Sports Card Tour 2018 - New Orleans

The Collector's Sports Card Tour is closing out the month of May in the Big Easy. Today we're in New Orleans. 

NOLA is home to two pro sports teams- the Saints and the Pelicans.

The Saints won Super Bowl XLIV after the 2009 season. The Pelicans are the original Charlotte Hornets-even though their name and history was returned to the expansion Charlotte franchise. I had to explain all of this to my brother-in-law during the Pels' closeout win over Portland last month. 

Anthony Davis scored 47 points in that Game 4 win over Portland, leading the Pels to the second round for the second time in their history. The "Brow" base cards are the only Pelicans in my star player box. I don't have any DeMarcus Cousins or Chris Paul base cards yet..

..but I do have this dual relic with CP3 and David West. Both this and the Artist Proof parallel were part of the COMC 500; the relic card actually cost less ($1.15) than the Davis ($1.23) 

There's another David West card that has caught my eye more than a couple times:

It's tempting to spend $3.25 on this card, but the tiny crease above the 'C' scares me off.

Earlier this month I bought a 75-card repack of basketball cards and pulled this Baron Davis Topps Prisitne single. It was a nice surprise and easily my favorite card in the pack.

14 of the 26 NOLA-based basketball cards in my base binders are of these four players -
Sixth Man of the Year Eric Gordon and Jrue Holiday..

...Ryan Anderson and Tyreke Evans. Anderson, Gordon, and Chris Paul were teammates with the Rockets this season.

None of my New Orleans cards are from the first five years of the Jazz franchise (both my Pete Maravich cards are Atlanta Hawks inserts.)

New Orleans was all but destroyed when Hurricane Katrina ripped through the Gulf of Mexico in 2005. The Louisiana Superdome was used as a shelter for displaced residents:

Saints owner Tom Benson used the damaged Dome as leverage to get a new stadium built, threatening to move the Saints to San Antonio in the wake of Katrina. Instead, the recently deceased billionaire got a more favorable lease - and the Superdome was renovated (and renamed.)

The Saints returned to the Superdome for the 2006 season, with a new anthem and a new leader.

Drew Brees led New Orleans to the NFC title game in his first season with the team; three years later he was MVP of the Saints' Super Bowl win over Indy. Barring injury, he will become the all-time leader in passing yardage during the 2018 season. The Playoff Ticket parallel is my only Brees 'hit' unless you count this:

Multi-player cards clash with my OCD; I have a separate section in my binder for them - even if all of the players depicted are on the same team.

 

The Saints went all-in on Ricky Williams, trading their entire draft for him in 1999. The gamble paid off.  After 33 NFL seasons the franchise finally earned a playoff win in Ricky's second year. The enigmatic running back was traded to Miami after just three seasons with the Saints.

After Williams left and before Brees arrived the Saints did not make the playoffs - though they were an extra point away in 2003.

You'll have to click 'watch on YouTube' but it's worth it for the announcer's reaction alone.

Two longtime Saints greats can be found in the Pro Football Hall of Fame - and my star player box.

This is my only Rickey Jackson card. He was part of a killer linebacking crew along with Sam Mills and Pat Swilling. I remember ESPN's NFL Prime Time did a story on the trio; they did a cheesy rap song intro which I won't bother looking for.

A kicker in Canton? Yesss! Morten Andersen won a lot of games for the Saints when I was a kid, and kept on kicking until age 47. He's likely the only special teams player in my stars/Hofers box; I don't have any George Blanda, Jan Stenerud, or Ray Guy cards.

Remember the Flat Rate box of cards I bought on eBay? Of the 130 football cards therein, 75 of them were Saints.

74 of them were Marques Colston (a single Reggie Bush card must have slipped in by mistake.)

If I had 75 Jim Everett cards my wife would be happy. Alas, I only have six from his Saints seasons.

Archie Manning never played in a playoff game and only had one non-losing season as Saints' signal-caller. His sons were pretty good, though.

The rest of my Saints hits (no bounty payments needed.) The Chrome Delhomme is a rookie card, though it's not labeled as such.

Favorite Saints player: Drew Brees

Favorite Pelicans player: Anthony Davis

Next tour stop: New York City


Thanks for reading!


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Two Box Break with Surprises Inside

It was not a good day for my two favorite sports teams. The Devils were eliminated in five games by the Tampa Bay Lightning, and the Red Sox were no-hit by Oakland's Sean Manaea. The Devils series (like much of the Stanley Cup Playoffs) was highly predictable, but until yesterday the Sox were an astounding 17-2 and led the league in runs scored and batting. Manaea is having a great season so far, but I don't think anyone expected that kind of performance against Boston's big bats. 


I haven't mentioned the Red Sox' historic start on my blog, for a few reasons. For one, I didn't want to jinx them. Two, the playoffs always divert my attention from baseball until such time that my favorite teams/players are eliminated. And three, I've been so backlogged with blog post ideas that I'm unable to keep up with current events. 

 
Zippy Zappy of the blog Torren' Up Cards is well-known to most of you but I just recently added him to my blogroll. He's got a great Blog Bat Around idea going, which prompts bloggers to build a baseball team from the autographed items in your collection. I'm still on the fence about participating. I'd prefer to hold back my best autos for the Sports Card Tour. Plus I'd have a hard time filling positions, especially catcher and bullpen. Unless ZZ can spare a Torrens auto for me ;-)


I do want to get some more Sports Card Tour stops out of the way this week. The longer I go without writing, the harder it is for me to get back on track. And there are so many new cards in my collection that I can't wait to get through the tour and get them all sorted.



Last week I received two boxes of cards in the mail - and four thank you posts. One of each was from Dennis (Too Many Verlanders/Manninghams) Though I did send him a four-card PWE I was certainly not expecting him to hit me back with a Medium Flat Rate box full of...magazines!

