A Trade Between Packmen

This hasn't been the best football season I've experienced as a fan. Both of my teams--on the college and pro level--started the year with high expectations and have fallen a bit flat in reaching them. 

My BYU Cougars were coming off back-to-back 10-win seasons and returned 20/22 starters from last year's team that rolled undefeated through the PAC-12 they faced, en route to a 6-1 overall record against P5 opponents. 

 

The scan did these cards no favor. The two Wild Cards are a silver and gold parallel. If you look closely at the Collector's Edge Millennium Collection parallel, you can just barely make out a faint outline of a photo.

 

When this year began, they opened hot, beating future conference rival (and defending Big XII champ) Baylor for a Top 10 win. Sitting at 2-0 and ranked #12 after two weeks, the future was bright for a team leaving independence to join a P5 conference next year. A loss at Oregon turned out not to be such a bad loss. But then came October. Oh man, October. The Cougs went 0-4 in the month and looked really bad doing it. They salvaged at least a bowl appearance with an undefeated November, including a solid win over Boise St. and another P5 win over not-so-great Stanford. So BYU finishes the season at 7-5. This was definitely not the expectation for an experienced team with an NFL prospect QB and an offensive line that is graded #1 by Pro Football Focus this season. So what went wrong? Well, the defense, for one. Contrasted with the #22 offense (per PFF), the defense sits at #113.

 

 

But the biggest difference between last year and this year could very well be the loss of current Atlanta Falcons running back, Tyler Allgeier. He was so good last year for BYU. I've started gathering a few cards of Allgeier, but many 2022 football products have only been recently released, or are still waiting. I did manage to snag my first auto off eBay, however.

So that's the disappointing season of the BYU Cougars. At least they managed to finish above .500. 

 

My Packers, though. Ouch. Last year, the Pack finished 13-4 and earned the #1 seed in the NFC. A heartbreaking playoff loss to San Francisco cut the season short prematurely, but expectations were high starting this year. In fact, about half of all expert prognostications I saw put Green Bay in the Super Bowl this year. But then they just kept losing. Sitting at 4-8 now, the playoffs look like a distant dream. It has been a long time since I've been so disappointed by the Pack's performance.

 

 

At least the cards are still great. Everything in this post (minus the eBay Allgeier purchase) came from a trade on TCDB with fellow cheesehead dmbramer. Donn hooked me up with a page of new Jordys and a bunch of cards from Shopko's Packer-centric set in 1997. I especially love my first cards of offensive coordinator Pat Shurmur and defensive coordinator Sherm Lewis (previous scan).

Some of the cards were for other sections of my collection. Four of these guys are all-decade picks, plus a college uni Heisman. Even though it has been a disappointing season for this fan, trades like this one with another surely disappointed Packer fan have been good.

Big XII, Here We Come!

This has been one heck of an exciting week to be a BYU fan. For those of us who have been following closely, it has seemed like a done deal. But I couldn't make myself fully believe until it became official today.

BYU IS JOINING THE BIG 12.

Eleven years ago, TCU and Utah bolted the Mountain West for P5 conferences. BYU took a gamble and decided to go independent in football rather than stick around with the leftovers. There were some rocky years, for sure--especially during the first few years before they had scheduling partners. We were subject to multiple FCS opponents per year. And once there was one loss on the record, the bowl destination was already confirmed due to exclusive tie-ins with certain bowls. Spoiler alert: they were never good bowls. But the past few years have been fun as AD Tom Holmoe was able to make scheduling deals with more and more programs, resulting in a schedule that includes 4-6 P5 teams that we would never have seen otherwise--Wisconsin, Michigan St., Tennessee, to name a few. But we still faced the same "lose one and what is left to play for?" predicament and a very "blah" schedule from mid-October on. Now, after a couple of flirtations with Power 5 conferences that failed to end in invites, BYU has schedule stability and a conference with better bowl tie-ins. And I am pumped.

To celebrate the day, I'm posting my self-created eBay blaster that I received about two weeks ago. I've made COMC blasters before, but never eBay. I was searching for a Dax Milne auto and came across a seller who had a deal that was something like "buy 20, get 40% off," so I started looking through his singles. The cards I picked out cost me $24 shipped, about the same as a $20 plus tax blaster.

It's BYU's big day, so let's show off some new BYU pick-ups. Congrats to Dax Milne, who was the second-to-last pick in the 2021 NFL Draft and ended up making the roster for the Washington Football Team. He's a great story: he went from walk-on to 7th round draft pick to NFL roster spot.

