Free Buybacks

Free to a good home. 

 

I recently went through my set collections and took stock of certain rarer cards that I had accumulated. I trimmed up the want lists a bit and added some things to the lists that hadn't appeared before, including all of the buyback cards from the various Topps Heritage sets over the years. I don't have a ton of them and am certainly not making a point of looking for more, but I felt it was worth documenting.

I did decide that I have absolutely no interest in Allen & Ginter buybacks. If these were buybacks of original Allen & Ginter cards, I'd obviously think about this differently. However, for the tenth anniversary of the Topps revival of the Allen & Ginter brand, they stamped up a bunch of A&G cards from the previous 9 years. Buybacks of cards that were released in the past couple of decades are just not interesting to me if they aren't part of my team collection, so I'd like to offer them up to my readers.

This isn't an official "Free Stuff Friday", but the usual rules apply. Feel free to claim a card in the comments. Basically, if I haven't sent anything to you in the past (i.e. I don't have your address), then I'd like you to consider sending me something at some point in the future. That's really the only rule.

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.

Short, Parallel and Vintage

A pile of returns from the last Spring Cleaning entry. 

 

I had a lot of fun getting rid of cards last year in my prolonged "Spring Cleaning" event. I'm hoping to have something going again this year more along the lines of free group breaks that I've done in the past, although if I keep buying cards I'm going to end up having to do another spring cleaning by the time spring actually arrives.

The last person to sign up for the event was reader Randy, to whom I sent a box of cards from assorted Minnesota sports teams for his family to peruse. For whatever reason, there was a huge run on Twins cards last year, but I managed to scrape a few up to go along with some Timberwolves and Vikings. Randy responded in kind with a big, generous package of Cardinals goodies and set needs. I'll show off a few here, but realize that these aren't completely representative of everything I added to my collection.

For as much as people complained about the glut of cards in the '90s, it did bring forth a new era of surprisingly difficult parallels to collect. This one from the 1999 SkyBox Thunder set is a purple foil "Rant" parallel. I think there are also "Rave" parallels, because SkyBox liked a little crazy in their Thunder.

Speaking of crazy, what about a card made entirely of metal? I should keep a stack of these by my door at all times to ward off potential intruders. I can throw them like shuriken.

Not strictly limited to the '90s (or more recent), in the package were also number of vintage cards, including some big names like these!

As mentioned, there were also a bunch of set needs. We're not just talking about base cards, folks.

Even these aren't just base cards. They're star players appear on those pesky short printed cards that Heritage loves to throw at you. As much as it's easy to complain about 75 to 100 short printed cards in each Heritage set, at least they don't throw at you the escalating rarity tier like the cards they were originally inspired by. It would be maddening if each group of 100 or so cards was more rare than the next. If anyone doesn't understand how annoying this is, just go back and try to complete a full set of 2008 Upper Deck Timeline. I dare you!

To contrast with the above 2019 Heritage cards are these originals from the 1970 set. None of these are high numbers, however.

Lastly, here's a couple of famous historic people from the second Allen & Ginter revival set.

Thanks again to Randy and everyone who sent me cards in last year's huge Spring Cleaning campaign.

Hodgepodge

A three-sport @pennysleeves collection of card things. 

 

Sometimes, when there's no overarching theme to the stuff that people send me through the mail, there's not really a good word to use as a descriptor. Hence, I'm calling this stack of cards I got back in the fall from A Penny Sleeve for your Thoughts a hodgepodge. Is "hodgepodge" a word I use a lot in life? Not really. I'm not sure why it came to mind today, but that's what I'm going with.

Quite a few of the cards in this generous package are of the parallel variety. As a team collector, I'm never going to achieve any sense of completeness, but I do know that the base cards I need from the more attainable sets are dwindling over time.

I honestly have no idea who Dee Haynes is. I'm guessing he didn't progress very far in his professional baseball journey. This Bowman Chrome parallel is pretty similar to the X-Fractors you see in the Topps Chrome offerings, but it's not quite the same. It's a bit more disco-y if that makes any sense.

The Panini Threads concept of just showing a player's jersey would work a lot better if they actually used recognizable players instead of mostly rookies. If you saw a Warriors #30 jersey or a (trying to remember who was popular a decade ago) Heat #3 jersey on one of these cards, it would pop, right? Can anyone name this player from the 2010-11 season? (It's Elliot Williams.) Actually, one of the things that bothers me about modern basketball cards in general is that they are focused so much on rookies, when only a handful of them ever have a lasting impact in any given season.

Speaking of rookie impact, Martell Webster was an interesting player who never quite lived up to his loft draft selection (#6 overall in 2005.) This is a neat looking card, though.

One of the fun things about the 2020 Olympics (in 2021) was learning that Rudy Fernandez is still playing hoops. This Certified Potential parallel is numbered to just 100.

Here's another numbered Blazers card. Robin Lopez has started some games recently for Orlando and has carved out quite a career for himself.

The font is a little suspect and I'm not quite sure why the giant basketball has to obscure a large chunk of the photo (there's some mystery guy's feet at the bottom), but this is otherwise a nice looking card of a former Blazer shot-blocking wiz.

