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.

Somebody Call the Police!

Because there is a team up in Green Bay who is giving everyone they meet a beat-down! 

The Renaissance of Aaron Rodgers has been really fun this year. The offense is putting points on the board like crazy. I know the team took a lot of heat this off-season for not providing Rodgers with more weapons. I admit that I wasn't too enthralled with the Draft Day strategy, but I was actually more worried about picking up a decent linebacker after watching what the Niners did to the D in the playoffs. The team did neither of those things during the draft. Rumor has it that Rodgers himself was none too happy, but I'm hoping that he is starting to "trust the process" a little more after these earlier successes. I hope the team is treating Jordan Love as a long-term project, and they have convinced Aaron that there is no plan to play him at any time in the near future. My mother is a Utah State alum, so I've seen plenty of Jordan Love over his college career and I will attest that he needs a lot of work before he is ready to take the reins of an NFL offense.

Regardless of what the future of this team is, right now they are fun to watch. To commemorate my current excitement level with this team, I want to post about my latest Packers purchase. I recently found a seller on eBay who has a bunch of the Packers Police sets for sale. These are some of my favorite cards of the Pack, even though I didn't have many before. I don't know of many teams that do this type of set as consistently as the Packers do, so this seller had a few different ones to choose from. I would have liked to get some of the sets from the early '80s, but the seller seemed to have priced them at a little more of a premium. Instead, I opted for a four-year run that for me spanned my 8th-11th grade school years.

1996:

This team won the Super Bowl. After spending about three years getting my heart broken in the playoffs, I was finally able to see my team bring home a championship. I don't have many Mike Holmgren cards, and this is definitely the first time that Ron Wolf has been added to my collection. I think the same can be said for Earl Dotson and Craig Hentrich. I love that Earl Dotson photo.

1997:

And this team lost the Super Bowl. But since this set was printed the year following the victory, the Lombardi Trophy is featured prominently in the set. It even got its own card. If I am to judge the roster by the checklist of these sets, then George Koonce, Wayne Simmons, Keith Jackson, Chris Jacke, and Ken Ruettgers were the keys to the Super Bowl win. They were in the 1996 set but were replaced the following year by Frank Winters, William Henderson, Dorsey Levens, Santana Dotson, and a trophy. That roster then lost the Big Game. Coincidence? I think not. (Actually, I think I would rather have the latter four players on my team than the guys from the year before, but that's just my opinion.)

1998:

I think this is my favorite look of the police sets I picked up. There were several newcomers to this set: Bernardo Harris, Adam Timmerman, Ross Verba, Brian Williams, and Tyrone Williams.

1999:

When I first saw this set, I thought, They were sure leaning hard into the new Millennium, futuristic design. That was before I noticed the "Into the Millennium" stripe running up the left side of the card. The most notable newcomer in this year's rendition is Coach Ray Rhodes. This is my first Rhodes card. There were two new faces that I'm glad to see (Ryan Longwell and Marco Rivera, who I really loved when they were on the team), one I'm not so happy to see (serial rapist Darren Sharper), and one that I really don't have any feelings for (Vonnie Holliday).

These police sets are some of my favorite oddball cards, so picking them up for a little over $5 shipped apiece was a no-brainer for me. Now let's hope the 2020 Packers squad can keep speeding up the field and assaulting the end zone before the police show up and book 'em all.

A Big Box of Bulldog Cubs and a Contest Question

As a guy whose primary collection is football, I really love to see football cards pop up on blogs. I especially love it when bloggers have football on their wantlists because I have far more football available to send out than baseball. So one of my favorite blogs out there is Nothing If Not Random, run by Roy, AKA Bulldog. I put together a little package of Bills and Falcons and sent them out to Roy to initiate our first trading interaction. What he sent back was absolutely incredible.

I sent a bubble mailer. He returned fire with an 800-count box packed with Packers and Cubs. Mostly Cubs. Here are all the Cubs of the package divided by five year periods. In all, there were 726 Cubs cards in the box. I can't show them all here, but I have a few highlights.

We'll start out with some 2015 rookie cards of guys who are building pretty successful careers, even if Soler is doing it over in the AL. He's having the best season of the three, as Baez and Bryant are having a pretty rough go of it as we near the halfway point in 2020.

We have a couple of goodies from North of the Border, circa 1988. Both of these guys had pretty successful careers, too. This isn't my first 1988 Leaf, but I do believe this is the only 1988 OPC in my collection.

And let's stick with the themes of "pretty successful careers" and "late 80s I didn't have." Somehow, I don't think I ever knew about this All-Stars set from Donruss. I'm embarrassed to admit this to fellow collectors, but I'm happy to have added the Cubs from the set, and two Hall of Famers, to boot!

