Card Madness 2016, Pt. 1

The tournament of tournaments has officially begun.  In just a few short weeks we will see who reigns supreme in the land.  We'll probably see who wins this basketball thing, too.  But here is my 2016 Card Madness.

Round 1 Matchup: Buffalo Bills vs. Indianapolis Colts

2015 Prestige # 18 Fred Jackson                                 

Player: 4 Fred Jackson is far from a star, but he gets points for being Buffalo's equivalent of Rasputin.  How long did he stick around when everybody else was sticking a fork in him?

Design: 3 One of my favorite sets of 2015, has great full-bleed photography and an interesting design.  It gets dinged a point for being just a little too busy, making the names hard to read sometimes.  Plus the jersey number is pointless.  It just adds to the distraction as is barely noticeable as a feature.

Photo: 3 Great action photo.  Looks like he is in mid-juke.  One point is lost for the helmet fading out.

Back: 2 Not the greatest back, and it has a recycled photo.  It gives the player's rank in his major statistical category, which is cool.

Condition: 3

2013 Topps Chrome #14 Reggie Wayne

Player: 5 An all-time great.

Design: 3 2013 is one of my least favorite Topps flagship designs of this decade.  It looks like a weird attempt at ornate, but just looks like goofy wings to me.  And the player name is too small.  It's better in Chrome, so that saves a point for this card.

Photo: 4 What a great photo!  Action shot of a great receiver making a catch while being defended by Eric Berry, who just happens to be a top safety in the league.  At least, I assume he's making the catch.  It's hard to say for sure.

Back: 2 Not a bad back, but it's imperfection to me is putting the player's Twitter handle on the card.  I don't care!  It's a weird peeve of mine that Topps has decided is a good idea.

Condition: 2 This card is slightly off-centered.

Final Score: Indianapolis 16, Buffalo 15

 Round 1 Matchup: New York Jets vs. Oakland Raiders

2013 Panini Prizm #73 Stephen Hill

Player: 1 Stephen Hill?  Yawn.

Design: 3 2013 Prizm is a set I'm building.  It's a cool, shiny set, but there's not much else to speak of.  It's not offensive, but it's not astounding.  I'm intrigued by the edges, which appear textured, but actually quite smooth.  It's the most interesting design feature.

Photo: 2 It's an action shot, but it's too isolated to be remarkable.

Back: 3 The good: a blurb about Hill's work ethic, learning moves from Santonio Holmes.  The bad: no college is listed.  I love seeing the player's alma mater.

Condition: 3
  
ENOR Pro Football Hall of Fame #144 Gene Upshaw


Player: 5 One of the greatest O-linemen of all-time.

Design: 1 I hate the design of this set.  More than anything, it's the ugly gold border.

Photo: 3 It's a good action shot.  I like the dirt flying and all over Upshaw.  It's just a little too jumbled and it is more difficult to pick out the actual subject of the card.

Back: 2 The design is completely unattractive.  The saving grace here is the meaty biography of a Hall of Famer.

Condition: 3

Final Score: Oakland 14, New York 13
  

Round 1 Matchup: Carolina Panthers vs. Dallas Cowboys

 

2006 Leaf Rookies & Stars #16 Keyshawn Johnson

Player: 4 Keyshawn is one of those guys I appreciated more as his career went on.  I also had completely forgotten that he played for the Panthers.

Design: 1 Horrible design.  The picture is dwarfed by the background, which seems to be the focus of the card.  Those racing stripes waste an enormous amount of space.

Photo: 2 Not much going on here, folks.

Back: 1 More stripes.

Condition: 3 

1997 SPx #36 Deion Sanders

Player: 5 I never was a Deion fan, but I can't deny his talent or his impact on the game.

Design: 4 Can I give extra points?  These first SPx sets were revolutionary and are still hard to beat.  Good photography, die-cut, holographic.  Awesome.

Photo: 3 Deion in coverage.  Just doin' what he do.

Back: 3 The design genius just continues on the back.  It's amazing to me how much information and good stats they fit on the back of a die-cut card with smaller space.  And a new picture to boot!  Have I mentioned I love this set?