A good chunk of my blaster went toward my refractor frankenset. Brett Kennedy and Robbie Ray are serial-numbered to boot.

I bolstered my ROY collection, especially my cards of last year's winners, Kyle Lewis and Devin Williams.

I also took advantage to add to my most recent PC addition, All-Star Game MVP Vlad, Jr. Cronenworth, Houck, and Colon were just cards that I thought would be worth owning, even if they didn't have a specific place in my collection.

I picked up some shiny NFL All-Decade performers.

And oh, yes, I did find a Dax Milne auto.

I haven't seen any blasters in a store for a while, but I have seen them being sold on eBay for more than $30 apiece. Some of those blasters have 20 cards in them. If I could see a blaster that contained 34 cards, 18 guaranteed refractors, and three autos, I would jump on it. And if I was guaranteed to have all 34 cards be keepers in my collection? That's a no-brainer. I think I did pretty well for myself with my faux blaster.

Go Cougs! If we can beat Utah tomorrow and end the streak, this may shape up to be one of the greatest weekends of my fandom.

Overdue TCDB Roundup (Part 3 ) + Some eBay Cougars

I love collecting BYU football players. Over the past few years, it has been my favorite collection to grow. It feels like college connections are less common than pro fandoms among collectors, so barring the few NFL superstars that the school has produced, I usually have little competition in getting cards and many of my trading partners are probably happy to unload the common BYU cards I request in trades. But anybody who pays attention to football news probably realizes that this year, I will have competition for a certain young QB. Zach Wilson just became the highest NFL draft pick to ever come out of BYU, going #2 overall to the Jets. I anticipate that I'll have some trouble trying to pick up Zach Wilson cards at price points that I feel comfortable paying. But I have been at it already.

 

Leaf Draft dropped last month and I entered a player breaks, trying to score Wilson. I didn't win any breaks, but I was able to pick up both of his cards in the base set on eBay afterward. These two cards cost me just $2 shipped. Here's the crazy thing: I didn't read the listing carefully and I didn't realize that the All-American subset card was part of it. I thought I was only buying the one on the left. That was a nice surprise.

In the meantime, I bought another single of the All-American card. This was a surprise, too, because the seller sent me 3 copies. He included a note that said he sent all three because there was chipping along the left side on all three backs. But I wasn't too concerned about that. Now I just have three copies of this Wilson!

The one Leaf player break I did win was Matt Bushman, and I ended up getting lucky enough for auto. You know, BYU sent 12 players to the NFL this year, five drafted. At this time last year, I would have said only two players on the team were NFL-caliber: Bushman and Khyris Tonga. Then the team exploded into the national spotlight--and Bushman didn't even play. He suffered a season-ending injury on the first day of training camp last August. So for the hype surrounding the Cougs last season, Bushman missed it all, but still received a UDFA contract from the Raiders.

While searching for other Zach Wilson cards on the cheap, I came across these that are copyrighted by somebody called "Rookie Gems." Normally, I don't go for customs, but since I have seen other Rookie Gems on eBay, I figured they were probably decent quality. The artwork is pretty good, too, so I liked the look of them. Since I worry about finding any cards that I can afford, I decided to try these for the novelty of it.

Here are the backs. I have to say, these Rookie Gems cards, while well-designed, look much better in pictures on the computer screen than in-hand. The cardstock is awful and pretty much every custom I've ever received from you bloggers is higher quality. But at least they'll be somewhat unique in my collection.

Leaf brought back Pro Set this year, and I was happy to find this one in a Jets lot. For under $5, I picked this card up, along with some other Jets cards, including a Darrelle Revis rookie, a numbered relic of Revis, and a relic of Leonard Williams. How I was the only person to jump on this lot, I don't know.

My first cards that have all the licenses to include legitimate uniform photos came from Score. I was lucky enough to pick up this lot for around $3 per card. That happens to be more than I would like to spend, but it was reasonable to me, so I jumped on it. As more football releases have come out, the Zach Wilson cards I'm seeing are more expensive, so I'm glad I picked these up. My Wilson collection has a decent start now.

Chris Wilcox is another player I failed to win in a break. Luckily I found this lot for just a tad more than a dollar per card.

So I've been pretty busy on eBay, at least by my standards. But many of my TCDB trades this year have brought in some former Cougars. To finish my outstanding TCDB trade posts, we'll take a look at BYU players I've swapped some cards for.

Kyle Van Noy rookies. And I love that retro Bowman of all-time leading receiver, Cody Hoffman. For my money, I would have pegged John Beck to have a better NFL career than what I've seen from Zach Wilson, so I hope for Zach's sake I'm wrong. By the way, if you watched any BYU football games last year you probably heard about the Beck-Wilson connection, when Zach used his time off of campus during the pandemic to drive to California and train with Beck.

