one picks the winning team, I will choose whoever picked the closest score regardless of which team was chosen.
• The winner will get some sort of unopened 2024 baseball pack/box (up to $12.99 in value).
• You can only enter once, so make it a good guess!