UConn Wins!

The Connecticut Huskies won their fifth National Championship Monday night, the most of any school in the 21st century and the most without a loss in the title game. UConn men's hoops is less consistent than the women's side, but Geno Auriemma's program has fallen behind in recent years. Dan Hurley's squad ended the longest title drought the school has seen since Rebecca Lobo & co. captured their first crown in 1995:

UConn Huskies NCAA Basketball Championships
1995	1996	1997	1998	1999
2000	2001	2002	2003	2004
2005	2006	2007	2008	2009
2010	2011	2012	2013	2014
2015	2016	2017	2018	2019
	2021	2022	2023
		purple = women's; blue = men's; red = both

I haven't lived there in nearly two decades but it is nice to see my home state succeed at something. Indiana, Kentucky, and North Carolina were always known as traditional basketball schools and states. Connecticut was added to that list long ago. They don't have the pro hoops history to match the "blue bloods" but the success on the women's side had a hand in bringing a WNBA team to the state:

I don't have any Connecticut Sun cards. Perhaps I should add one to my very small stack of WNBA cards.

Yep, I have exactly one page of women's basketball cards in my collection. More than half of it is UConn-related, and yet I'm still missing Nykesha Sales, Diana Taurasi, Swin Cash, Maya Moore, Paige Bueckers... you get the idea.

Heck, I haven't kept up with the Husky men either. When I was a kid, my interest in UConn basketball was right up there with the Red Sox. Tate George was my guy. Then it was Chris Smith, then Donyell Marshall, then Ray Allen.

By the time Rip Hamilton and Khalid El-Amin took over, I was devoting a lot less time to basketball and a lot more time to girls... some of whom happened to like basketball.

My high school drama club took a trip to the UConn campus for an acting workshop. (It's the only time I've been up there, btw.) We each got to pick from a list of classes and I completely biffed it. Somehow I ended up in some kind of yoga/mediation-type workshop. Of the 75 or so students in my school that attended this trip there was only one in the class with me.

Danielle was a lifesaver; I would have felt so foolish and awkward without her in that class. When the 90-minute workshop was over, she walked with me to the other end of the campus where we had to meet up with the rest of the group for a performance of Six Degrees of Separation.

During our long stroll across the campus, we chatted (she more than I) until we approached Gampel Pavilion, which she enthusiastically indicated. Her hoops fandom was one reason why she wanted to enroll at the university one day. I have no idea if she did.

Though it was a textbook opportunity to exchange numbers and stay in touch, I was too self-conscious to make the attempt when we parted company at the theater, or on the bus ride back home. 

A few weeks later I was getting lunch in the school cafeteria when I ran into my baseball buddy Mike. Mike was a huge fan of Martin Scorsese films, the Yankees, and Gary Sheffield (long before Sheff became a Yankee). His new girlfriend was standing by his side. "Hi, Chris!" She said cheerfully.

"Hey, Danielle." I replied, holding back a heavy sigh.

"You guys know each other?" Mike said, surprised.

Not quite. 

Anyway, I moved to New Jersey a few years later and adopted Jersey's Team as my new fave. I was never a college sports fan outside of Connecticut and admittedly only pay attention when the Huskies are in the national championship. Which is fair play since college hoop fans are oblivious about my team. One of the Defector comrades commented thusly:

I'm not paying $79 to fish-slap this guy, so here you go:

1995 - Jacques Lemaire

2000 - Larry Robinson

2003 - Pat Burns

Responses from Defector readers included: Chelsea FC (Really? You had to look across the pond for an example?) and the Washington Redshins' impressive run of three Super Bowl victories with three different... quarterbacks.

Which reminds me - I might have to interrupt the All-Time Teams series again for Devils playoff talk. 

Can we get four Stanley Cups with four different coaches? 

Back to baseball tomorrow. Thanks for reading!




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Defunct Franchises

My original title for this post was going to be "20 for '20" because I counted all of the basketball cards in my COMC order and well.. there were 20. But then I realized something even more interesting about these cards:

A high percentage of the cards I ordered depict teams that no longer exist. Take this Tom Chambers card here. This is one of five Seattle Supersonics cards I picked up accidentally-on purpose. I didn't realize that one fourth of the basketball cards I bought were Sonics stars until I had them in-hand.

 

Here's a festive batch of shiny hoopers that put me in a Christmas mood. The Lillard Rainmakers insert (which kind of looks like tinsel) cost $1.20, while the Love Optic parallel (#d/85) was one of the cheapest Fast Break Red Prizms available at just $0.93. The color-matching Hakeem cost $0.71, and the Gary Payton Defensive Gems insert was the cheapest of the six at $0.65.

