This tradition I stole from the many other bloggers who do this but I love it.  It is also hard.  I really thought this would be easier this year but it definitely wasn't.  My favorite card of the year though has to be this one.  Denny Hamlin wearing a mask of himself.  It is a 2020 Prizm SP and one I pulled just this month but I love it.  I know it is easy to say "it is so 2020" but I like that he didn't take himself too seriously and it's creepy funny.  

I've wanted this card for a long time and when I was finally able to find one at a good price I was  excited.  During this speech David Ortiz famously stated "This is our ****king city" after thanking local first responders and officials for their response to the Boston Marathon bombing.  

Nique is my favorite all-time player and this card has always been one I like.  I happened to pull it this year from a pack from a pack lot sale.  Great photo and he is framed by Atlanta Hawks on the board in the background.  And you have to love the excitement of the fan in the background (bottom left)!

My favorite football card was so easy.  Nothing better than Drew Brees looking like a boss on this 2001 Upper Deck Vintage card.

This card was a no brainer.  Sandy (Olivia Newton-John) with her black leather coat and cigarette...gotta love it.  And who doesn't love the closing scene of Grease when we were all blow away by her transformation.  

This Sidney Crosby card has a great photo as it goes horizontal.  You see the intensity on his face and ya just have to figure it didn't end well for some poor goalie.

 2019-2020 Mosaic Basketball: Don't get too excited this pack has been hanging around for a while.  Decent pull here starting with Zion here who everyone went crazy for in last year's basketball collecting season.  He and the Pelicans have had a good start to the season so far so collectors will be even more excited.  I can't wait for new basketball cards to hit the shelf.  Been so long.

Glad to pull a McCollum and Jokic is always a good pull.  He showed off how good he was in the bubble last year after Denver made it to the Western Conference Finals.

Devonte' Graham is looking over his shoulder with LaMelo ball on the team now. Graham's having a tough shooting year but the season is still young.  He is a solid young player for the Hornets.  Jrue Holiday is now a Buck still finding his way on a really good Milwaukee team.  

Chris Paul is a part of the the Suns.  Big things are expected from Phoenix this year.  Fun pack that is capped off by this Steph Curry parallel.  I have more packs of these in reserve so you'll see those in the future. 

New unis aren't the only thing Atlanta Hawks fans have to look forward to this season.  They won the offseason with the additions of Bogdan Bogdanovic, Danilo Gallinari, and Rajon Rondo.  Once healthy they'll also have Clint Capela to add to the mix when he is healthy.  He was pcked up in a really good trade last year.  On paper this is an excellent roster but you don't win trophies for best offseasons.  There are still plenty of questions like where some players will play, having enough minutes and basketballs to go around, and what does all this do to the younger players this team had been developing.  That's about as negative as it gets.  I'm excited to see what this team can do.  Trae Young is a superstar talent and he finally has talent around him.  This is still a young team so if they figure it out they could compete for a few seasons to come and in the Eastern conference there's no reason to think they won't.  Hopefully I'll get the chance to see this team play this year.  I have to admit I'm a little giddy.

 

 I'm a little late on this but didn't the season sneak up on all of us.  Portland did well in the bubble last year after getting Jusif Nurkic and Zach Collins back but were still the #8 seed.  They were greatly overmatched against the eventual champion Los Angeles Lakers in the playoffs and were out after their first round loss.  This year they add Robert Covington and Derrick Jones Jr. and get back Rodney Hood while Zach Collins should be healthy at some point.  While I'd love to think they'll make great strides this year with a healthy team I think they are  probably a #6 seed waiting to happen.  To get in the top four of the western conference it will take a huge change on the defensive end.  These guys can score but defensively they struggle.  Hopefully Convington and Jones Jr. can help them on the perimeter but it'll take more than two guys to turn this around.  I'm looking forward to seeing what the rest of the season brings.  Portland is fun to watch and you have to expect Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum to be studs again.  Nurkic is so good too.  If this team doesn't make strides I'll be curious to see if management makes some type of change.  Go Blazers!