Taysom Hill. Will he beat out Jameis Winston to replace Drew Brees? If he didn't claim the job outright last year in his extended audition, I'm not sure it will happen. But Sean Payton seems to love him, so we'll see.

How about some Cougars with Super Bowl rings? McMahon, Gouveia, and Morris all have one. Vai Sikahema was the first Tongan to play in the NFL. Ronney Jenkins didn't finish his college career at BYU because he transferred to Northern Arizona, but he managed to score 29 total TDs in his two seasons with the Y.

Some baseball Cougars and a pair of football players who found themselves playing in Canada. Sweet CFL cards.

And we'll end with these former BYU baseball players. And speaking of baseball, I need to wrap this up to get my sons to their little league games tonight. Go Mets and White Sox (little league-wise, that is)!

One-of-a-Kind: A Cardpocalypse Challenge, Day 3

Today's challenge was difficult for me. Many bloggers are baseball collectors with a little side collection of football. My main collection is football. So when I am asked to choose my favorite football card in my collection, I'm stumped. I had to think hard about this one. And I'm still not sure I got it right.

My first thought was, it has to have something to do with BYU. My BYU fandom is the deepest running one that I have and I have a ton of great memories. So I considered this card, which appears to depict one of the clearest, most enjoyable sports memories I have. I remember watching this game in my sister's living room with my brother-in-law. We were both on the edge of our seats when the Cougars had one play in the game. It was either score or drop the game to arch-rival Utah. John Beck came up with this gem of a play.

I think this is the play on the card. We both went nuts, by the way, while our wives looked at us warily.

Then my thoughts turned to the Packers. I know have some really cool Packers cards. I flipped open my binder and when my eye rested on this, I knew it had to be considered. This was from one of the last packs I bought before my hiatus. Truth be told, I don't think I had bought anything at all the year prior. But just for fun, I picked up a Fleer Tradition pack and this came out. It's acetate, and 3/4 of the circle in the middle is transparent. I loved it then, and I still think it's awesome.

That got my mind going on other great cards I acquired during my youth. It reminded me that I had a Barry Sanders card that had been my favorite at one point. This was an expensive card at one point, one that I would have never considered buying as a single. Fortunately for this Barry Sanders fan, I had a trading buddy who was an Emmitt Smith fan. When he pulled this insert, I had a Stadium Club Emmitt insert to swap him for it. I don't remember the details, but it seems like both inserts fell about one per box. We both walked away happy and this has been on my shortlist of favorites ever since.

None of those would be considered my favorite (I don't think). I kept asking myself, "If I could only keep one card, which one would it be?" What I settled on was this 2013 Panini Black Printing Plate. I came to this decision because Brad Sorensen is my favorite player to collect and I pride myself in thinking that I have the largest Sorensen collection anywhere. And if I'm proud of my unique Sorensen collection, then a truly unique, no-one-else-has-this card would be a crowning jewel. So, if I could keep only one card, I would choose to hold on to one that is a true one-of-a-kind of my one-of-a-kind collection.

The Kalani Sitake Show

Tonight my BYU Cougars will face off with the University of Hawaii Rainbow Warriors in the Hawaii Bowl. Aloha! While I'm hoping for a win, this will cap a somewhat disappointing season either way. It's not all bad, though. If you would have told me that 8-5 was a possibility for this season, I would have taken it. The problem isn't the five losses--it's the teams those losses came against.  First, there was the season-opening loss to arch-rival Utah. For those of you who live outside of the state, it may be easy to overlook how heated this rivalry is. I once saw a Sports Illustrated article that ranked it as the third-most intense college rivalry in the nation, behind only Ohio State-Michigan and Texas-Oklahoma. But the losing streak continued, and it has now been over ten years since BYU emerged victorious in that game. After beating Tennessee in SEC country and USC at home, the Cougars somehow managed to lose to Toledo and South Florida. Then they righted the ship and won games they were supposed to win and some they weren't (see Boise State's only loss of the season). Just when things were rolling, they fell flat against former conference rival San Diego State, whom BYU had historically owned (28-7-1 record before the matchup). If you're counting, the fifth loss was against Washington, which was both expected and acceptable. The problem with this team was the tantalizing show of potential followed by frustrating, inexplicable losses. This has become a hallmark of coach Kalani Sitake's Cougars. The winning percentage isn't too bad, and there have been some marquee wins, but there are also a couple of dreadful losses each year.