Payton and Chambers were in my original COMC order which I requested in July. I did not plan on buying any more singles until these arrived. However, a seller named The27guy disrupted those plans by posting a bunch of Immaculate singles at low prices - then adding a sale I couldn't resist.

Sonic BOOM! This X-Man patch is numbered to 10 and set me back $7.30, the second-most expensive basketball card I bought. Hall of Famer David Thompson's Shadowbox Signature (#d/99) cost $4.30.

One more Sonics relic, and a zombie Sonics card to go with it. Both of these Standard singles are numbered to 75. Ray Allen was $4.90, while Serge Ibaka was too cheap to pass up at $1.15.

More Immaculate bargains. Gerald Henderson wasn't a star - if he were, this 3-color patch #d to 10 would have cost a lot more than $3.10. The Christian Laettner relic is my least favorite design here, but I can overlook the odd swatch window placement for $1.62.

 

Point gods. I passed on this Stockton relic so many times I was certain someone else would snatch it up. But my patience paid off and I brought it home for $3.44 (the cheapest copies on the site now are over $6.00) The Nets aren't exactly a defunct franchise - they're alive and well in a different city. I probably should have tried to get to a game while they were here but I didn't know any NBA fans :/

I did get slightly excited when J-Kidd led the Nets to back-to-back Finals appearances - until realizing they had no chance of winning either series. This Franchise Foundations card ($0.85) reminds me of 2003, when a banner hung over Continental Arena declaring the home of the Nets and Devils to be the "Arena of Champions." I'm not the world's biggest CP3 fan but this Limited single was a nice pickup for four dimes.

Here's another Essential single. Talk about a point god.. they don't get much better than the big O. I added Oscar and Kareem to my Bucks collection for $1.45. 

 

There was one more Bucks card in this COMC shipment.. one I purchased in October of 2019 but couldn't bring it home until last week:

This was kind of an impulse buy. I searched Robertson autos one night, saw that the cheapest were sticker autos over $30, and didn't give it another thought -- until a seller posted a 50% off sale and I snagged this for $18.25. Yeah, it's a sticker auto, but it's an auto of an all-time great numbered to 25. It's also my best autographed basketball card by far.

Let's wrap up the basketball portion with some local oddballs. These are from a UConn Huskies set issued in 1991-92:

I lived in Connecticut for 24 years and I've never heard of Petro Pantry - or UConn Field House, which was the Huskies' home prior to Gampel Pavilion. I have heard of Walt Dropo though. The longtime major league 1st baseman was one of the greatest all-around athletes in state history. I actually saw him at a card shop once, though I didn't meet him. We were traveling upstate on the hunt for baseball card stores and I popped in when he happened to be signing autographs. I think I was about 10 years old at the time.

 

Some more Connecticut cards, including a pair of West Haven Yankees. I showed off these Whalers before, but here they are again. They are a defunct team, after all :*(

So are the Nordiques and North Stars. I'd like to pick up some sticker-sized Ultra Pro pages some day but Panini/Topps stickers aren't the same size from year to year. Minny was $0.70, Quebec was $0.74. The Whalers logo has been sold out for over a year. I'll have to pay a premium for that one if it ever pops up again. 

I didn't pick up any Atlanta Thrashers in this order but I did get a sharp looking Flames team card for just $0.67.

I'll show off most of my hockey and baseball card purchases next week. Until then, here's one more from a long-gone franchise:

Hall of Famer Harry Howell was one of the few stars the Seals had in the early 1970s. This 1970-71 Topps base card is the cleanest vintage hockey card I've seen in a while - and it only cost 86 cents!

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The PWE Swap Meet has been a huge success so far! Yesterday alone I received two stuffed bubble mailers and four envelopes. In the first week I've received cards from reader Ken, Bo, Elliptical Man, Night Owl, Nachos Grande, Nine Pockets, The Angels In Order, and three TCDB traders. My football box is overflowing already!

I'll have those return PWEs mailed out this weekend, and I'll reveal a portion of the prize box here:

Frank "Home Run" Baker of the Philadelphia Athletics

The PWE Swap is open until December 28th. Send me those unwanted football cards!


 

Thanks for reading!




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For Promotional Purposes Only

After somehow saving $15 off a 1956 Topps single on eBay, I was officially granted a $25 off coupon. It came with a timeline of my 20 years (and countless dollars) spent on the bay. I was surprised to learn that my first purchase was made more than two years after I'd signed up. I was not surprised to learn that it was a Peter Worrell item.

A coupon code often feels like found money, and getting a second bite of the apple gave me the freedom to shop for set fillers and other things that I wouldn't have purchased at full price.

Burbank Sportscards offered free shipping for any purchase of $30 or more, and I picked up a handful of singles starting with this Sidney Crosby base card for my Exquisite set build:

Once my COMC order arrives I will need just four of the 30 cards in the current player portion of the set (I'm not going after the HOFers or RCs) This Crosby was reasonably priced at $15 but If I didn't have the coupon I'd have bought another 1956 Topps single with that money.