Oh man, I don't think we give 1963 Fleer enough love. It's really sad that a set this nice was limited to just 66 cards, but Topps had their whole monopoly thing going on. I need to get the rest of the Cardinals from this set.

There's been a couple of Cardinals and a bunch of Blazers, so why not some football? Finest refractors look great in any sport. I'm sure a lot of you pro-peel folks are cringing at this card with its protective layer intact.

Jon also sent a healthy stack of 2006 Turkey Red parallels. I've selected a few of these cards to show here, mostly at random.

They do look nice, don't they? I'll never get tired of Turkey Red.

At Last, Some New Hoops

 

Panini drops the first set of the new NBA season while we're already past the midway point. 

 

In the sports card world, it's hard to argue that the global pandemic has made anything more stupid and irritating than NBA cards. Availability was already starting to become an issue prior to 2020, but what I can only assume to be a mix of supply chain issues and general cruddiness pushed most of Panini's NBA release schedule for the 2020-21 season well beyond the end of the actual season. And now, well into January, we finally have the first cards of the current season.

I have to admit that I'm totally surprised that this is actually my favorite Hoops design in years. The design elements, like the team logo in the upper keft corner and the basketball court design on the bottom actually seem somewhat inspired. It could be that it's just been too long since I've seen new NBA cards with a regular photo background, but I'm really liking these.

I'm impressed with the back of the card even more, and that's saying a lot considering how Panini usually treats this stuff. While it's true that I wish the "previous season plus career totals" wasn't the default setting for Panini cards, there's more than enough going on with this to make up for it. I actually like the pixelated looking close-up photo (taken from the photo on the front, naturally.) And there's an interesting dotted three-point line going on in the bottom section. I don't even hate the weird slightly rotated rectangle in the middle, which reminds me a bit of the '90s without, well, being too '90s if that makes any sense.

Of course, I started this post talking about availability of these cards when I ended up having to go to desperate lengths (eBay breaks) to get these. As of this writing, blasters are just finally showing up online and are probably as difficult as ever to actually find in a store.

The prospects of the current Blazers season are pretty dismal at this point, but CJ McCollum is back with the team (until he gets traded, I guess?)

Of course, as exciting as it is to finally see new season basketball cards, there are loads of empty seats in the background of these shots. I did say I wanted to see real photos and not what Panini throws together in all of their other shinier sets, didn't I?

As this is the only rookie card I've had in hand so far, I'm not sure if they used this fake out of focus background style for all of the new guys or if there's more of a variety of looks. Still, considering that these are always going to be Media Day shots, it looks better than what's been done previously.

Derrick Jones Jr. is the only ex-Blazer on the current checklist, although both Carmelo Anthony and Enes Kanter (Freedom) appear in Blazers uniforms with their respective new team logos. I'll have to track down both of their cards somehow, since I won't be getting them in any breaks.

I have a history of basically never having Blazers players on my fantasy team. This is not an intentional thing, it's just the way things have worked out over the years. I did pick up Robert Covington off of the ol' waiver wire, however. He doesn't score a lot, but he has been picking up some stats in other more coveted categories for me (steals and blocks!)

The New Kids

A #CrackinWaxMailDay from @CrackinWax serves up some Bowman Draft youngsters. 

 

Let me just say that I don't get the adoration for Bowman Draft from certain corners at all. It's the third prominent release using the same Bowman design each year, and by this point we're all a bit sick of it. It does tend to feature the first cards of the latest draft class, but... let's face it, this is a prospectors set and nothing more. I did buy into a Bowman Draft break from Crackin' Wax despite my general apathy towards the set because it's my burden as a team collector. Let's check out these cards on the already familiar design.

People tend to only care about the "1st" cards in the set, so we'll deal with those... first. Austin Love was a third round pick, one of the traditional college pitchers that the Cardinals tend to pick.

The 2021 draft was far enough off in the distance by the time these cards came out that none of these guys have names that rang a bell for me. McGreevy was the Cards top pick, but again... college pitcher. Prospectors hate pitchers. I'm apparently not going to get rich off of a stack of Michael McGreevy Bowman 1st's.

Ryan Holgate was a "Competitive Balance Round B" pick, which is sort of like the old "sandwich pick", except that he would be more like something that fell out of the sandwich or went on the side of the plate, like a bag of chips perhaps. Round B happens after Round 2, where Round A occurs between Round 1 and Round 2. I'm not sure if this strange draft structure will continue when the next CBA is agreed to, but that's what we had for 2021.

The Cardinals 2nd round pick, Joshua Baez, didn't make it into the set. I have no idea how Topps decides to make the checklist for these sets, but I know that not all of the top draft picks end up in the mix.

Of course, the Bowman Draft set is not all about firsts. Here's the rest of the team set. Jordan Walker was last year's top pick. Ivan Herrera is quickly ascending the Cardinals prospect ranks. Malcom Nunez made his debut in Bowman Chrome this year.

As usual, there are Chrome versions and refractors of each of the players in the set. Here's one of the refractors.

Bowman Draft also has inserts this year, which surprised me a bit. I didn't end up with any of the inserts, however. At the prices that Bowman Draft usually commands, I don't anticipate buying any more of the stuff, but at least I've got a good chunk of the team collection down.