Speaking of Hall of Fame, Lee Smith is now in the Hall of Fame. These other guys all belong in the Facial Hair Hall of Fame, though. That 1981 Cubs squad was stacked mustache firepower.

Roy even managed to give me some set help. This Schwarber will go into my 2019 Big League build, which is crazy that I'm even still working on it.

There were a few inserts and parallels in the box. The die-cut Ryno looks really nice in-hand, but my favorite has to be the Zobrist Award Winner. How can I not love a card celebrating a Cub winning World Series MVP? It seems like so long ago now. This year's version of the Cubs has a pretty good record, but unless some bats start heating up, they won't be able to win it all again this year. The pitching has been pretty incredible, though, especially Yu Darvish.

I would be remiss not to highlight the legendary photography of Stadium Club. . .  and 1992 Fleer? Seriously, that Lancaster is awesome. Pitcher at the plate? Check. How about having him bunt? Okay. What about having the ball in the air, in the frame, with his eyes glued to it? You got it. Great card there.

Besides 92 Fleer, there is another set I would like to take a closer look at in this post. Of all the early-year Upper Deck sets, 1992 is the one I've really seen the least. But flipping through this package, I found that there is a lot to love about this set. I mean, you can see not one, but two bunts above and a player brushing his teeth in the dugout. But I found the backs of these cards is where the quirkiness of this set really comes to life.

Just look at how interesting these photos are. Jorge Bell tipping his cap during All-Star Game introductions. A helmetless Cy Young winner sliding into base. Shawon Dunston trying to make a diving tag on Paul O'Neill or Joe Girardi trying to pull the ball down in time to make the out at the plate. Then there is Andre Dawson spread-eagle (or spread-hawk in this case?) to rob a home run. Although, I can't tell if he made the catch or not. These are all great.

I started this post by praising Roy for his many football-related posts, so I can't leave out the Packers from the box. I'll take a Press Proof of Aaron Jones's rookie card any day. This is my first look at last year's Panini Illusions, and they're pretty impressive. They have a Fleer Flair or Topps Gold Label look going on. There's nothing wrong with either of those two brands.

These Packers will all go into a set build. I needed all of these for my 1997 Upper Deck Legends set. I still have a few needs for this posted on my wantlist, but I'm getting closer.

In the box, there were 43 Packers. 25 of them were new to me for a success rate of 58% being cards I added to my collection. Now we're going to play a little game. There were 726 Cubs cards in the box. I want you to guess what percentage of those 726 cards were new to my collection. Just leave a comment on this post with your guess by 11:59 pm on Thursday, September 3. The person whose guess is closest will get a little prize package from me.

Thanks, Roy for the generous mail-day. I certainly hope we end up trading again in the future.

Contest Question--

Of the 726 Cubs Roy sent me, what percentage was new to my collection?

50-Year-Old NFL Legend Cardboard

Last week I was on eBay looking for an affordable box to break, since I'm not really buying any retail right now. I found one (which will be saved for a later post), and in my customary way, searched around for other items the seller had for sale. I came across a "U-Pick" lot of 1970 Topps football and saw there were some pretty good players available and add it to my purchase. With the shipping included, these 10 cards came out to about a dollar apiece.

The highlight of this purchase was knocking off two players from my NFL All-Time Team Project. For this project, I'm collecting one card from each player who was chosen for the NFL's 100th Anniversary All-Time Team this past season. My criteria for these cards is that they must fill one of these criteria: 1) a Hall of Fame rookie, 2) a vintage card (defined as pre-1982 for this purpose), or 3) a serial-number of 500 or lower. I was able to pick up two new cards for this project.

And Gale Sayers is a big one for a dollar. This alone made the purchase worth it to me. It's off-center, but otherwise in great condition. The same can be said for John Mackey. It's even more off-center, but its condition is great.

I also tried to pick out a few other Hall of Famers. Robinson, Wilcox, and Bethea are all enshrined in Canton. My favorite card of these four is Elvin Bethea because this is his rookie. Again, an average of $1 per card got me a Hall of Fame rookie from 1970. I'll take it. Gary Garrison is a name I recognized from recent years' Hall of Fame finalists. I don't know much about him, but I know he was a finalist or semi-finalist for the Hall in the past year or two, so I went ahead and selected my first card of him for my lot.

And, of course, I took whatever Packers he had available from the set, too. This is my first Doug Hart card. Up to this point, the only card I had of Gale Gillingham was an All-Pro card he shared with John Hannah. It's a great card--with a Packer great and a Hall of Fame great on the same card--but it's nice to have one of Gillingham flying solo.

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.