Mailbag! Bills! Bills! Bills!

 Back to the TMM/V mailer again, and the Buffalo portion of this.

There is some logic to my leading with this Jake Fromm card. Not only is it from my beloved Chronicles, it was the only Bills card in this post that wasn't either a numbered card or a hit.

Jake has something in common with both Tim Hasselbeck and Dominic Rhodes. They all appeared in a grand total of zero games for the Bills, but still got cards where they were listed with the team. 

We finally get to guys who actually suited up for the Bills and made into games. Trent avoids the Top 3 list of the most regrettable post-Jim Kelly QBs thanks to Peterman, Losman and Johnson, but he still made into games. Peerless Price, I had no complaints about, and it was one of the better names in team history. And he had two stints with team, starting and ending his NFL career with the team.

If swatches are your thing, here's a couple that were supposedly game-worn by Willis McGahee. The Certified is /100, with the Limited being /75. so at least they've got that going for them even if this was a jersey he might only have worn during a practice.

Dennis joked about this mailer turning me into an E.J. Manuel super collector, and it certainly did with this page/scanner bed worth of goodness. All the swatches are of the event-worn or used variety but everything still looks nice with all the jerseys featuring a consistent blue. Then add a football piece and a sticker autograph, and the E.J. content in the hit portion probably doubled thanks to this mailing. Sure, he might be like Trent Edwards in that he stays out of the bottom-3 Bills QBs thanks to others' incompetence, but that doesn't mean I don't want hits of his. The same applies to any Bills alum, no matter how sad their play was.

There you have it!

2022 Adventures in Repacks - Part 31 - It's New to Me!

 

My latest repack box included one of these basketball ones. They promise 4 rookie cards, 4 star cards, and a relic. 

Bonus rookie! I really wasn't expecting anything huge here, so I'm just looking for something interesting. And Luke Kennard looking absolutely terrified of the camera certainly counts. A couple obscure ones on the bottom are more intriguing to me than the folks I'm more familiar with on the top. I had no idea who Chris Owens was, but wikipedia tells me he is the great nephew of Jesse Owens. And I never would have learned that if I didn't find his card in this.

We can play the game of "Is *x* really a star" with this? But who really cares if there's a second-year Shaq card in the group? 

And your hit! Much like with the rookie portion, I wasn't expecting to see a star show up here, but I am very happy with the card itself, since Court Kings is one of my favourite releases each year. It is the one set that, because of its roots with Diamond Kings, can get away with being as garish as possible. Even if this is only a player-worn plain white swatch, it does contrast perfectly with the design and the set to make a great card, and it somehow more obnoxious than it would be with a darker swatch.

If that makes sense.

Granny Shot Mojo

 

Every Rick Barry card should feature an image like this.  

Mailbag! 2-14 content!

 Today, I open up the mailbag, and a bubbler that showed up recently from Dennis @ Too Many Manninghams/Verlanders. This mailer can be split into three categories: 2/14 content, The Bills, and Misc. Baseball. My fellow birthday boys get the spotlight today.

This post would be exclusively football if not for this addition. I'd sent feelers out to some of my stateside trading partners that if they were looking for something not too costly to add into a mailer, that any cards of Jaden Shackelford would do. He made several appearances in unlicensed NCAA themed releases this past spring. Although undrafted, he is with Oklahoma City now, which gives a possibility of more chances to add him to the collection. Although for now, 1 will do.

Football the rest of the way home. The remainder of the Bills content will appear shortly in another post, but Jim Kelly content usually makes the first appearance in the 2/14 binder, while dupes are moved into the Bills collection. 

The only other 1-and-done football card is Jared Lorenzen, with the late QB appearing on a Copper parallel. Like the gold parallels in baseball, these are numbered to the year of release, in this case 2007.

Another departed QB gets the next spot. The upper left card is a silly issue that compared McNair to Captain America. The one next to it is a draft-themed card, that ends up being almost as far from reality as the CA card, since he shares that one with Heath Shuler. There's only one numbered card in this group - the shiny Bowman refractor is /500.

In comparison, all of these are numbered cards. Clockwise from the top left, they come in at /2002, /89, /125, 1700 and /2002. I like the variety here with the Tulane Green Wave card, and the throwback Washington uniform. 

And here is the volume winner - Drew Bledsoe gets 6 cards. Only the Widescreen insert is numbered, but we do have nice variety. NFL and NCAA. Cards from during his career and post-career. Variety is the spice of life!

