Baseball and football cards -- just the way you like them!
Christmas in sports cards form came late, but that's because I was out of town. I usually end up with a pile of packages and trades around the holidays, mostly because I figure that people are in a giving mood and also maybe have a little extra time off to do the card thing. I'm also out of town for a bit around these holiday maybe every two out of three years, so I was greeted with an avalanche of envelopes of all shapes and sizes once mail delivery resumed after the first of the year. At the top of the pile was a generous holiday package from Dennis of Too Many Verlanders, which is always a welcome sight.
Let's look at the football guys first. This is one of the blue mirror parallels from 2018 Panini Certified and is numbered to just 50 copies. I know some people dropped a lot of money on cards of the Heisman Trophy winner Mariota early in his career, and I've benefitted lately on picking up a few of his nicer cards now that the shine has long worn off.
Here's another Ducks QB in his pro uniform. I think Justin Herbert is going to have to shed the stigma of being a Chargers player entirely if he is going to elevate his status in the NFL, but certainly having Jim Harbaugh around could eventually change things a bit. We'll see.
Of course, this is another card for my Oregon collection, but it reminds me of how strange it feels that I actually rooted for the Chiefs at one point. Like... this decade. Kind of.
It's kind of incredible that I now own two distinct versions of this fairly obscure auto/manupatch card of late oughts Ducks running back Jeremiah Johnson. You can see the other one here. (Same card, different patch!)
For every Jalen Hurts, Donovan McNabb or Randall Cunningham in my time following the Eagles, there's been a couple of Kevin Kolbs and a couple of Detmers. Well, maybe just one Kolb. Anyway, it was a great year for the Eagles and you'd think I'd have more to say about it, but the Super Bowl was kind of surreal... in a fun way!
I'm not a full fledged Eagles team collector in the same way that I am with Cardinals (baseball) cards, but I do have a couple of boxes set aside for them. I did add a bunch of base Duce Staley cards to my want list on TCDB since he was a favorite from the past, and serendipitously ended up receiving this numbered "Premiere Date" parallel from Dennis around the same time. It's great!
Jevon Holland is a really good player, and a free agent. I could certainly think of another bird team whose uniform he'd look pretty good in if you ask me.
Here's another Duck! Ed Dickson is showing off the underrated late '00s Ducks look here.
Of course, the package wasn't all pigskin pushers. (That's a thing, right?) Dennis sent over a nice little stack of baseball parallels and inserts from sets I dabble in from time to time. These two Bowman Heritage cards are both chunky one-per-pack parallels with facsimile signatures. This era used to have a lot of thick cards that would theoretically throw off someone trying to search for similarly thick coveted memorabilia cards.
This trio of lesser known baseball players are featured on mini parallels from the 2005 Bowman Heritage set. Chris Volstad is the only name I remember here. It's possible that the other two never made it to the bigs.
Last up from the set stuff is a 2005 Turkey Red red parallel for the meta collectors out there, and a '74 Highlights card from the 2023 Topps Heritage set. They don't really fit together at all, but what the hell, I was saving some space.
The last card featured here is a Cards card (hey, that's the blog!) Kolten Wong had a decent run with the team and will always been linked with the Mike Matheny era, for better and for worse. I think most of us would welcome something on the level of the Matheny days right now, considering the current state of the team (ahem: mediocrity.)