Condition: 2 There are some smudges.  Some of what you see is from the scanner.  Some is all card.

Final Score: Dallas 17, Carolina 11

Round 1 Matchup: Green Bay Packers vs. Tampa Bay Buccaneers

1991 ENOR Pro Football Hall of Fame #32 Willie Davis

Player: 5 Can't argue with the player.  A Hall of Fame Packer from Lombardi's defense.

Design: 1

Photo: 1 Could they have chosen a worse photo?  No pads, no team identifier.  This could be a fan wearing a #87 jersey to a high school football game for all this picture shows.

Back: 2 Once again, a bad design is saved by the HoF info.  I learned that Willie Davis was a military man and he never missed a game in 12 seasons.

Condition: 1 There's a nice crease on the left side of the card.

1995 Collector's Choice #12 Warren Sapp

Player: 5 Rookie of a Hall of Famer.

Design: 2 I'm a fan of Collector's Choice.  I like the unique lettering of this particular set.  However, the rookies in this set have the disadvantage of the ugly rookie logo in the bottom left.  The colors scream 90s, don't they?

Photo: 2 Not a fan of this photo.  It's like the company was trying to make Sapp look as dumb as possible.  He looks utterly confused by whatever is going on.

Back: 2 I like the clear focus on the overall draft pick number.  I like to know this about rookies, as I'm a bit obsessed with the draft.  There's new photo, which is better than the front, and the original from the front almost becomes a watermark on the back. It's a nice effect.

Condition: 2 Nothing major, but the corners aren't the sharpest.

Extra: 1 The rookies are the first cards in the set, and they attempted to number according to draft position.  Thus, Warren Sapp was the 12th overall pick and this card is #12.  When I organize my sets, I separate the rookies out and put them in draft order.  It preserves the history of the year's draft for me.  This card gets a bonus point for doing it for me.

Final Score: Tampa Bay 14, Green Bay 10 Despite my Packers pulling a Hall of Fame guy, the quality of the card itself proved its downfall.  I'm a bit disappointed that my team went down so early, but I'm going to play it straight, by the card.

Four more matchups will follow in a later post as the Madness continues.

Card Madness 2016, Intro

It's Madness Time!

And it seems like everybody has to do some kind of bracket.

And I'm going to do one here, of course.

Since this is a football card blog, my tournament is NFL themed.  I've created a bracket using last year's results (and this year's draft order) to seed the teams.  The top half of the bracket is AFC; the bottom half is NFC.  Each round has a randomly selected card in my collection from the teams in the matchup.  I put the cards head-to-head based on 5 categories:

• 5 points for the player
• 4 points for the card's design
• 4 points for the quality of the photograph
• 3 points for the card back
• 3 points for the card's condition

There may also be a bonus point awarded for something I like that doesn't fit into any of those categories.  In the event of a tie, I will break the tie based on the overall feel and my liking of the card.  Yes, this is highly subjective and completely arbitrary.  Sorry about that.  I've been teaching my 8th graders about allusions recently.  Anyway, a new card will be used for each round, so I can showcase as many great random cards as I can.  In the end, one team be will left standing.  Who ya got?

I'm going to try to keep pace with the actual NCAA Tourney, but with a new baby in the equation, I can't make any huge promises.  Suffice it to say I have every intention of completing this tournament in a timely manner.

Here is the bracket.  The 1st Round cards have been chosen at random.  The madness will begin shortly.

Welcome to the World

This is a quick post celebrating a birthday.  A few weeks ago, one of  my favorite bloggers, Nick from Baseball Dime Box bid us adieu on his birthday with a card of man who shares his birthday.  Today I'm celebrating the birth of my first daughter, who joined us on Thursday, with a card of one of the all-time greats, who also happened to be born on March 10.  I don't know anything about Mr. Woodson's birth, but our little girl is wonderfully healthy and cute as can be.

My three sons all sparked a new PC for me.  It seemed more apropos for some inexplicable reason to collect baseball players rather than football players in this case, but I started collecting guys that I normally wouldn't: Andruw Jones, Curt Wilkerson, and Doyle Alexander.  Those guys all share a birthday with my boys.  March 10 didn't really have any baseball players who seemed interesting to collect--sorry, but Dayan Viciedo and John Cangelosi don't do anything for me--but how could I not feature Rod Woodson when I found out he shared a birthday with my daughter?