Dennis must have been doing some spring cleaning; there were 13 magazines with Red Sox on the cover, including 11 Beckett back issues. But that's not all! 

I kept reaching my hand into the box and pulling out fun surprises, like these oversized Dan Marino cards:

And two Pinnacle Inside cans (Marino and Nomar Garciaparra) which were carefully filled with stacks of cards..including Marino cards of various sizes:

Dennis stuffed 75 cards into those cans, hitting player PCs like Martin Brodeur, Steve Nash, Shaq, and another NBA great who I will mention in my next post.

There were Nomar cards inside the Nomar can.. along with another super cool item.

I've never seen these Topps Screen Plays before, which is a bummer since I was a film buff and aspiring screen play writer when they were released in 1997. The flip side of the tin looks more like a movie film canister. I'm assuming these were one-card tins; the Sportflics-like card above it was the only one inside.

The whole swap with Dennis originated a while back, when he offered up a duplicate of this Max Scherzer patch card. I'm a big fan of Immaculate cards, even unlicensed ones, so I claimed it. Should have known by now that Dennis would send much more than this one card.

Dennis, thanks again for another great trade! I keep trying to equal your generosity, only to be as overmatched as the Devils and Red Sox were yesterday.

The Large Flat Rate box I ordered from eBay contained over 4,000 cards. Most of them were baseball and hockey, which kind of figures because I had been hoping to beef up my basketball and football card collections. I'll get to the hockey cards another day, but here's a sampling of some of the baseball in the box:

This might be my favorite card of them all.. and it arrived right after Jackie Robinson day.

I didn't need any of the eight Heritage base cards in the box, but I needed both these inserts.

A fair amount of recent Topps sets were represented. I came up empty on the two I'm collecting (2015 and 2016) but there were some nice singles from 2012:

The seller promised autos and relics in the listing. He/she met the minimum requirement:

Sands would not have cracked my autographed card outfield. Not by a long shot.

I didn't buy this box for the hits anyhow. I bought it for the large chunks of junk wax:

My brother-in-law gave me his sealed factory set of 1991 Score - which means all 421 cards I found in this box are dupes. However I haven't actually looked at them in years. Even without any star power (aside from the great Bob Walk) I found some cards that were interesting to me. 

I tried to keep an exact breakdown of each card by set and year - which I won't bore you with. Once that was done I removed the overproduction era stuff I couldn't use and put them back in the box (the fate of those cards will be determined later.)

Then I extracted all the Red Sox and star players/HOFers:

This weekend I've been sorting all of the remaining cards by team. I plan to send these out for trades, and I'd like to do another 50/50 swap this spring. But I want to change it up.

Ummph...that woman.

via GIPHY

Anywho. Last year I had a lot of success swapping team lots for random stuff. Nearly everyone who claimed a team lot sent cards that fit my collection - even though I was willing to accept any 50 cards. Though I did get ripped off by a couple of readers I learned a lot about which bloggers are reliable (and generous) trade partners.

This time, I'm probably going to implement a "must send first" policy for anyone I don't recognize. If you're reading this, that almost certainly won't affect you. But it will have the added benefit of spacing out trade packages, so that I'm not mailing out a dozen at once.

I also had another idea, based on watching/reading Box Break posts. What if each 50/50 package included 25 cards from your chosen team and 25 random cards - either from a single different team (box break style) or an assortment of teams (repack style)? In either case I'd ask participants to claim a team and a number - which would be assigned to your "surprise" package. 

Does this sound interesting to any of you? I'd appreciate any feedback you have on how we can make the 50/50 swap even better this time around.

Thanks for reading!

 
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Cards Are My Antidepressant

In my last post I mentioned that I planned to take a few days off and recharge. I didn't plan on taking a whole week, but I was battling a busy schedule and a bout with depression. Someday I'll go into more detail about my thought patterns and experiences. Maybe.

This week is going to be a tough one as well, but I've got the next two days to reset and relax. The weather has been horrible all "spring", which had made it a lot more difficult to fight through the malaise. Fortunately the flash floods have subsided, the sun is peeking through the clouds... and I've got some new cards to keep me occupied.

Adam Sanders, author of the blog Cardboard Clubhouse (and a fellow Devils fan) sent me a bubble mailer that was so stuffed with 2015 Topps singles that he had to ship the mailer in a Priority Mail envelope! I'm still going through all 210 of the cards he sent me, but if this doesn't finish off my set I'll be shocked. Thanks for the trade Adam!

In addition to this I made an "eBay trade" earlier this month, selling three of my 1956 Topps dupes and using the cash to buy a box o' mystery.

This is what I sold:

And this is what I bought:

One of these arrived at my door this afternoon. (I took a pic on my ipad, but I cant figure out how to send pics to myself)

I actually had a dream about what would be inside, and I'm noting it because my subconscious is always fascinating to me. In the dream I pulled lots of non-descript base cards, an Eric Staal numbered parallel, a Joe Thornton parallel, and in the last row, a stack of PSA-graded vintage buried under...shampoo bottles?!? Which didn't spill on the cards but did crack some of the slabs. Not going to try and interpret that one, lol.

I'm so thrilled that these packages arrived today, when I really needed a mood booster. I've been trying hard to write something on this blog - specifically a Sports Card Tour post - but I had to let my stress and anxiety pass. Good writing or even pedestrian writing can't be forced. 

Green Bay is the next SCT stop, and while I should be extremely excited to write about my favorite football franchise it seems overwhelming at the moment. I can't seem to decide which of my 3,000 or so cards to choose, or what stories to tell. It will be posted soon though. 

And I'll be sure to show you all what's inside the Priority Mail box. Hopefully it won't be bottles of shampoo ;)


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