It's (NBA) Playoff Time!

Basketball's second season commences. It must be repack time. 

By the slimmest of margins, the Portland Trail Blazers snagged the 3rd seed in the Western Conference, their highest seed in 18 years. Their won-loss record was not stellar, but they captured a division title on the regular season's final day, falling just shy of 50 wins. There are a ton of "good, but not necessarily great" teams in the league this year, especially in the West, which begins to explain how a sub-50 win Blazers team finds themselves in a favorable playoff position this year. They will face the New Orleans Pelicans, in what I feel is a favorable matchup considering that DeMarcus Cousins is injured and unavailable.

To celebrate the start of the playoffs (P.S. I have tickets to tonight's Pelicans/Blazers Game 1), I picked up a $5 repack box from our downtown Target location. These always contain 25% less cards than their baseball counterparts, which makes me question whether basketball cards in general are worth more than baseball (doesn't seem possible.) Some other factors must be at play here. However, we see this totally legitimate basketball player on the side of the Jumbo Box and know that we can only move forward. It's time to look at some basketball cards before we return to your regularly scheduled programming.

This is an impressive dunk by Marcus Camby in the original style Toronto Raptors jersey. They seemed like the first team to become self-aware when it came to basketball jersey designs.

Fleer was apparently on life support when Upper Deck took over the (former) Fleer brands. They probably could have done something more exciting with this Hot Prospects set.

This Dale Davis Stadium Club card just screams "promo photo" instead of "real life action". I only scanned this because Davis looks super awkward here.

This Dwight Howard card from the current Panini Prizm set was showing on the front of the box, which helped me to decide to grab this and not some other thing. Howard's card is a silver Prizm version. He also plays for the Hornets after a stint with the Rockets.

When I was really young, I once saw Mark Eaton play in some sort of exhibition/charity game at a local community center and thought he was the largest person on the planet, like an actual medieval giant.

Old-school James Edwards doesn't look terrible impressed with the tiny human trying to guard him. I don't usually let Lakers infect this blog, but this photo was too good to pass up.

I feel like the basketball repacks are kind of a cheat, because they can tend to include some college cards, like this Duke guy here.

Here's another Duke... er, Dukes guy.

Former Stanford chump Adam Keefe looks terrified for some reason.

So does Kurt Thomas!

Just showing off the old Vancouver Grizzlies jersey here.

Hey, it's a basketball!

I really like these longer cards, but I feel like the six-pocket pages to store them in were quite a rarity back in the '90s when these sets were being cranked out.

Theo Ratliff looks extremely uncomfortable in a suit here. I looked to see if Upper Deck did this to him because he was recently traded or something, but... nope.

Here's an early, pre-Blazers J.R. Rider card. Is that Danny Ainge down there? Hi, Danny.

This was the card I was happiest to get the most out of this box, as Ridnour is someone I ostensibly collect, being an Oregon alum. This also looks like someone let a kid wear an adult sized uniform.

John Starks' star burned brightly for the Knicks, but his run there was fairly brief. He bounced around a bit after leaving New York.

NBA Legend, I guess, Tim Hardaway.

I want to remember players for what they did on the court, and Hardway certainly had his stellar moments there. It's just hard to totally forget what kind of person he was revealed to be later in life.

I sneaked in another Laker here, because I was a fan of Nick the Quick back in his college days (no idea why, it's pretty random) and this is a nice looking card. Well, aside from the squished Nick in the lower left corner.

This is just a reminder that the Topps Archives concept has been around for quite awhile. When they got an NBA license again in 1992, they put out an interesting little set of players on would-be designs from their lost years, based off the baseball sets. It's not exactly the most collectible set in terms of value, but it's fun.

Stickers, Anyone?

A couple of packs of stickers to calm the nerves.

Sports are too overwhelming right now, and I don't know what else to do, so here are some stickers. I picked up a couple of packs of 1981 Topps baseball album stickers on Listia awhile back, mostly because the wrapper looked awesome. It is awesome, in fact.

