In protest of Bruce Chen getting the Royal's opening day start instead of Hochevar I'm going to post some pictures of football cards. I know it's probably card-blog sacrilege, but I don't care. I'm very sad that Hoch doesn't get to face-off against Jered Weaver on opening day for a second year in a row. Now that I've got that off my chest, on with the show.
The third card I've added to my Denver Broncos Super Bowl XXXII Roster Rookie Set (I may need to shorten that name in the future) is one of my man Eddy Mac's rookie cards.
Until I got this card, I never knew that I wore both of McCaffrey's jersey numbers in high school football. I wore 81 my freshman year and then 87 the rest of my high school career.
And since I'm showing off McCaffrey cards at the wrong time of year, I may as well unveil this monstrosity.
This card is one of the few times that I'm glad they don't make cards like they used to.
I took a mental health (and, what has turned into a body health) day-off from work today, which means that I had the bubble mailers out of the mailbox before the mail lady was finished with our block (which is really quick because there are only two houses and two churches on our side of the block).
And wouldn't you know it, but my first additions to my NFL Team Logo Manupatches set arrived. It seems very fitting that they would arrive a day after the Super Bowl.
I know that not as many people actively collect football cards, but if anyone has any NFL Team Logo Manupatches that they'd like to trade (especially the Broncos), let me know.
Early this summer, San Jose Fuji of the Chronicles of Fuji blog asked a simple question, Who Wants Some Cards? and proceeded to hold one of the most interesting contests I've ever entered.
Over the course of June and July, Fuji asked for opinions, stories, predictions, and comments. With a combination of persistence and grit, I amassed enough points to earn one of the many great prizes. I decided to choose the base set of 2010 Panini Threads Football cards since Play at the Plate grabbed up my first choice of 1990s football parallels/inserts (I thought there might be some decent mustaches in that collection).
I received my prize package in the mail today and I was very pleased with my choice. These are some really nice looking cards and I picked out some of my favorites to show off.
The Broncos were represented in the set with four cards. I was kinda bummed that there wasn't at least one defensive Bronco in the set. No love for Elvis Dumervil or Champ Bailey or Brian Dawkins? Bummer for me.
I do like the uniformly horizontal layout of the set. It is a nice change of pace from the traditional vertical set-up and is way better than the annoying mixture of vertical and horizontal cards. And I'm always a fan of full-bleed photography.
Thanks a bunch to Fuji for the great contest and the great prize! I'm looking forward to next year's summer event.
My wife's computer is "in the shop" until a new battery charger arrives later this week, which means she's using my computer during the day to study for her bar exam. Therefore, I'm doing some late night blogging.
I was looking through some of my binders and thought I'd do a few Fave Fives of some of my Colorado sports card collections over the next week or so, with some purchases and trades sprinkled in as they arrive in the mail.
Today's Fave Five is going to feature my favorite football player of all time: Ed McCaffrey. I've previously explained my love for Eddy Mac and, of the 43 McCaffrey cards I own, these are my Fave Five.
FIVE: Concentration
FOUR: Gallery Portrait
THREE: Mile High Salute
TWO: Intensity
ONE: Up in the Air
I'd eventually like to add a McCaffrey autograph, jersey relice, and rookie card to my collection, especially if anyone has one they'd like to trade away. If that someone is you, please let me know.
Avid Rockies collector Hiflew of Cards from the Quarry sent me a house warming package in the mail and it was quite the doozy.
I love receiving packages from Hiflew because he usually includes a pile of his Rockies duplicates. My Rockies collection has easily doubled thanks to his generosity. This package was no exception. He sent me a 200-count box full of cards and probably half of them were Rockies cards. Here are some of the highlights.
There were some seriously sweet Rockies cards that I was more than happy to add to my Rockies binder.
And, as usual, he touched on many more of my personal collections, including some Royals,
some fantastic early-90s Broncos,
and, most unexpectedly, a manupatch letter that I'll add to my Alphabet Set.
Finally, there were a handful of mustache cards that I'll be adding to my Mustache Set, including one of the bushiest soup strainers that I've encountered.
Thanks again to Hiflew for the fantastic care package! It's guys like you that make the card collecting community a great place.
If you are not currently trading with Jeff from My Sports and Sports Cards you are really missing out. He has a vast array of trade material and the packages he sends have always been top notch.
Just this week, Jeff sent me an email letting me know he had shipped a package to me. A day or two later, I received some great cards that hit upon three of my personal collections.
The card I was probably the most happy to see was this 2011 Gypsy Queen Dexter Fowler card.
When I would see scans of this card, I thought it was a bit too busy for my taste. The background seemed to wash out the image of Dexter. But in hand, it is much more appealing to the eye. And my wife loves the design of these cards. Maybe I'll be able to convince her to bust a box of them with me once my self-imposed card-buying fast is over.
Also, I am so glad I got this card in a trade and didn't buy it on eBay. The more people I meet in via my blog, the more I realize that someone will have plenty of base cards of my players that they'll be more than happy to trade to me if I'm patient enough.
Jeff also included a good portion of the Royals team set from GQ, as well as a #/299 Billy Butler. And who woulda thought that, of the guys in the bottom row of this scan, Gordon might be having the best year of the bunch? (Then again, I could be wrong and Greinke might be killing it after he came back from his injury. I don't really pay much attention to teams other than the Rocks and Royals -- which woulda been a good blog name.)
And, were it not for my trades with Jeff, my Broncos binder would be weak-sauce right now.
