Football Miscellany

 I took advantage of the Sportlots mailbox feature to consolidate shipping costs and add some miscellaneous wants to my football, baseball and basketball collections. There was some set building, and I won't bore you with those, but here's the football stuff that didn't get put in my set boxes/binders.

I love 80s cards where the featured player looks  like a guy who hangs around outside middle schools and gives out warm cans of beer to the female students. Steve definitely gives that vibe. Unfortunately for him, this was the only card of his career at any level.

How does a basketball photo end up in a football set? Antonio Gates never played a down in college, but did play basketball. When it looked like there was no interest in him for the NBA, he arranged for himself to work out for NFL scouts. That earned him a contract with the Chargers, and he'd finish with the NFL record for touchdowns by a tight end, and a very likely enshrinement in Canton. I always love undrafted success stories.

Weather porn! Weather porn!

The best way for me to end these miscellaneous posts is some 2/14 content, with a card that could end up in either this or my Bills collection. Drew still remains in third place for the football portion of the collection, with 145 total cards, trailing Steve McNair at 171 and Jim Kelly at 211.

Here's two more! With these two, Garrard closes in on the triple-digit count in the collection with 96 cards. He'll eventually accompany the other 4 football players (Alshon Jeffery, 127) in that level.

And there you have it!

A Dime Box Mailer - Part 3 of 4

 More than 2 weeks later, back to the mailer!

This isn't just any ol' Blue Jays card to start off this mailer. While this is a nice rookie card of pitcher Alek Manoah, it is also the final card I needed to put the 2021 Update set to bed. Since this did arrive about a month ago, I can technically claim that I finished the 2021 set-build before I started on Heritage this year. That's always a plus!

I guess when you release a set in 1986, Rick Bosetti would likely count as an all-time Blue Jay. TCMA also recycled this photo, which appeared back in 1981 on his Donruss card.

The Jays section was a little sparser in this team bag, allowing the late Damaso Garcia to pick up the volume victory with these two cards. 

I don't see any expiration date for this offer! Wonder if they still have some?

This Historical Hits joins a Joe Carter to complete the Historical Hits Jays content from 2021. Both of the walk-off homers are worthy on inclusion, and I'm really happy to see Joe's return to Topps sets.

A random Delgado is a fine conclusion to the Toronto portion.

It might not be a photo of him and his pitching motion, but this is still a wonderfully unique photo of Nomo for the Mets PC.

John Olerud's 4 card made gave him the nod here.

But Vladdy is the king with these 6 new cards. I really do not feel like going back over the anniversary posts, but I'm guess that at least one of these was part of the giveaway.

But here's my favourite Expo card. I'm still tempted to scratch at least one of these. Maybe one day, I'll order one of the cheaper ones of COMC and succumb to that temptation.

This one is certainly one I requested in the giveaway. O-Pee-Chee content, with all its bilingual goodness, are some of my favourite cards in the collection. Although I can't imagine why Topps couldn't get a photo of Lopes from the final month of the season, especially since he was in Cubs colours on Fleer & Donruss' cards.

But that's the fun of O-Pee-Chee. And at least they got the Cubs logo on it, unlike Topps.

1 group of cards left!

Sticking it to the 2/14 Collection

 I've had these around for months now. I might as well finally scan 'em, and add them into the 2/14 collection. I got them all from nhlstickers.com, and I am certain they were wondering "Why order only cards of these guys?".

Because they're all 2/14 guys, and it moved my collection closer to 3300 total items.

While this one is a fairly mainstream item from a Panini release, I found this one somewhat odd. Stickers are meant to be stuck, right? And there's an album for someone to do the sticking! 

Which makes the stats on the back, complete with the wrong birth month, look out of place on these stickers. But, since most of his other cards list the 2/14 date, I guess I'll still consider it a suitable addition.

But I don't do that with 2/16 Bernie Geoffrion cards. Why? I'm not quite sure.

Give me classics like this Walt Poddubny!

Where I can order a mini-sac, ideal for the gym, pool or travel! Call that the first thing I'll do when I time travel back to early 1988.

But, the best back goes to smaller of these two Calle Johansson entries.

I'm not sure what exactly a Marabou is, or if they still even exist, but I know if I ever go to Finland, they will likely make me say Mmm.

Here's a couple more Calles, making him the big  winner with 4 new entries in the collection, now totaling 45.

Marian Gaborik makes a  pair of appearances. He trails Milan Hejduk by 11 for the overall lead in the 2/14 binders.