199 - Mike Schmidt - The HOF third baseman gets things off to a nice start. I always liked this version of the Phillies 'P' logo, as it coincided with the period where they were the Portland Beavers parent club.

79 - Johnny Wockenfuss - Wockenfuss didn't have a Schmidt-like career, but he does score extra points in the name department.

10 - Cecil Cooper - A lot of blue on this one.

67 - Miguel Dilone - I have no idea who this is, but the striped stirrups are a good look.

91 - Paul Molitor - Pack 2 kicks things off much the way that Pack 1 did, with a Hall of Famer.

102 - Butch Wynegar - As I've mentioned before, the Yankees were the first team I really paid attention to when I was old enough to understand such distinctions as teams and players. I remember Wynegar catching for New York, insomuch that I was aware of his existence.

179 - Bill Russell - Not the legendary basketball player, of course, but being a 3-time All-Star is nothing to sneeze at.

46 - Carlton Fisk - We end things with another world class baseball player in Fisk.

Even this creepy kid approves.

Affordable Pacific

'90s Group Break results. 

Long-time blog Cardboard Collections has been doing affordable group breaks for, well, a long time. Recently, this has turned into a Facebook group called, you guessed it - Affordable Breaks & Giveaways. (Okay, maybe you didn't guess it.)

The first break I signed up for since joining the new group was a low budget '90s affair: boxes of Pacific from 1993 and 1994. While Lee Smith was the only card I needed from the 1993 bunch (the box was a Series 1 box and most of my needs are in Series 2), I did manage to knock off a good grouping of cards from the 1994 set.

Jose Oquendo, the Secret Weapon. Oquendo is back coaching third base and working heavily with the infielders again after a two year DL stint. Everyone is kind of sort of hoping he's the answer to the Cardinals recent decent into baserunning blunders and defensive shenanigans.

Tom Pagnozzi, former All-Star catcher!

These early Pacific cards were really cool about showing off photos on both sides of the card. If you're not going to do the full stats thing, this is the way to go.

Bob Tewksbury was a rookie (with the Yankees) when I first started collecting cards, and I always felt he was vastly underrated. Well, it didn't feel like he was rated at all. I always dug him and his unusual last name, so it was cool when he became a Cardinal.

My second, randomized team ended up being the Red Sox. I still have Red Sox leftovers from this if anyone has any Pacific team sets to fill.

March Radness X Results!

Congratulations to Jeff (and "congratulations" to another Jeff). 

The tenth edition of March Radness is in the books, with Villanova taking the title for the second time in three years. When will we start hating them more than Duke?

Before we get to the winners... if you are mentioned in this post, please email me or send me a direct message on Twitter with your mailing address to claim your prize. I had some issues with this last time around.

Big congrats are in order to JediJeff of 2x3 Heroes, who takes home the top prize! This year was special, and Jeff will get two blasters -- a new 2018 product and one of my choosing. Jeff's total was outstanding at 1310. In fact, our top two finishes were within the 99th percentile of all brackets selected on ESPN. Great job!

Our three runners-up were Red Cardboard, Xenu FTW, and Wilson (2nd, 3rd and 4th respectively). All three will get runner-up prizes.

Jeff of One Man's Junk (Wax/Bracket) successfully logged the worst bracket in the competition, and had some stiff competition in the race to the bottom. In fact, there were 11 brackets that scored less than 600 points, including mine. The less successful Jeff will win the less desirable prize.

Finally, I promised a random entrant would receive a prize as well... another baseball blaster of my choosing. Who will it be?? Let's hit up the old random.org machine.

Congrats to COREY'S BROTHER'S FRIEND, who gets the random baseball blaster prize!

Pack Dud

One pack of Gypsy Queen to sneeze at. 