I picked up two more rookies for my 2014-15 Panini Prizm basketball set, bringing me down to just six needs. There are only two cheapies left, and only one veteran base card (Kevin Durant).

The All-Time Teams project has gone somewhat dormant as I focus on traditional set builds. Burbank seemed like the best place to address that with their 2 million+ singles on eBay alone.

 

 

It's tough to find a Ron Perranoski Dodgers card, just about all of them are high-numbered and cost far more than I'm willing to spend. Burbank listed this 1967 Topps single (as EX-MT) at $2. It's definitely not EX-MT, the centering would be terrible if it weren't miscut. I basically paid 35 cents for this card so I can't complain too much.

The Barnstormers aren't officially part of my All-Time teams collection yet but I've been looking to acquire a Jim McCormick card anyhow. This 2014 Goodwin Champions SP was a little pricey at $3.60; I probably wouldn't have ordered it if the coupon hadn't worked.

I didn't know this New Haven Ravens logo card existed until I saw it in Burbank's eBay store. I'd buy these for a dollar all day.

This Peter Worrell 1 of 1 has been on my radar for years. Burbank had it priced at $9.95 until recently. Worrell's two seasons with the AHL's Beast of New Haven were the reason I became a super collector. 

After years of adding two or fewer new cards to my Peter PC I've had quite a turnaround in 2020. This is my tenth new pickup so far, and it's only September. I'm not sure how these stamped 1 of 1 singles were distributed, or at which National: the 2002 show was in Chicago, the 2003 National was in Atlantic City :/

Overall I spent about eight bucks out of pocket for these eight singles. Here's another Connecticut card:

This Kemba Walker Teal Explosion parallel didn't come from Burbank (I purchased it on COMC for $1.29 last year) but it did inspire my first full-length post on The 1993. Hope you enjoy the new blog.

Thanks for reading!



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The first $50

I'm ten days out from my 15th anniversary with the Mrs. and nearly all of the "play money" I set aside from the sale of my Mike Trout RC has been emptied out of my PayPal account. It did not go the way I expected at all. Shoebox Shane advised me to focus on one or two high-value cards and I really did try...but I ended up with a lot more than two cards.

Most of my purchases will arrive at the end of this week, and I'll likely recap them all sometime around the 17th. However I decided to spend $50 (plus tax) at COMC, knocking a few cards off of my watch list. I don't plan to request shipping until I've got 200 cards in my inventory (I'm at about 150 now) and I don't want to wait that long to discuss these cards. 

Initially I'd planned to pick up an Immaculate on-card auto of a Hall of Famer for $24.99. One of the 49 copies sold on eBay for over $32 and I was afraid that the COMC copy would have sold out as a result. It hasn't, but I got my Panini Immaculate Collection fix in other places (or tried to, anyway - that's a story for another post.)

Instead I spent my COMC cash on PC and set needs. A quick search for graded 1960s cards turned up this Al Simmons for my mid-grade 1961 Golden Press set build:

$8 down, $42 to go. Once this is in hand I'll have 12 of the 33 cards in the set. I'm still missing all of the big names (Cobb, DiMaggio, Gehrig) and there's a slight chance I'll add a couple more high-grade HOFers to my collection by the end of the week.

I've had my eye on these Conlon Collection color masters for quite a while. One COMC seller has a bunch and I finally made an offer on Frank "Home Run" Baker here. I added it to my inventory for $8.20, about 10% off the asking price of $9.

This Dustin Pedroia manupatch wasn't on my watch list for 100 years but it sure felt that way at times. I've kept an eye on it since 2018 and it just wouldn't budge below $5 - until last week when I snagged it for $4.65.

Thanks to CrazieJoe (and an assist from baseballcardstore.ca) I finished the 2003-04 Topps Pristine base set. I'm not bold enough to tackle the serial-numbered rookie portion, but I didn't hesitate to add a Devil #d/699 to my collection for $1.11. 

My Brett Favre box is running out of room and I planned to prioritize other player collections - until I came across this 2002 Topps Pristine refractor #d/349. The seller was asking $9.99 and I might have picked it up at that price. When it went on sale for $6.10 I threw it in my cart faster than one of Brett's bullet passes to Antonio Freeman. 

This Tremont Waters Panini Prizm green parallel was a bit of an impulse buy at $1.19. The G-League Rookie of the Year went to high school in my home town and, tragically, his father was found dead in a hotel that's about 20 feet from my mom's house (we used to play Wiffle Ball in this parking lot.) I was actually browsing Tacko Fall cards when I saw this color-matching gem pop up. If both Fall and Waters make the Celtics rotation I might have to switch allegiances from the Bucks, lol.