I work with a youth group in my church, as an advisor for 14-15 year-old boys. We had the opportunity to take the boys to attend a live taping of the weekly BYU Football with Kalani Sitake show in BYUtv studios. Five years into Sitake's coaching tenure, I'm still not convinced he's the right man for the job. On the other hand, I don't know who else would be. To be the head coach of a BYU athletics program, a coach must live the highest standards of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. A head coach must attend church regularly, cannot drink or smoke, and must pay a full 10% tithing on all income. Many members of the Church throughout the world do these things as part of our faith, but not many of them are FBS football head coaches.

On the set, Kalani was charismatic and friendly. He took questions from the audience during commercial breaks and gave guidance to some younger children in attendance. After the taping, we all had a chance to go down and meet the coach.

You can see me because I am a)not blurred out, and b)not Tongan. The rest of the faces are blurred out because most of them are minors and I'm not putting them out on the interwebs.

The funny thing about this bipolar season is that the defense has been not great for a good part of it. But of the departing seniors playing their final game tonight, the two that I think have a legitimate shot of playing on Sundays are both defenders. Go figure. First, safety Austin Lee has received an invite to participate in the East-West Shrine Game, where he'll have a chance to show the coaches his nose for the ball. The other is do-everything DB Dayan Ghanwoloku. Dayan has started just about everywhere in the secondary and has some solid coverage skills. He's not the fastest guy around, so maybe he'll project as a safety. I'll miss those two and their playmaking abilities.

I certainly miss high-level quarterback play. In the past decade, we have been having a recurring nightmare: a freshman quarterback comes in, plays really well, gets our hopes up, and then regresses over the next few seasons. Jake Heaps did it. Tanner Mangum did it. Zac Wilson looks like he might be on the same path. After looking great last year, Zac has created some doubt about his decision-making in his sophomore season. Adding to the doubt is the fact that backup Baylor Romney has outplayed Wilson this season. (Wilson missed four games with a broken thumb.) Romney is--you guessed it--a freshman. Ty Detmer was once thrust into the game as a freshman when the starter got hurt. Two years later, Detmer won the Heisman as a junior. We seem to have some promise at QB right now, but I won't be predicting a Heisman any time soon.

The major focus of my last COMC order was to build my BYU collection. I tried to find photos with the college uniform when I could. This is just my second card of Swiss Army Knife Taysom Hill, who was snake-bitten in college. Seriously, who suffers five season-ending injuries during their college career? I'm happy to see him find a niche, or two or three, in the pros. The Max Hall card, by the way, is beautiful in-hand. The scan doesn't come close to doing it justice.

I managed to pick up five autos from COMC. Fred Warner (top right) is playing lights out for the 49ers this year. This is my second auto of him, but my first licensed one. These are my first Brandon Doman and Dennis Pitta signatures.

The Cougs currently have a 5-game win streak over the Rainbow Warriors, but Hawaii always makes me nervous. I think it's a little PTSD from 2001. That year BYU, led by Doman and Doak Walker Winner Luke Staley, was 12-0 and ranked #9, angling for the first BCS bid ever by a mid-major. They went into Honolulu for the season finale and left with a 72-45 beatdown. Let's hope for better results tonight.

A Trio of Seasonal Surprises

I've received three unexpected packages this month from some familiar bloggers. Chris, the Collector; Matt, the Sports Card Collector; and Dennis, from Too Many Verlanders all hit me with a surprise holiday package. These are three collectors with whom I feel I have a pretty strong collection connection because of our similar interests. Chris and I both hoard Packers, while I share an interest in college collecting with Dennis. And Matt and I both love our football, especially 1990s style.

All three of them added to my Packers collection.

Four new Brett Favres here. I had never even heard of Pinnacle Laser View before. Holograms were always pretty cool, as Penny Sleeve for Your Thoughts recently wrote, they probably aren't coming back. This particular card didn't scan well.

SCC sent a pair of Turkey Red Packers. I never bought any of these, so I don't have many. These are both new to me. Poor Jared Abbrederis and Rajion Neal look like they the sole survivors of a nuclear holocaust.

Dennis sent some Packers, as well. 2007 Topps is far from my favorite design, but the plus side here is that I haven't ever bothered to pick up a lot of it, so all of these cards are new to me.

Chris and Dennis also helped me build my All-Decade teams. These cards came from Chris, and I especially appreciate the Dave Butz Redskins team card. Butz just doesn't have too many cards out there, so any I find are welcomed.