2020 Absolute Football:  These four packs are from Dollar Tree and has one yellow parallel per pack.  I bought quite a few and will show them off in groupings like this.  The design is solid .  I'm not a huge fan of yellow parallels as the color just doesn't work for me in contrast to the team colors.  Won't complain about a Joe Burrow parallel though.

This set has 100 veterans and 100 rookies in the base offering.  Not the strongest pull amongst the veterans but some guys here everyone knows well.  

The foil put on the rookie cards makes them stand out from the veterans as well as the design being reversed.  These were fun but we'll see some better pulls in my other packs I'll share in the future.

BREAKDOWN: 
20 – Total cards
10 – RC
4 – Yellow Parallel

 2020 Donruss Holiday Blaster:  Merry Christmas!  I said I wouldn't do another one of these but I couldn't pass it up when I saw more on my local shelves.  And it is Christmas so it seems appropriate.  I'll mostly show off some highlights.  One good thing is there were only a few cards that were duplicates of the other blaster so that is a big win.  Let's start with some Joe Montana greatness in a Chief uni.

Some really good star power in this box including these guys.

This is a solid rookie pull for this holiday relic. Jeudy is one of the leaders in receptions on the Denver Broncos.

Justin Herbert has had some up and down games but he really looks like he will at some point be the franchise quarterback San Diego is looking for.

Some rookie inserts.  Both of these guys are having a good rookie campaign and Jonathan Taylor has looked really good as he leads the Colts in rushing.

I was very happy with my pull and think this blaster out did my first holiday blaster in regards to base cards.  

Can't say enough about how I really like that retro '90 design.

Retired greats!  Love finding these guys in the different sets.  I pulled the Denver Bronco Peyton in my last box so this was a nice find. Fun pull and plenty of good cards make this blaster a win.  I hope everyone has a great Christmas!

88 – Total Cards

9 – RC

6 – Retired Greats

3 – Rated Rookie

1 – Retro 1990

1 – Elite Series Rookies

1 – Rookie Sweater Relic

1 – Rookie Gridiron Kings

1 – Optic Rated Rookie Red & Green Parallel

 Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey is a new Christmas movie from Netflix I watched last night and it is good.  I really enjoyed watching it.  Our adult kids suggested it to me and it didn't let me down.  Jingle Jangle is a fun tail about a toymaker who loses his his way after all his ideas are stolen by an apprentice.  The characters are done so well.  Actors Forest Whitaker and Keegan-Michael Key are excellent but the star is Madelen Mills, the toymaker's granddaughter who helps him find who he is again.  The energy and spirit she brings is infectious.  It took me a few minutes to recognize her but Phylicia Rashad also has a big part in the movie.  There are songs in this movie that are done well and one of the movie's producers is John Legend.  Plenty to like here and I wanted to share before the big day tomorrow.  Merry Christmas Eve!

 Home Work: A Memoir of My Hollywood Years by Julie Andrews: I'm a big Julie Andrews fan and received this as a gift for which I'm very grateful.  I really enjoyed her first book Home: A Memoir of My Early Years and I was surprised to find I never did a review on it.  I really enjoyed this book just as much as the first.  The first memoir included her youth and her young career through Broadway.  This one picks things up as she starts her Hollywood career.  I'm glad she took two books to cover her life.  I do feel this one seems to move too fast at points but that is me being greedy and just wanting to have more insight into her life and the movies she made.  Her personal life is front and center as well.  She had a large family and like any family had it's issues.  Still she was a good mother through it all while balancing a career and home life.  The ending of the book seemed a bit abrupt as it really does stop when the bulk her movie career was over.  I doubt she is planning a third book but I think there'd be enough to fill one if she wanted to. Bottom line is if you like Julie Andrews you'll enjoy this book.  My favorite Julie Andrews movies are the The Sound of Music, Victor Victoria, and The Princess Diaries.  And did you know...she once showed her breasts in a movie?  Oh yeah...www.google.com...  Those are my random thoughts on this book.

