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.

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.

These Football Cards Look Like They've Been Through a Football Game

We may be nearing the halfway point of the NFL season, but I'm just barely getting around to buying/posting new football cards. I splurged on a couple of jumbo packs of this year's offerings, as well as some clearance-priced jumbo packs from last year.

As you can tell from the difference in the pictures, I didn't open these all at once. I spread it out a little over a couple of weeks; hence, I have photos from the same purchase but taken at different times.

Let's take a look first at some of last year's cards.

First up, 2018 Score. As far as base cards go, only one will make it into my PC, and that is Adam Vinatieri. The rookies weren't impressive, as Bo Scarbrough was the best of the lot. These two inserts, however, are welcome additions to my collection. I'm getting ever closer to finishing the NFL Draft set, which I'm only after because I love how it will look all together in a binder.

Apparently, there were a lot of inserts stuffed into the jumbo packs of Score last year. This makes 6 inserts. All of these, by the way, are up for trade if you want them.

Did I mention there were a lot of inserts? This brings the total inserts/parallels to 15 in the pack. Heck, there's even a parallel of an insert in the Red Captains Khalil Mack. I tend to like the Captains insert more in parallel form, I've found. The Scorecard Abdullah and the Red Burfict have already found new homes, thanks to TCDB, but all the rest are also available for trade.

My favorite set design of 2018 was Panini. If it's just called Panini, does that make this something like Panini Flagship? That just seems weird. Anyway, I would have definitely gone after this set, except for one little detail: every rookie was a stupid SP, falling one per box. I couldn't afford to chase those down, so I just had to admire the set from a distance. Fitz and Donald were the best I got from the first pack of Panini.

Well, lo and behold, I pulled a rookie! These are on kind of a cool canvas cardstock. And, actually, there are two here, but Mark Andrews is a Bronze Knight parallel. A Bruce Smith Franchise Leaders will go into my All-Decade collection. I really, really like opening 2018 Panini.

A second pack of last year's Panini brought me two Packers, including a Bronze Knight. Of course, seeing DeShone Kizer in the background of Davante Adams's card makes me cringe a bit. Please stay healthy, Aaron!

I was two for two pulling a rookie out of the jumbo packs. And then I started wondering where I heard that the rookies were one per box. One per jumbo pack might be more accurate. So, I did some quick research to find they were two per box or one per fat pack box. I'm guessing, then, that these two clearance packs came from two different boxes originally, and I really lucked out, getting the box hit rookie from each one. Courtland Sutton was a good find, but you may notice the ding in the upper right-hand corner. This was a recurring problem with these cards, as you'll soon see.

Two inserts came out of this pack. I really like the look of the Pillars of Excellence card, but I really don't know what to say about Antonio Brown at this point. For a minute, it looked like his antics in Oakland were part of some master scheme to wind up with the Patriots. Then that stay wound up being short lived and I don't know what to think about it anymore.

I didn't just buy last year's clearance stuff, either. I pick up my first couple of packs of 2019 football, too. I pointed out that some of the second Panini pack had dinged corners. That's a chance you take when you buy older packs at big box stores. Who knows how many times they've been handled or even shipped? But I was really disappointed with what happened next.

I bought a fat pack of brand new Score. I don't know if this particular pack had been dropped or pack searched roughly or what, but the corners were frighteningly ugly. What made it even worse was that I had actually found some pretty good cards in there that I'm hesitant to even trade now.

The design is an obvious allusion to the classic inaugural 1989 Score. The borders are color-coded: blue for NFC teams and red for AFC teams. I believe this is my first MVS, besides the rookie card that came in a factory set of Donruss I bought last year.

"Hollywood" Brown is the best rookie I pulled, but you can see the rounded corner ding in the scan. The NFL Draft insert set (bottom row) is once again a nice-looking set, but not as colorful as last year's. The rookies are the only thing preventing me from selecting this set as my 2019 build. I have no problem with rookies in their college unis, but this is such an early-season release that they can't even tell us the NFL team that selected them. My set builds are a historical artifact in my mind, and I want to tell the story of the year's draft as a part of it.

There seem to be a lot of players jumping for the ball and making catches above their heads in this set.

I love the Packers. I don't care for their throwbacks. I get that they are a very old franchise and they are trying to replicate the original uniforms, which would have had leather helmets. But that doesn't make them any more attractive to me. Both of these inserts will stay in my collection.

Once again, there are a lot of inserts in a jumbo pack of Score. There is a good mix of shiny and not-shiny cards here. I think my favorite look is the Captains set. This was apparently an Ezekiel Elliott hot pack, with a base and two inserts, but all three had a corner that was beat-up. If anybody is interested in any of these cards anyway, they are all still available for trade.