I don't know about starting a new PC of Woodson for her, though.  I love me some Rod Woodson, but for some reason it doesn't seem fit to recognize that tiny girl with by amassing cardboard pictures of guys with helmets and masks knocking each other around.  I'll have to find another way.

Franchise 9: Houston Oilers/Tennessee Titans

One feature I want to make for this blog is to feature the best nine players for each franchise.  Why nine?  Because then I get to create a binder with a page for each team, of course!  To make my task a little easier, I've decided to narrow the field to Super Bowl Era players only.  First of all, it eased the selection process because I wanted to keep each team to nine players.  Trying to take a team like the Bears or Packers with all its history and whittle the greatest players to nine is a daunting task.  For some of these teams, it was hard enough to make the cuts that I did.  To double the length of the history and decide between Norm Van Brocklin and Torry Holt was beyond the scope of what I wanted for this project.  Sorry Norm, it's just easier to justify excluding you because of your time period.  Second, it makes it a bit easier to collect the cards I need without having to bust my budget on a lot of vintage.  Third, since half the teams in the NFL don't have history too far beyond the advent of the Super Bowl, it levels the field a little for the newer teams.

As is always the case with any type of ranking, there will be plenty of room for debate.  This is in no way a definitive list.  I have a soft spot in my heart for the guys in the trenches, so some may say that I have included too many offensive linemen.  Interestingly, I have found that most teams have a 5/4 split between offense and defense, or vice-versa.  I didn't intentionally try to even it out, that's just how it turned out.  This is just my opinion, and I tried to base it on both stats and status.  I've learned a little bit of football history in the process as well, and having a bit of history is one of the appeals of collecting to me.  In any case, it gave me another something to do with my cards, and that's why I did it in the first place.

The teams will be presented in no particular order; basically, I have chosen the players already and am in the process of filling in the gaps as I do not currently own a card of every player I have chosen.  I'll present each team as I complete its page.  Players are in order of position, not ranking.  I don't really care to take my nine franchise players and try to rank their greatness.  I'll just leave it as a team.

Now for what you really want to see: some cards!  Beginning with one of the weakest teams in the Super Bowl Era, the Houston Oilers/Tennessee Titans.

1. Steve McNair, QB (1995 Skybox Impact RC)

"Air" McNair was a top-five draft pick from a small school, which in and of itself sets him apart as a quarterback.   Fellow small-school prospect Carson Wentz can only hope his NFL future matches McNair's career.  He led the franchise to its only Super Bowl appearance, and came a Kevin Dyson yard short of winning it.  In 11 years with the team, he passed for over 27,000 yards and 136 TDs.  Tack on 36 rushing TDs and an MVP award in 2003, and McNair is arguably the most successful QB in franchise history.

2. Warren Moon, QB (2012 Topps Rookie Reprint)

If McNair was the most successful, Warren Moon was the most prolific QB in franchise history.  Moon spent 10 years with the club, passing for a franchise record 33,685 yards and 196 TDs in the famous Run 'n' Shoot offense.

3. Earl Campbell, RB (1991 Score)

For a guy I never saw play, Earl Campbell ranks pretty high on my list of all-time favorite players.  He rushed for 8,574 yards for the Oilers and was a nightmare for would-be tacklers.

4. Eddie George, RB (1996 Pinnacle RC)

Eddie George spent 10 years in Tennessee, eclipsing 10,000 rushing yards in that time.  This card is interesting to me.  Pinnacle is definitely one of my favorite brands of the 90s, and I like the gold pyramid at the bottom.  I like the inside the stadium setting of this card, but the women's restroom sign to Eddie's left is a bit weird.

5. Chris Johnson, RB (2010 Topps 1000 Yard Club)

Johnson was a tough inclusion here.  One on hand, he only spent six years with the franchise.  On the hand, he is one of only seven players in history with a 2,000 yard season.  Six years put him third on the franchise career rushing list.  But his flash-in-the-pan status almost kept him off the list.  This card was hard to resist putting in as well, because it's the 1000 Yard Club insert detailing his 2K year on the back.