Thanks for all these goodies, Dennis, and if I forget to add thanks in future posts, thanks for those as well!

Randomed Saints

 And the other team from the random.

Your base cards. Not as numerous as the Colts representation, but seeing McAllister among the Legends portion of the set was, like with Dallas Clark and the Colts, a pleasant little surprise.  And the rookie available here is a first rounder. But it doesn't bode well for Panini's confidence in Winston that their QB doesn't appear here.

But there's parallels available, such as this orange.

Or this 'Premium Bronze Mini', where there are only 75 out there.

Some inserts. I really like the 'Early days of Colour TV' vibe from For The Ages. It really feels like something that could appear in a Heritage-ish release.

I guess I got the autograph most people want to see come out of this product. This shiny blue beauty is numbered to /35 as well. And there's the benefit of this being released late enough that Panini was able to use the drafting team's logo on the card, even if it is tiny. The penmanship may not be precise, but at least it is more than just the initials. Always a plus!

There you have it!

Randomed Colts

 When showing off some Bills cards out of 2022 Legacy, I mentioned getting into a couple randoms of the product as well. The Colts and Saints were the teams I landed in those, and I'll start showing these off with this post. Colts comes before Saints alphabetically, so they get the lead spot.

7 cards is a little above average for a base set in a 200 card set, but this is all of them, but Matt Ryan's move to the team probably put them at the level, even if he didn't warrant the photoshop treatment. Dallas Clark seems like a random inclusion for the Legends portion of the set, but I won't complain about any extra cards.

Reggie Wayne would seem a little more logical as a member of that subset, but he also got an appearance in this Time Machines insert. This one is the green parallel, /100. 

This spot really came through when it came to auto/relics, with this being one of three of them I landed. While Price was undrafted he still signed with the Colts and is on the Practice Squad, so this counted as a Colts hit. His signature is decent enough as well, and I can read his last name. That's enough to probably place him in the upper portions of legibility in this rookie class. 

Here's a drafted player. The scan is a little (lot) rough, but this is Alec Pierce, who was the first player selected by the Colts, in the second round. This one is probably going off to COMC in the near future, unless there is a Cincinnati Bearcats collector that is interested. That's since I also got this:

Here's a better scan of a Pierce auto/relic. To go with the brightness and the patches, this Yellow Diamond parallel comes in at a mere 10 copies. While I rather doubt that patch was from the game itself, the patch comes from the 2021 Peach Bowl, where the Bearcats lost to Georgia. I don't know why an item tied to a rather high-profile loss is used, but at least it still adds even more colour to a rather colourful card. This one is probably more likely of the keeper than the previous one, but if you can do significant damage to my wantlists, then I could be convinced to part with this one over the other. 

There you have it! 

I Messed Up Again

Last week, I lamented  that I missed a new 2/14 guy in my COMC to-be-posted box. I managed to top that, by missing 2 Bills cards in there. So, like with Doug Peters, these two get their own post.

OK. This technically isn't a Bills card. If this card were associated with any NFL team, it would likely be the team that he started with - Miami. Yet, I'll call this a Bills card because he has none with the team, and the NCAA card will always do in a such a situation. He's on his second go-around with Buffalo, so I might as well add something of him.

And this card I messed up twice with. Not only did I not post this when I did a Bills post, but I also messed up by writing that I had already posted this when I posted the Jadeveon Clowney card from the same insert set in a 2/14 post. But now I'll remedy this by showing off a shiny draft themed card of BRUUUUUCE!

There you have it!

Smile!

 

2022 Adventures in Repacks - Part 30 - Restocked

 

Nothing beats a fresh supply of repacks!

Baseball up first, and here's the pack and repacks within the repack.

Unlike with the hockey version, these 70s/80s repacks might actually contain a card from the 1970s. Even if it isn't a big name, at least I can appreciate sideburns that just scream "Steinbrenner would hate me." The two Fleer cards aren't from the same release - the Guante is an update while McKeon is the regular one. There's even a 60s card appearance - sorrt of.

Here's the Hall of Famers. At least one isn't a junk wax card. The 2007 card is from Randy's return to Arizona, so that's why it has the 'I just got traded' vibe.

The 12 card pack opens with some Blue Jays content in the form of a minor league card. I didn't even know that he reached the majors with Toronto (albeit with a gap of several years bouncing around franchises from this appearance), and is still in baseball with the Reds. That early Cabrera is also a pretty nice find for a repack.