The last pack I bought was Absolute. The past couple of years, Absolute has been really shiny with just a player pasted on a colored background. They were certainly eye-catching, but they weren't my favorite. This year, Panini decided to forgo the shine and put a photo with an actual background on the front. I like the laces on the side as a design feature.

Unlike Panini, with scarce rookies, and Score, with no NFL teams, the rookies in Absolute are a regular part of the base set. They are different from the rest of the base in the way they have been somewhat Chrome-ified. Because of the design and the feasibility of the rookie portion of the set, I think that Absolute will be my annual set build this year.

We'll finish off this post with the parallels and inserts of the pack. Luckily, both inserts are keepers for me, in the All-Decade and Heisman collections, respectively.

Score is always a fun, cheap break with a lot of inserts, apparently. I like this year's Score, but the damaged pack leaves a bit of a bitter taste in my mouth--especially because I got some pretty good cards that were among the damaged. Absolute absolutely came through this year, in my opinion. For five jumbo packs for about $20, I certainly enjoyed the break.

Let's Check Out Some Cards

Browsing COMC can be dangerous.  Anytime I go on there, I find more cards that I had never really known before that they existed.  And just like that!  I want them.  Typically, my COMC orders are bigger than I really care to admit to myself.  In recent months, I've been trying to be more disciplined with all of my finances in general, and that has affected my collecting habits greatly.  Evidence of this comes in my most recent COMC order, which really wasn't too plentiful.  I may not have gotten a great quantity of cards this time around, but I'm very happy with the quality.

 These cards range from 1968 real cardboard feel to shiny modern cards.  Heck, we have a shiny modern refractor of a vintage Bobby Bonds.  It's a beautiful card.  Then we have a faux-vintage Gypsy Queen of legend Joe Morgan and a shiny vintage-style of youngster Alex Bregman.  The one common thread is All-Star Game MVP.

A couple more players who belong in that category, in miniature form.  Lots of legends in this order.

There really isn't a common thread for these two cards.  I needed the Shields for my slow-moving Bunt Programs set-build.  The 1976 Rookie Pitchers card features two players I need for two different reasons.  Ken Crosby could obviously fit in my Cubs binder, while Butch Metzger would go in my ROY binder.  Since this is the first Ken Crosby I own, the nod goes to allowing him representation in my Cubs binder.

More shiny!  These are some set builds. 2013 Prizm Brilliance is completed.  2016 Panini Legends of the Shield is one shy.  2016 Absolute Unsung Heroes is also extremely close.  I'm only missing rookies for  2016 Panini, but Tyler Boyd is no longer one of them.

We'll finish this short post with some all-time greats.  Three of these cards are serial-numbered (Hendricks /499, Jones /999, and Kevin Williams /2011).  My favorite, though, is the Finest Refractor of Aeneas Williams.  He may be a Hall of Famer, but I still believe he is underrated.  This card is beautiful in-hand.

Happy Friday, everyone!

No Box Was Broken in This Box Break

Last summer, Kerry at Cards on Cards ran a 10th Anniversary Group Break.  I picked up a slot in that break, but it was an interesting slot.  In fact, none of the cards I got in the break could have possibly come from the boxes Kerry was opening.  He was opening baseball boxes; I opted to receive NFL cards. You see, along with the teams in the group break, Kerry put together some lots of other cards that could be claimed.

When the cards from my slot in the "break" came, I was amazed at how many there were. I expected to see something like a team bag, but no.  This is what was in my mailbox.

A lot of cards, that's what.  No doubt that something in all of this would be some cards I would need.  The Cowboys tattoo I don't need, so I'm thinking of sending it to SCC.  I'm sure he'll want it.

There was a smattering of all kinds of things in box, mostly between 1990-2008, leaning strongly toward the 90s.  It turns out there was a lot in there that fit into my collection, including 1993 Pro Set, which I previously had none of.

One cool Pro Set card that didn't fit into my collection, except under "Cool Card I Think I'll Keep," was this card of Francis "Bucko" Kilroy.  From the back of this card, I learned that Kilroy had been in the NFL since 1943, when he came in as a player.  He was even an All-Pro during his career.  The really cool thing about this card to me, however, was learning that Kilroy was considered one of the first five talent scouts in the league.  Very cool.

Going back in time a little, we have some 1988 Topps 1000 Yard Club inserts.  This package inspired me on to another set build. I only need 13 more, so why not?

Also from the 80s, some stickers of stars that I need.

Here are some guys that I only care about for their college days.  The Sam Bradford is an SP photo variation.  When I first saw it out of the box, I thought something looked different.  It turns out that I had the base already, and that's why this version looked unfamiliar.

There was a lot of good trade bait included, too, and some of it has already been made part of some TCDB trades.  Big thanks to Kerry for free "break," and a belated congratulations on 10 years of bloggerhood.