Lots of Variety, One Great Purchase

I am having a blast with my recent pick-up. I bought a lot of 2 plastic boxes of football cards from a classified and I've been digging through a couple thousand cards since then. There is so much variety that I'm finding stuff I've never seen or heard of before. There's even some stuff that I've failed to identify still. I would estimate that I found about 500 keeper cards, though I don't have everything cataloged and put away yet, so I can't give a number with certainty. It's clearly going to keep me busy for a while this summer, though.

 Let's examine the variety a little, shall we? These cards stretched into the 1970s and early 1980s. There weren't many all-time greats in the older cards, but you can see there were at least two All-Pros here. I have to admit I'm not familiar with Leon Gray or Herbert Scott, though.

As we move through the 80s, I recognize more names. In all, I would guess that pre-1990 cards make-up only about 5% of the total cards in the boxes. As might be expected, the greatest concentration came from 1990-1995.

As I went through the cards, I gained some insight to the changes in our hobby. For example, here is 1990, divided by brand. Beyond these four, there weren't too many products to choose from in 1990.

But here is 1991. There's a big difference here. In some cases, the same companies from 1990 released new brands, such as Topps introducing Stadium Club or Fleer coming out with Ultra. We also have new companies, like Pacific, Pro Line, Upper Deck, and Wild Card joining the fray. Product choices went wild in the early 90s.

Here's another view. This is the list of "Major Releases" for 1992 and 1993, as shown in the Trading Card Database. To illustrate the great variety in this lot, the purple visited links show the brands that I had to click on to catalog cards for that year. You can see that I received a little something from almost everything these years.

Let's take a closer look at the cards I've decided to add to my collection. Here we have some all-time greats with 5 HOFers and one who deserves consideration (Tyrer).

As always, my All-Decade collections received a boost. Here are the 1980s players. Who knew that Wild Card made a Chrome set in 1993, as seen in Andre Tippett (top center)?

Here we have the 1990s players. I had never before seen Collector's Edge's Super Bowl sets, like Cornelius Bennett above. I learned that they did them for a few years. Only the teams who made the Super Bowl are in the sets. The gold foil on Willie Roaf's 1997 Score card indicates the Hobby Reserve parallel, which I had never come across before.

There was so much representation from the 90s that I couldn't include just one image. I discovered that I was underrating 1994 Playoff. And that Thurman Thomas Warp Speed insert is just slick.

Now we move into the 2000s. Torry Holt is seen in 2000 Collector's Edge T3. I'd never seen this product before. I learned that the hobby edition has a refractor-y foil and sides are embossed, while the retail version is plainer. I picked up some of both the hobby and retail. The guy I bought this from seemed to have a preference for Collector's Edge.

And even some cards from the newly-formed 2010s All-Decade Team! I haven't decided yet if I'm going to do the same type of collection with these players as I have done with All-Decade teams of the past, but I'll hold on to these while I decide. Rookies of Calais Campbell, Eric Weddle, and Eric Berry are a good thing, though. I'll most likely post about this new decade team in the future.

A football purchase wouldn't be complete without some Packers. Here we have some shiny 90's Lambeau Leapers.

These guys were among my favorites when I was a kid. I especially like the Chmura card in the middle. Was he the team's long snapper at one point? I really don't know.

 And, of course, there were cards from my non-collecting years that I didn't have.

Heisman winners in college unis! These are the first Charlie Ward football cards I have, and there are three of them. This was the unexpected collection hit for me. I wasn't expecting Heisman winners from their college days. Earl Campbell is from 2019 Leaf Draft, so you can see that the collection extended to present-day, even if it was just a few cards.

1989 Pro Set supplied some new cards for my centers collection, which includes pictures of centers with their hands on the ball.


As I'm winding up this post, I have a few interesting finds to share.

First, this 1993 Pro Set Power Power Combo insert fits in both my All-Decade team for Art Monk and my Heisman collection for Desmond Howard. Both of those players were standouts for the . . . Falcons? This is an uncorrected error.

Or how about this Heath Shuler? Does anybody at all know what this is? I haven't identified it yet, and I can't find TGIF Cards in the TCDB. The card is acetate and kind of cool. If you have any information about it, please comment below.

And one last oddity. I definitely wasn't expecting any autographs, but there was one. Joseph Patton was a 3rd-round pick for the Redskins in 1994. And Yatil Green is missing his auto! This card says, "Genuine Autograph," in the bottom-left corner. It has a print run of 5,000. But I see no autograph. After doing some research, I learned that the only cards with a print run of 5,000 were signed. It looks like Yatil missed one here.

I've really enjoyed this purchase so far. I posted some trade bait last week; most of it is still available if you are interested in some rookies, inserts, or parallels from this lot. I may do another post or two as I continue to sort, log, and store this awesome cardboard.