I've made no secret of not being into the Topps Gypsy Queen set. Each design has been unique, which is nice, but it's just never really done anything for me. It seems unnecessary, expensive, and mundane all at the same time. If I'm going to make a stupid decision and buy expensive cards, I want to be impressed by them. And with 33% less product at the same price point as Heritage, it's definitely not in my budget unless I make a special exception.

Let's check out my one and possibly only pack purchase, APTBNL style.

144 - Odubel Herrera - Herrera was an All-Star two seasons ago, but I don't know that he's really played at that level since his selection.

67 - Ketel Marte - The former Mariners prospect is still very young, but has yet to break out.

39 - Kendrys Morales - And then there's Kendrys Morales, who I remember seeing in Portland playing with the Salt Lake Bees a number of years ago.

118 - Eric Thames - After some years away in Korea, the league seemingly figured out Thames again by the end of spring last season.

147 - Jason Heyward - Annnnnd... this guy.

104 - Felix Jorge - Well, let's get back to my original point and check out the card design. It's not Panini Donruss awful, but it's not great, either. This is the same "arted up" photo design that we've seen on a lot of recent Topps products. It's fine for what this set is trying to be, I suppose. It's just not all that exciting. Kind of like this pack.

On the back, there's a lot of unused space. When Topps does this, it would make a lot more sense if they did what they did with Turkey Red and actually used a larger font to fill up the space. This set can't really decide if it wants to be Allen & Ginter or it wants to by Turkey Red, so it comes across as sort of a wannabe-mishmash of both. The frame and Gypsy Queen nameplate looks like it could have been incorporated better into the design instead of being left to the back of the card like it was outvoted by a committee.

And that's it. Six cards, all from the base set, apparently. No inserts, no team swaps, no super rare legends, no capless balding guys, no face swaps. It's about what I expected.

Off We Go

Highlighting some Cards cards as the 2018 season begins in earnest. 

With the Cardinals pulling their record up to .500 today in the very young season, it's time to show off some more Cardinals cards. That's what we do here! Diamondbacks fan JayP of CMMDTO sent over an excellent bunch of St. Louis players (well, not literally the players) in exchange for some guys from his squad. Excellent.

I am very light on cards of the 21 year old pitching prospect Junior Fernandez, so this was a welcome sight. Even more so, I have very few Bowman Platinum cards from the past two seasons because... well... Walmart. (I will point out that I slipped and did actually go into a Walmart as recently as last baseball season, probably to look for stupid Bowman Platinum, only to find that the store's card aisle had apparently been replaced with fidget spinners. So 2017 of them.)

Ozzie Smith, Legend! It's always at the top of my list to add to my collection of The Wizard. This is apparently a base card from the 2001 Donruss Classics set, but it's serial numbered (/1755) because the early 2000s were weird, man.

Stephen Piscotty is one of quite a few former Cardinals who earned a 25-man roster spot and regular playing time with another club in 2018. His trade to Oakland which helped him return closer to home and be around his ailing mother is a cool story, and I hope he does well there. I believe that I once owned an A's cap, an A's batting helmet and a Jose Canseco 40/40 A's poster (but not at the same time), so there's that.

Ahh, refractors are the best. Fernando Vina reminds me of the early '00s, of course, a time where I was finally able to watch Cardinals games on TV with somewhat regularity for the first time in my life. (Thanks, Albert!)

I don't really know what I think of the Topps Chrome sepia refractors. One of the more attractive things about Chrome refractors are their bright colors and overall shininess, so the sepia look kind of sucks out a lot of that fun.

Finally, here's a Cub throwing to a Cardinal. It's not just any Cardinal, of course, but Jim Edmonds! I always find these cards where rivals have to share space to be a bit dubious, but at least it's not Carlos Zambrano. I don't even have negative things to say about Kerry Wood. And no, that's not even April Fool's me talking. It helps that there's only one jersey piece here and it's... (checking the back one more time to make sure)... actually Jim Edmonds. Nice! Of course, now I'm a bit nervous that there's a Kerry Wood version of this card that I am missing. Not nice.