And here's a few folks that joined Lowry and Poddubny in the one-and-done club in this post.

There you have it!

2022 Adventures in Repacks - Part 9.3 - Surprising Basketball

And the finale of this group.

And these are the contents:

I'm never going to run out of sleeves.

In these repacks, the 15000+ Career Points pack usually means you're getting some early 90s stuff, and that held true again. 

Bonus card! Kleine & Johnson were also right beside themselves numerically in the set, so I'm guessing they got stuck together when the repack machinery was working. That Vin Baker rookie was probably a good pull at one point, before becoming repack fodder. Hoops really liked using overhead photos in that insert set.

I don't really want to go through the stats to find out if these players really were 3-point leaders at one point, but unlike the the 15000+ pack, at least they aren't all junk wax cards. Even though it deviates from the ticket motif, the smoky background in team colours is really nice. 

And the Stadium Club pack. Topps was determined to continue the design from the other sports, and put the player's rookie card on the back. The only problem was that Topps had been out of  the basketball business for about a decade, meaning that...

the player's rookie card was, in most cases, the card from the flagship set from earlier in the year, or even a picture of exactly what was on the front of the card. While the latter was fun when it happened in other sports, it looks very amateurish here.

A little more from the pack. Spud Webb is always a nice pull.

And the final card to show off is an absolute classic. Not only is it a Jordan, but it is a photo that nowadays would be called a posterizing. And the posterize-ee isn't some garbage-time player either. A photo from Madison Square Garden as well! So much greatness on one piece of cardboard. It isn't a super valuable Jordan, but everything about it makes it seem like it deserves to be.

There you have it! 

2022 Adventures in Repacks - Part 9.2 - Surprising Baseball

 

Baseball today, and again it is all cardboard content!

As usual, I start from the upper left. While I like the drawn aspect of the Gallery release, there really is an unfortunate sameness in this pack. At least Lester has his glove, and you can see part of the logo on another...but yeah...boring!

The miscellaneous 12 pack was far more interesting. That Helton photo is a classic, and Hall of Famer content accompanies it nicely with another unique photo. 

The second half was also pretty unique. The Horner is from a 1986 mail-in set. Also: O-Pee-Chee! Electric Diamond! 

And the Electric Diamond parallel comes with a pitcher-at-the-plate on the reverse! This was several years before Milwaukee moved to the NL, so it is an obvious spring training photo. If this had been used on the front, it would have been another classic.

Superstars! And yet another great photo in this group with Ozzie forcing a play at the plate. 

The Pitchers Pack started off normal enough, but completely fell off the rails in the end, but in a good way. Conlon? A Black Sox card? Thank you, and more please! 

A Yankees-themed pack isn't exactly the ending I'd want, but there still was a Heritage appearance. So at least there was at least one interesting card in the bunch. Along with a whole bunch of a skeevy mustaches.

There you have it! Only thing left is a basketball one next time!

2022 Adventures in Repacks - Part 9.1

 I've still got a few of these left in the ol' repack box. Let's finish them up over the next few days!

And here's the content contained within!

Nothing but cardboard content in this one.

Both Hodson and Marshall had their names appear a pair of times on the Stanley Cup, so there's somid solid careers in the mix. As  for Jordan Weal, he was in the KHL this past season.

That is a lot of junk wax era stuff in the 90s pack. At least there's an interesting photo on the Cheveldae. The most amazing thing was the complete lack of any 1990 Bowman among these 13 cards.

Hey! There was only 11 cards in this! At least there was a Rangers alum among the group, with Paul Coffey rocking some impressive hockey hair. There's some helmetless mojo too with Doug Wilson on one of the early Sharks cards.  At least this ended up more interesting than the variety pack of early 90s stuff, despite fewer cards.

Another group with more than the advertised cards. But, as with the Dollarama versions, this one contained no 70s content. Foster is the second Rangers alum in this post. The Flames team card, very appropriately, comes from their recent Stanley Cup final victory. Plus, Willi Plett is the finest NHLer ever to be born in Paraguay! That counts for something!

An Ovechkin is always a good way to start any sort of miscellaneous grouping. It took quite a while to get to the repack's best friend - 1990 Bowman, but there it is. With the lock-out and the reduced rookie class as a result, the 12-13 release year isn't the most memorable, but the Pominville is one of the more unique photos out of that year. Dumba's card has another great use of a horizontal medium. While I do like seeing photos of uniforms from outdoor games on cards, those ones sported by Colorado remain hideous.

And there you have it!