This time he sent along a serial numbered Elway (my first) and enough modern Donkeys to fill a page.
Thanks again Jeff for some great cards for my personal collection. I'm working on rounding up a pile of cards to help you with your White Sox collection and should have them in the mail later this week.
A couple of months ago I won a Tim Tebow redemption code from the Cardboard Collections blog. I entered in the redemption code and then, as the months passed by while Topps processed my redemption, I forgot about the card.
So I was pleasantly surprised to find an unexpected envelope in my mailbox last week. Inside I found this card.
Thanks to Colbey for running the truly simple contest and for hooking me up with a free card. It'll make a great addition to my Denver Bronco binder.
The Colorado Collection is my attempt to get an autograph card of athletes born and/or raised in Colorado.
Today's addition to the Colorado Collection is Vincent Jackson. Born in Colorado Springs, Vincent attended Wakefield High School where he earned All-State honorable mention honors in football his senior year.
After high school, Vincent attended the University of Northern Colorado, one of the few schools to recruit him, where, according to his Wikipedia page, he
"earned All American Honors as a punt returner, scoring the first time he ever touched a ball on a punt return against Adams State College (CO). He rewrote the record books on the way to becoming Northern Colorado's all-time leader in receptions, receiving yards (game & season), KR yards, PR yards, receiving touchdowns. His senior season was highlighted by a 13-catch 249-yard, 3-touchdown effort against Florida Atlantic"
I was excited to add the following Vincent Jackson card because it has him in his UNC Bear's uniform and has a UNC logo on the front of the card. My sister is an alumnus of the University of Northern Colorado and many of my high school friends attended this school.
Jackson was drafted in the second round of the 2005 draft by the San Diego Chargers.
Vincent's NFL career has had it's highs (selected to the 2009 ProBowl) and it's highs (suspended for three games in 2010 for violating the league's substance abuse policy).
I recently traded cards with Tom who writes at Angels, In Order. I sent him an assortment of Angels cards, and in return, I received cards from three different sports.
First up are a dozen basketball cards. I'm pumped he included the Skybox Logoman card. It's one of those "no number" cards that I had no idea existed. It'll be a great addition to my 1990-91 Skybox set.
The Stadium Club "Member's Choice" Shaq card is awesome. I know I had this card at one point during the 90s, but traded/sold/lost it during my "Time Away from Collecting". And you can't go wrong with mid-90s Skybox insert cards.
In the baseball portion of the trade package, I found seven Royals and one Rockies cards.
The Royals cards are from the 2003 MLB Showdown card game. The backs of the cards all look like this:
While the opposite side has the player pictures and stats.
With these cards, I'd say I ended up with ....(slowly puts on sunglasses)...... a "Royal flush".
YYYYEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!
The one Rockies card in the package is a beauty. I present Todd Helton.
Finally, the piece de resistance of the trade would be these Denver Broncos cards. My Broncos collection is actually fairly sad considering they are the professional sports team I've loved the longest.
With these cards, my Terrell Davis collection just quadrupled and my Elway collection doubled.
As for the Grieses, while he wasn't my favorite Bronco, I always felt that he was never given a fair shake from Broncos fans, and, if this card is any indication, the people at Fleer weren't a fan either.
Ouch man. Why not just have a picture of him standing on the sideline, sans-helmet, holding a clip board?
When I was growing up in the 80s and 90s, I only rooted for one local (i.e. in my state) professional sports team, the Denver Broncos.
Colorado is Broncos country and I was raised on the Orange Crush from an early age. When I played football in my yard with the neighbor kids, I would pretend to be John Elway passing to the Three Amigos on offense and I was always Karl Mecklenburg when it was my turn to play defense.
By the time I got to high school, the Broncos had ditched their Orange Crush uniforms and had finally surrounded Elway with the talent he needed to win his first Super Bowl. While Terrel Davis, Bill Romanowski, Rod Smith, Steve Atwater, Shannon Sharpe, and Elway were the popular players of this time, Ed McCaffrey was the player I looked up to and attempted to emulate.
Eddy was everything I wanted to be on the football field. He was tough, gritty, scrappy, and fast. I was skinny, slow, and did not enjoy being tackled or hit, which was not the ideal skill set for football. But, I did the best I could and I contend I looked just as cool wearing 87 on my jersey as Ed.
To make matters worse (or maybe better, depending on how you look at it) our football team was a rushing team. During my high school career, my classmate Wade Sumpter rushed for 6441 yards (5th all-time in the state) on 723 attempts (7th all-time) and scored 110 touchdowns (3rd all-time) for 676 points (3rd all-time). You don't reach those numbers by passing often.
I spent my freshman, sophomore, and junior years playing on the JV team. I just wasn't big enough, fast enough, or tough enough to play at the varsity level. But during my senior year, after a few players ahead of me on the depth chart got injured, I became a starter on the varsity team. I ended up being a decent tight end (I was too slow to play flanker, so they hid me on the line) and made the All-Conference team.
Ed McCaffrey was a team player and did what was necessary for his team to win. He wasn't the star of the team, but without him, the Broncos may not have won back-to-back Super Bowls.
Unfortunately I wasn't collecting cards while Ed was an active player in the League, so here are some cards I picked up at my LCS a while back.
BONUS VIDEO of one of the greatest crack-back blocks in NFL history. Ed lays-out a Green Bay defender and completes it with a finger-point (and please excuse the accompanying music).