6. Bruce Matthews, OL (1993 Fleer)

Matthews spent his entire 19-year career with Houston/Tennessee, logging starts at every position along the offensive line.  He was named to 14 Pro Bowls and the 7 1st-Team All-Pro teams.  He is also one of the 1st-team guards on the 1990 All-Decade Team.  I don't know why, but I love the 1993 Fleer set.  It's one that I will never complete, mainly because I don't have a big enough desire to complete it, but I have a whole stack of them.  It's a design I have long loved, with its transparent block lettering and sometimes awful centering.  I'm finding that I'm a big fan of the old Fleer, and this set is one of the best.

7. Mike Munchak, G (1991 Pinnacle)

Munchak spent all 12 of his NFL seasons with Houston.  During that time, he was named to 9 Pro Bowls and 2 1st-Team All-Pro Teams.  He is also a member of the 1980s All-Decade Team and the Hall of Fame.  To boot, he also manned the franchise as the head coach from 2011-2013.  But we won't hold that against him.  It's fitting that one of the few teams with three running backs in the Franchise 9 has two of the game's greatest offensive linemen.

8. Elvin Bethea, DE (1978 Topps)

Bethea spent 16 years with Houston, earning 8 Pro Bowl nods in that span.  According to Pro-Football-Reference.com, Bethea has a career approximate value rating, good enough for 8th on the franchise list.

9. Keith Bulluck, LB (2008 Upper Deck)

Rounding out the Houston/Tennessee Franchise 9 is Keith Bulluck.  For 10 seasons, Bulluck was the model of consistency for the team.  He may not be the sexiest pick, but ranks 3rd in franchise history in tackles, 3rd in fumbles forces, 18th in sacks, and 15th in interceptions.  He did a lot of everything for a decade, and never received the credit he deserved.

Well, there it is.  The first of 32 Franchise 9 pages.  I hope you enjoy looking as much as I have enjoyed creating the lists and will enjoy filling in the holes.

Where Heather and the Zistle Grow

Where do I put this card?  This card fits in several places of my collection.  First, it's a Packers card, so it could go in my Packers binder.  But Charles Woodson is also an All-Decade guy from the 2000s team.  So does he go with that PC?  Or, do I keep the 2012 Rookies & Stars set together because I'm building that?  I have a love/hate relationship with the organization aspect of my collection.  On one hand, I love to try new ways to organize.  On the other hand, that is time consuming for me.

So I was browsing around good card sites about a month ago, I and came across this thing called Zistle.  I bet that almost everyone out there who may reading this, and I know there are few of you, has heard of or used Zistle.  But to me, this was a revelation.  I'm not great at staying organized, but I do love to know exactly what I have.  Since I got back into the hobby a few years ago, I've been creating a spreadsheet to catalog every card I own.  Since I usually end up with sets or teams or players being split up by my endless quest for defining my collection, I needed to be able to sort quickly through the cards I owned to find my needs.  It has been laborious, but it's something I enjoy about the hobby.  Don't judge.

And now, suddenly, I no longer have to type out the year, set, subset, card number, player, and team and then indicate rookies, serial numbers, autograph, or memorabilia on my own spreadsheet.  Yes, I did that.  Stop judging!  Now it's just a matter of clicking on boxes and I have instant inventory.  One complaint I've heard about Zistle is how users have to upload checklists and cards, but on those occasions when it falls to me, well, I was already doing it anyway.  At least now it can help someone else, too. 

But my favorite feature of Zistle is the trading lists.  As I'm adding my cards, I can mark them for trade as I go.  I've created several want lists and in my month on the site, have already completed several trades.  I'm loving it!

Here is a rundown from my first few trades.  My first trade was a biggie.  Big thanks to Zistle user mikeyj for throwing together a little something awesome.  (I apologize for my scanner being stupid.  It has a hard time recognizing what to scan sometimes.)