1/3 of the cards in this were from 1990 Score, but I'll forgive all when the finale is a Stadium Club entry featuring the World Series trophy. What a solid keeper to end this.

For an all-Yankees pack, this was a lot of fun. Super-early Bernie Williams where he's still sporting the glasses, a pair of O-Pee-Chees (the Espinoza is far less obvious than the Washington), and more Stadium Club.

Even if it is still 1990 Fleer, I will note that they did throw in an extra card. And that Orel works so nicely with the design, so at least there was something interesting in this pack. 

There you have it!

Raptors Catch-Up

 Back to the COMC box, and the small # of Raptors cards within.

While I am not really the type to chase down at least on copy of every single Raptors card, I will at least go after one that salutes that Championship season. Right now, that means if Panini issues a card of Kawhi on the Raptors in a current set, that one has to be themed towards that winning team. And this one certainly does, with its Slam Magazine cover. There's even a former Raptor in Lou Williams featured in one of the articles - a nice easter egg bonus for the collection.

I looked at the least expensive Raptors cards available at COMC to determine which one to add to my collection, and this one was the cheapest I didn't have. Long live the oddness!

Much like Championship cards, the annual City edition cards are another one I try to hunt down at least one copy of for the Raptors collection. A set devoted to special, occasional uniforms? Thank you and I'll get one more the following season. And so on...

The finale is an autograph. While I still need to hit ship on my COMC inventory that contains a Scottie Barnes, and need to get my hands on a Banton, that's still one down off my wants for the 2021-22 rookie class. Thankfully, 22-23's doesn't seem as intimidating as this past season with Christian Koloko and Ron Harper Jr as the only likely candidates for autos. 

There you have it! 

I Messed Up

 

A month-ish ago, I recapped  all the new faces that were in my 2/14 collection that were in my latest COMC shipment. Turns out that I missed the card of former minor league pitcher Doug Peters. 

Oops.

But that does mean that he gets a new 2/14 guy post all to himself! 

Worth the Wait

 

It took me way  too long to add a certified Tom Henke autograph to the ol' Jays binder. But this Archives beauty was worth waiting for. 

Football Finale

 The final football post for the time being is yet another pack of Chronicles. I opted for the draft version over the NFL version because of more variety of designs.

And here's your opener. Williams was a first round pick of the Lions, and that's going to be a theme in this pack recap.

Here's some nice veteran content, and there's certainly a Pacific Northwest feel to a couple of these cards. Sam Howell went to Washington in the 5th round, and will probably see some action when Carson Wentz gets injured. Justyn Ross is in Kansas City.

Only one Bronze parallel in this pack, and it is of a QB that will probably see action as well, albeit for Atlanta, as the season progresses. 

Switching to the foil portion of this, it becomes a Detroit Lions hot pack. Those 2 cards of Hutchinson are bound for Ann Arbor shortly, and Williams returns for a second appearance. McBride is the odd man out here, being a Cardinals pick.

While this pack promised more variety in terms of designs, it really didn't do so for actual players, with there being yet another repeat player. But these exclusive-to-hanger-pack designs do look much nicer together when there's a variety of colour on the borders. That Herbert is already put aside for a future mailer. Chris Olaye went to the Saints in the first round, and you'll be seeing him again when I show off some cards from a random break of Legacy. Jahan Dotson, also a first rounder, but to Washington, makes a case for this being a Commanders hot pack as well, as that's their 3rd card.

There you have it!

Not Tony! Toni! Toné! Instead, Toney Toney Toney!

 And some more Chronicles, courtesy of a half-case random. I ended up with the New York Giants spot, which, for a  rookie intensive product, meant I'd probably be drowning in Kadarius Toney cards. And that was an easy prediction.

He may not have had the most amazing rookie season, but he was still a first round draft pick, and there's always the potential there. The top row and base card are all designs I'd gotten cards of previously in the one pack I'd opened, but the other three, Flux, Magnitude and Dynagon  are all new. Flux and Magnitude are looks making their football debut, in fact.

Shiny cards are also available, and these scan so much nicer than the regular base cards, which only serve to show how filthy my scanner bed is. 

While the Flux parallel wasn't numbered, this one was. Coming in at /99, these red parallels are almost perfect for a Giants card. Not as perfect as a blue parallel, but still really close.

He might not have much of an auto from an aesthetic point, but it is still an autograph.

If you want some player-used swatches to distract you, here you go!

And if you want to see a card of a player not named Kadarius Toney, here's something for you as well.

There you have it!