 

The Mandalorian:  Jon Favreau gets it.  He's put together a great TV series that keeps hitting the high marks for Star Wars fans.  The second season was plenty of fun.  Along the way there are great characters who show up from across the Star Wars galaxy and different platforms.  It's awesome.  I'm not saying it's perfect but it does such a great job of putting us in the Star Wars universe with characters, new or old, that we really like.  I hope everyone else is enjoyed it as much as me.  

Klaus (2019) Netflix:  I watched this one last night and I really enjoyed it.  A unique take on the Santa Claus mythos it was very fun to watch.  As I've gotten older I'm a bit more leery of animated movies but this one impressed me.  The humor, story and characters were all wins. I will admit it took me a few minutes to get into it but once it got going I was hooked.  It's definitely going into my holiday movie rotation.  That's all I got but wanted to share some thoughts about this one.

2020 Playoff Football: Playoff was a favorite of mine last year so I was pleased to see these show up.  This year's design is okay but all that white isn't exactly appealing.  Just seems bright and doesn't add anything.  These could grow on me though so I don't want to make any final judgements yet.

The design is a bit better on cards where the player isn't in all white but I'm still not there.  Good pull in this pack.  You get 40 cards per pack so you get some good value.

You won't find many inserts here.  This Rookie Wave is one of only two in the pack.  That Jaylon Smith is a Kickoff parallel.  

You know I love me some retired greats so these were fun pulls.  Wish there had been more.

The backs aren't bad sans the small font. Some color and some stats while duplicating the front's photo.

This was a fun pack.  I have more I'll show off in the future.  Maybe I'm not quite sold on the look but it won't stop me from buying more if I see them in the wild.

2020 NASCAR Prizm: I'm not a shiny card guy but couldn't pass this up when I found it a Wal-Mart out of town.  Always chasing the Hailee Deegan cards but if I could pull one card this year it was this Denny Hamlin short print and boom there he is!  He is wearing a mask of...his own face.  It is creepy funny and I love it.  Hamlin is a great driver who finished 4th in the NASCAR standings this year and will be a Hall of Famer someday when he calls it quits

The design is very solid on these.  That Jimmie Johnson is a blue parallel.  Jimmie retired and is an all-time great with seven NASCAR championships.  Harvick and Keselowski finished 5th and 2nd respectively in the 2020 standings and each have a championship on their resume.

Chase Elliott was the 2020 NASCAR Champion.  I enjoy cards with the cars on them and this one works though the scan makes it look like it is cracking in places on this Powertrain insert.

A couple of younger drivers on these Next Level and NUMB3R5 inserts.  Tony Stewart is a retired great and two time champion.  This is my second SP which is easily determined by the checkered pattern framing the driver and write-up on back of those cards.  

This National Pride insert is not bad and gives us a shot of the driver and the car. For a box of 24 cards there is pretty good variety in terms of inserts and parallels.

The Stained Glass inserts are pretty cool though stained glass and NASCAR seem an odd pairing.  That Ryan Blaney is a blue parallel.  One of these is my Silver Mosaic which is numbered /199.  I think it is the Austin Dillon.

Fan favorite Clint Bowyer retired at the end of the season.  I think he'll be a great announcer.  He's very funny and likable. I'm a fan so pulling him is always fun.

Clint Bowyer hot box?  The 2020 NASCAR season was a good one even in the chaos that was 2020.  NASCAR did a great job adjusting on the fly and keeping the sport front and center as others sat on the sidelines.  This was a fun box.  You'll probably see another of these from me at some point given the chance.  I'll leave you with another card of your 2020 NASCAR Champion Chase Elliott.

BREAKDOWN: 
24 – Total Cards
4 – Stained Glass
3 – Blue and Carolina Blue Parallel
2 – SP
2 - Velocity
2 –Power Train
1 – Numb3r5
1 - Fireworks
1 – Next Level
1 – Blue Parallel
1 – National Pride
1 – Silver Mosaic #/199

 

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