Here's a pair of on-card autos from 2018-19 Upper Deck Chronology. I've glanced at the $5 and under offerings from this set and Brian Bellows was one of the biggest stars (no pun intended) available. The green North Stars jersey featuring the 1991 Stanley Cup final patch caught my eye and led me to spend $3.80 in credit. I nearly got both Bellows and Nelson Emerson for $5 total; Emerson's messy signature set me back just $1.31. 

More Whalers here with a Ray Ferraro Canvas insert. I have no idea when Upper Deck started sneaking retired players into what I thought was a parallel set, or why they picked "Chicken Parm". Regardless, as soon as I saw it I added it to my watch list.. and then someone bought it an instant later. So I quickly snatched up the next-cheapest copy for $2.80.

Ferraro was the Whalers' #2 center for many years, behind this Hall of Famer:

Until now I did not have a rookie card of "Ronnie Franchise" and one of my goals with this windfall was to fill that hole in my collection. I had always hoped to pick up a graded copy but I just couldn't justify spending triple-digits on a slabbed single. And so I examined my options on COMC, picked out the best-looking copy in my price range and made an offer. It's a bit of a gamble at $12.75, and I won't know if it paid off for a few months, but at least I can cross this off my shopping list.

If my math is correct that's a total of $49.91. Can't exactly call this a COMC Blaster.. a COMC Megabox maybe?  

This is the last time I'll be spending money at COMC until at least Black Friday, and I'll be happy to bring home some longtime residents of my watch list.. eventually.


Are you still shopping on COMC? Has your opinion of the site changed due to their indefinite shipping delays?



Thanks for reading!



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Connecticut Cards: a Pre-war legend and a lefty HOFer

I picked up a handful of cards on COMC this summer to accompany my All-Time Teams series (which will resume shortly) and this manu-patch of the Connecticut state flag was part of that order. This is from 2019 Goodwin Champions, a product I have never had any interest in purchasing. That said, there are some very cool hits in that set. 

these would look better without the map relics

The flag patches are much more affordable than the autos or space relics (at least Tier 1 flags like CT anyway.) I paid $1.57 for my copy three months ago but there are over a dozen state flags available for less than that today, including New Jersey, New Hampshire, Massachusetts.. and Connecticut :/


My Connecticut Collection branched out even further with another non-sports single. Even though I have greatly expanded my non-sports collection in recent years I still struggle to justify spending more than a dollar or two on a single card unless it's something like this.
 
Then I approached it from a different angle: Let's say you see a card of a legendary baseball player from the 1930's. It's not a Goudey or Play Ball single, more like a Cracker Jack or tobacco card, but it's definitely pre-war and legit. It's in excellent shape and it's a very famous name. A legend.

Would you pay $2.65 for such a card if it was Joe DiMaggio? Of course you would. 

That's how I talked myself into spending exactly that for this 1935 Gallaher Portrait Tobacco card of first-ballot Hall of Famer Katharine Hepburn:

I have no idea what this card is "worth" but there's a COMC seller asking over $40 for a PSA 4. My copy is slightly off-center and some of the ink is smudged (especially on the back) and I think it has better eye appeal than the graded copy. 

My mother and I watched a couple of her films back in the day, including The Philadelphia Story and Guess Who's Coming To Dinner. Hepburn lived in Old Saybrook, a lovely little shore town that I've visited a couple times. After she died in 2004 we drove near her property - which was secluded but not extravagant. That just wasn't her style.

[Here's something I learned while writing this post - Katharine won four Academy Awards and did not attend any of them to accept her statuette.]

This next card wasn't a recent COMC purchase. In fact I can't even recall how or when I acquired it. 

Last summer I picked up a Jerry Rice rookie card for my birthday and decided to build the rest of the 1986 Topps football set around it. Once I get the Howie Long single currently sitting in my COMC inventory, I will be two cards away from completion: Walter Payton and Steve Young.

   
Young attended high school in Greenwich, CT and lived there when his rookie card was released. It wouldn't surprise me if he still lives in the state since he works for ESPN.

I haven't been all that picky about condition for my 1986 set, aside from the key cards. I passed on a pair of Young RCs in a very affordable eBay auction. Kinda regret that in hindsight. For now, this 2012 Topps reprint insert will keep the spot warm:

Steve Young is one of the greatest athletes with Connecticut ties. Aside from that, he was obviously a left-handed passer. It seemed like that was more common when I was a kid - in addition to Young there was Boomer Esiason, Todd Marinovich, Scott Mitchell, and Mark Brunell a little later. In the 2000s the only one I can think of is Michael Vick. [edit: there's one on the way] 


I'm planning just one more post about Connecticut Cards, unless I pick up something really unique. However my next post will feature another New England icon...


Thanks for reading!


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