First, Mikey gave me some great cards to add to my Packers binder.  I love this card.  C'mon, what Green Bay fan doesn't love all four guys on this card?  They actually did a good job of fitting all the players without making it seem too overcrowded, but the Score logo kind of big down at the bottom, and it could be shrunken down so as not to cut off Aaron's and Eddie's heads.

Jordy Nelson is a new PC guy for me, and it's all because he didn't play at all this year.  It's the old adage that you don't know what you have 'til it's gone.  Without Jordy, the offense looked lost.  Aaron Rodgers dropped a few rungs on the quarterback ranking list.  I never realized how good Jordy Nelson was until he wasn't on the field.  So now I have a new collecting focus.

For some reason, I really like this year's Topps 60th Anniversary inserts.  It's got the feel of baseball's archives, which I also like.  Plus, the 1989 and 1986 designs shown here are great.  I like the clean look of the 1989 set, while the 1986 set has that busy diagonal gridiron border that for some reason works for me.

This design, however, I don't like as much.  The coolest thing about these cards is the pairing of current superstars with legends from the past.  I would like some blurb on the card about the two players, but I suppose it would take away from the pictures of one of the players.  The concept is okay, I guess, but the cards feel weird to me.  I won't argue with a pairing of Aaron Rodgers/Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers/Paul Hornung, though.

Here are the backs.

We also swapped 2015 rookies, with me sending a Marcus Mariota in exchange for this Jameis Winston.

The big part of the trade, though, was Mikey knocking off almost all of my 2014 Topps needs.  This is just a sampling of the set he sent me, and now I only have two cards left: the Philadelphia Eagles team card #130 and Janoris Jenkins #199.

There were some others there as well, but I don't want to get too long-winded on just one trade.  Suffice it to say that I added some to my All-Decade teams, my BYU collection, and a couple of cards to my 2008 Topps set.

In all, I am thoroughly enjoying my Zistle collection.  If you have the chance, check out my profile and tradelist there.  If you see something you like, hit me up for a trade.  Even if you're not on Zistle, you can email me about a trade.

And I'll keep adding to my collection on Zistle.  Because my OCD needs an easy outlet.

An All-Decade Post

Round about the age of 16, I stopped collecting.  As strange as it may seem, I determined my hard-earned money was best spent on gas and girls.  And a new collection: CDs.  Now I'm not all that old, but I'm well-aware just how well my preferred musical medium dates me.  Not to mention my tastes.

 These guys are all still around, right?

Anyway, 1996 was my last big collecting year.  Through high school, I bought one box a year, just for the heck of it, but I was no longer big into the hobby.  After I got married and moved away, my entire collection ended up in my mother's storage unit.  It wasn't until my mom decided to get rid of her storage unit that I rediscovered my old cards.  Fifteen years and two kids later, I didn't really think much of the collection.  I decided to sell.  I did want to keep some, however, for the sake of my two boys.  I had to choose which cards to save before I sold the rest of my collection.

Of the thousands of cards to choose from, I settled on a category of players I thought fitting to pass on to my kids: All-Decade Teams.  There was plenty of reasoning behind the choice.  It mostly has to do with my childhood, as do most things I'm trying to pass on to my kids.  In 1994, the NFL celebrated 75 seasons, and part of that celebration included a large, coffee table style book.

I had that book, and I probably came pretty close to memorizing it.  At the end of each decade, it had an illustration of all the guys who made up the All-Decade Team.  That was my favorite part.  I studied those pictures until I could recognize each and every face.  So when it came time to choose which pieces of cardboard featuring my childhood heroes to keep, I decided to keep a collection of two cards of each player from the decades of my childhood: the 1980s and 1990s.

Allow me to introduce you the NFL's All-Decade Team, as shown on some of the cards of my collection, starting with the 80s.

Since this team is selected by the Pro Football Hall of Fame selection committee, I'm not going to analyze the picks here.  Suffice it to say that I wonder where some people are (Hello, Tony Dorsett?)  I'll save my commentary for times that I am the one doing the choosing.

And here is the team of the 90s.

So there you have the cards I selected to keep for myself, as a token to my children of the guys I grew up idolizing.  The rest I was going to sell.