Dennis helped out my All-2000s team. The 2012 Absolute Gates was one of those cards I was shocked to find that I didn't already own. I have so much of that stuff; how was I missing this card?

Dennis also hit my Heisman collection hard. This has been a side project for me more than anything. I've never had it on my wantlist until this month. Mostly, I was just holding onto the Heisman winner cards I came across rather than actively pursuing them. But not that the list of winners is on my wantlist, I suppose it's fair game for people to start sending them. My original thought was to begin in earnest after I had completed my All-Decade binders, but the list is so much shorter that I may finish my Heisman project first. And congrats to newly anointed Heisman winner, Joe Burrows.

 In his note, Dennis said that he had some BYU players for, along with some other pieces of my collection. These two cards make up a part of Dennis's BYU offerings. The cards he sent were packed in the Steve Young Pinnacle Inside can that you see at the top of the page. The cards-in-can were shipped in a bubble mailer, so I was a bit confused when I picked up the mail and felt what seemed to be a Coke can in an envelope.

He also sent along my 3rd auto each "Le"Bronson Kaufusi and John Beck. I've never heard of Topps Performance, but that's a nice-looking card.

Of the three senders, only primarily-football guy Matt sent any baseball cards. Last year's 1st-round pick Ryan Jensen appears in Refractor form. Javy Baez comes in a Blue Chips Hot Start. Derrek Lee is a nice serial-numbered to 149 card.

Thanks to three great bloggers and trading partners for the holiday surprise!

A Few Random Sportlots Auctions

In a recent post, I checked out a Sportlots box for the first time and came away a pretty good sized "sportlot" of cards for my collection.  Around the same time, I decided to take a peek at a couple of auctions.  I don't usually look at the auctions on Sportlots, but this time around I found a few that caught my eye.  The titles were simple--things like "34 Stars Inserts Favre"--but they were on Day 3 with no bids, so I decided to check them out.  I saw a few cards I wanted in the photos and figured if I could win multiple auctions for cheap and get the combined shipping, it was worth a shot.  In the end, I won a trio of auctions for $.25 apiece, and with shipping, I had them for about $7 total.  I didn't know every card that would be in the lots, so I was taking a bit of a chance.  As it turns out, it was a pretty good chance to be taking.

This cool insert set came from 2008 Topps and Chrome.  It honors NFL players who also served active military duty.  With all three lots combined, I picked up two copies of this set, minus one card.  I've since remedied that incomplete set through COMC.  After my Black Friday shipping this year, I'll have my Roger Staubach in hand and a completed set in my binder.

The lots were all given titles that included, "inserts," "stars," and at least one player's name.  Most of the cards were stars, inserts, or rookies, which made me happy.  I was a bit scared that I'd get one or two inserts or stars, and the rest would be 1990 Pro Set or something.  Stars from the 90s were well-represented, mostly in shiny.

 The Nineties provided some interesting insert sets.  I remember how cool I thought the acetone Collector's Edge cards were when I was a kid, but Bobby Hebert is the first I've owned.  I also loved the Ultra Stars and anything Fleer Metal at the time, both modeled by Marshall Faulk here.

I don't know anybody who misses Classic, but I won't complain about parallels/inserts of a few Hall of Famers that I received.

Early 2000s inserts were a cool find. Since I bought no cards during this period, there are still many sets I've never seen before.  Not only were the cards themselves pretty cool, there are some pretty good names here.  Most of these guys aren't NFL legends, but they were higher-tier players in their time.

More late 90s/early 2000s inserts.  Marshall Faulk made quite a few appearances in the package.

There were some nice rookies in there.  The Playoff rookies on the bottom row aren't the greatest (or even good) players, but those are some cool transparent cards.

The inserts kept coming into the early 2010s.  These were the most recent cards in the package.  I like the inclusion of two underrated running backs in Lenny Moore and Lydell Mitchell, as well as Packer great Billy Howton.

 Some NFL legends came in 2008 shiny Chrome . . .

and some real 1980s cardboard.

There were two special occasion promos, from 2004 National Trading Card Day and the 1991 National Sports Collectible Convention.  Oh look, there's Marshall Faulk again.

Finally, there were a few additions to my BYU collection.  Playoff was a quality card company in the 90s, and I have liked Panini's reincarnation thus far this decade.

I took a chance on some lots, and though I couldn't fit it all in my collection, I did get some pretty good cards for about six cents a pop.  I really don't feel there was any filler junk in any of the lots.  So, if you're browsing around auctions on Sportlots, and you see a lot from AAAVINTA, I can vouch that it will be filled with some pretty good cards.