The only problem was that almost all of my cards were overproduced, mostly worthless 90s cards.  So I bought a few Dutch auctions off eBay to sweeten the pot for potential buyers.  And that was it.  I was receiving cards from the nearly 15 years I spent away from the hobby, and I was hooked again.  I stopped collecting before the days of memorabilia cards and autographs in every box.  Now I was getting my first, and it was awesome!  I started collecting again in 2012, inspired by old cardboard of some guys from my past, and I'm in again.  I do sell at local card shows, but any all-decade player I come across goes to my PC, not my seller's table.

Target Repack Impulse

Well, I never intended for a repack purchase to be my second post here, but it is what it is.  The other day I was at Target, having a gander at their wares, but what caught my eye most was the 10 pack Fairfield repack.  Ten packs for $8?  I'll guess I'll take that on impulse.

So here are the packs inside: 3 packs of 2014 Strata, 1 pack of 2014 Topps, 1 pack of 2014 Topps Platinum, 1 pack of 2013 Topps Chrome, 2 packs of 2013 Prestige, and 2 packs of 2013 Score.  Not great, but not bad either.  I'm putting together the 2014 Topps set, and I like Chrome and Platinum, so I wasn't wholly disappointed at the outset.  So what did they bring?  Here is a look at my favorite from each pack.

2014 Strata Pack #1

A base Gronk.  I'm not a huge Gronk fan, but I have grown fonder of him as time has passed.  This is the first pack I've ever cracked from 2014 Strata, but I have almost completed the 2013 set.  I think I prefer 2013's darker gray background with the team color portal design, but this is a pretty clean looking design, comparatively.

2014 Strata Pack #2

A Quarterback Die-Cut Andy Dalton.  I like this card.  I already had the Aaron Rodgers Quarterback Die-Cut from a trade last year, and I don't mind adding another.  The one thing that bothers me here is the right hand and the ball have been cut out of the picture.

2014 Strata Pack #3

The selection of these two cards as the highlight of this pack speaks volumes.  There were really no better options than the duo of Jake Locker an Zach Mettenberger.  The reason I went with the two together is they were back-to-back in the pack.  Two straight failed quarterbacks of the future for Tennessee, stacked against each other in one pack.  The inversion of the jersey color is an interesting visual.

2014 Topps

The Topps pack knocked two cards off my need list: #439 Jace Amaro and #409 Kelvin Benjamin.  I'm now 61 short of the set.  I'll post a need list for this set and a few others shortly.

2014 Topps Platinum

A Jimmy Garoppolo rookie from Topps Platinum rounds out the 2014 cards.  I like the sleek look of this card.  I don't know if all of the rookies had slightly different backgrounds from the vets, but this card has more a refractor shine and more white space than the other base in the pack.  Is he the heir to Tom Brady?

2013 Topps Chrome

Another die-cut quarterback, this time it's Ryan Nassib of the Giants.  This was actually a tough decision.  I also pulled a Johnathan Franklin rookie, and I have a mild PC going of his rookies.  But this one edges it out because I don't often beat 1:24 odds in a repack box.

2013 Score #1

A Terrance Williams rookie.  I really like the throwback nod to the iconic '89 set, and Williams isn't too bad a player.

2013 Score #2

J.J. Watt.  I love this shot of Watt in the tunnel.  I'm not a big fan of score, but this is a cool card.

And now we get to the good stuff.  Two packs of 2013 Prestige gave me a couple of goodies.

2013 Prestige #1

A Ziggy Ansah Extra Points parallel rookie.  I'm a huge BYU fan, and unfortunately, it's not that common for one of our guys to make it big in the NFL.  But Ziggy was taken in the Top 5 of the draft and is so far living up to the billing.  I'm happy to add one more to my collection.

And the big pull of the night came from...

2013 Prestige #2

Extra Points Rookie Auto of Tyler Bray.  Yeah, I know.  The former undrafted quarterback from Tennessee isn't all that exciting, but come on.  How often do you score an actual autograph from a repack?  Normally I hope for some decent rookies and maybe something that will help me complete a set.  This was unexpected and exciting.  Not bad for 80 cents a pack, right?

What about all of you readers?  What has been your best, most surprising pull from a repack?