Football Frankenset - July 2019 Pickups

029 - 1998 Skybox Premium - Dwayne Rudd

There have been some tough choices so far, this was not one of them, I really doubt anything will displace Dwayne Rudd with an actual Vikings helmet.

What the Heck is going on with Panini Unparalleled?

Most of my Football card news comes from searching for "2016 Redskins" on the old popular auction site and comc, so I had never heard of Panini Unparalleled until a search come up with the monstrosity above. First off, it took me a while to find Bruce Smith, tucked away in the top left like a bad "Where's Waldo". Not really the best use of space on this card, and the whole set is pretty much like that, a small cropped photo among an expense of refractory, foily insanity.

Custom Card: 2013 Magic Jon Ryan

Congratulations to Jon Ryan, the first Saskatchewan native to be a part of a  Super Bowl Championship team. Ryan played his college ball in his hometown of Regina as a Receiver/Punter/Kicker, where he still holds the record for longest touchdown reception at 109 yards. After spending two seasons in the CFL, and being named a CFL All-Star in 2005, Ryan signed with the Packers in 2006 and in 2008 went to the Seahawks. Despite playing in 127 career NFL games, he still does not have a football card in a NFL set. It was pretty lucky to find such a good photo of a punter, mixed with a retro style design in Topps Magic, this is easily one of my favorite customs.

Football Mailday

My football cards to post pile has gotten big enough to go through so it's time to show some off before the Super Bowl weekend.

A card I have always wanted, a 2nd year card of Hall of Famer and NFL record holder for most career interceptions, Paul Krause. I am not a huge graded card guy, so the PSA 6 doesn't bother me, I have just always though this was a good looking card and finding an encapsulated one for a decent price is a nice addition to the Redskins collection.

Acetate Appreciation: 2013 Momentum NFL Clear Cut

Panini seems to have embraced acetate this season with inserts in the Prestige product and now clear parallels of the entire Momentum set. These have been a little out of my price range and have been slow in showing up so I cheated by stealing some scans off the Bay. The "Clear Cut" checklist is the same as the base set, but the card design and photos are different. From first glance these cards are very nice, I love the faded logo behind the player photo and the design is nice and simple, with the base "non-rookie" cards being the better of the two in my eyes. The rookie design is very similar to the 1999 Playoff Momentum SSD acetate set that I will be posting about next week. I will definitely be trying to track some of these down.

NFL Zistle Trade

A football themed post for Super Bowl weekend featuring a trade with zistle.com user BengalsFan1. Going his way were all of my Bengals cards, around 50 of so, for some Redskins. Anthony Montgomery has very few cards so this auto checks him off the "One of every Redskin" wantlist. As much as I would love to forget the Rex Grossman era, I needed at least one for the PC, as well as getting my first Pierre Garcon cards. You don't see many cards of o-lineman so the Trent Williams rookie was nice and Chris Horton was a personal favorite who went from NFC Defensive Player of the Week and NFL Defensive Rookie of the Month as a rookie in 2008 to being out of the league in 2011. Finished off by some 2012 Prestige needs including a SP rookie and one baseball card with a 1989 Fleer Ron Hassey, the only player to catch two perfect games.

Custom Card: 1974 Topps Art Monk

A "Card the Never Was" style custom with Hall of Famer Art Monk who spent the last 3 games of 1995 with the Eagles before retiring. This seemed fairly appropriate with the Redskins playing in Philadelphia this weekend with Washington having a chance to take the NFC East with two more wins.

Monk was my favorite player as a kid and seeing him in an Eagles jersey is still hard and even weirder with him wearing #85. Over his 3 games with the Eagles, Monk caught 6 passes bringing his career totals to 940 receptions with 12,721 yards and 68 touchdowns. He was finally elected to the Hall of Fame in 2008 along with team mate Darrell Green in 2008.

Custom Card: 1982 Topps NFL Rick Walker

My first custom football card, Rick "Doc" Walker played in 119 career NFL games, 88 of those with the Redskins and never received a card in any official NFL product. A member of the 1982 Super Bowl XVII Championship team, set career highs with 17 catches, 168 yards and 2 touchdowns in 1983. Made his mark along with Don Warren as blocking Tight Ends in Joe Gibbs power running game and is an member of the Hogs.  Probably better known to Redskins fans for his broadcast career working as the Redskins radio sideline reporter among other Redskins related broadcasts.

Trade with BA Benny

In response to my 2011 Gypsy Queen want list going up the fine fellow behind BA Benny's Baseball Card Buffet contacted me about a trade, going his way was some set needs and assorted teams he collects. Coming back was around 50 Gypsy Queens I needed including some much needed short prints. He also threw in some Rockies I didn't have with two Chris Nelson's I needed for the "One of every Rockies" Collection and Seattle Seahawks starting QB Russell Wilson from when he was in the Rockies farm system. Finished out by a pile of Redskins cards, none of which I already had, which is impressive because I have around 1,500 different 'Skins cards. A small sampling of cards below. As always thanks for the great trade.

Trip to the LCS: 2012 Prestige Football

This weekend I made a very rare trip to the local card shop, and I use the term local loosely. The nearest card shop is about 150 km (about 100 miles) of Saskatchewan prairie away, so I get most things through mail order. I needed some card boxes for storage and to aid in an upcoming move so I stopped in while I was in the big city. Being a baseball collector in a hockey obsessed country is not easy, the Walmart only has base Topps blasters and hanger packs and the LCS had packs of 2012 Topps series 1 & 2 as well as a box of 2012 Bowman, both sets I am not collecting. I asked if they got any Gypsy Queen this year and the guy asked if it was even out yet. I can't blame the guy, he has to bring in what sells and baseball doesn't sell here. There was something that caught my eye and that was 2012 Prestige football. I try and stick to baseball just to stay in my budget, but I felt like a douche just buying supplies so I picked up 5 packs of Prestige just to feel out the product (as well as another purchase I am saving until tomorrow). I was blown away at how nice the design was and have covered it before on here with some custom baseball designs. Here is what I pulled.

RG3 Era Officially Begins

Well, we got him, Shanahan has his "franchise" quarterback to groom in an attempt to save his reputation and Danny Snyder has his big off season splash that will sell more jerseys. Topps and Panini took the opportunity to pimp their products showing off the NFL's newest stars in the making. I still love the Prestige design, and like the Topps design, I just wish the Burgundy and Gold on the bottom was switched with the gold on the bottom. I am actually surprised how little I find myself caring about this, this seems a lot like a team jumping on the Cam Newton bandwagon after one season and trying to find one of their own. I do hope Griffin leads the 'Skins back to glory, but we have been through this before. After going through Heath Shuler, Desmond Howard, Patrick Ramsey, Jason Campbell, Jeff George, Brandon Lloyd, Adam Archuleta, Albert Haynesworth and the countless other personnel mistakes I have a reason to be a little jaded.

Mailday: 1977 Topps Mexican Frank Grant

A one card mailday bring me closer to completing probably my longest running project, the 1977 Topps Mexican Redskins team set. This is a crazy set to collect cards from and this Frank Grant gives me 17 of the 24 Redskins cards. One of the ones I need is the Eddie Brown, which is part of the "Dirty Dozen" and runs around $250. The 1977 Mexican set features the same 528 cards with the same pictures as the standard American set, but all the text is in Spanish and for the Redskins the team name is in red instead of white. The cards were issued in two card packs with gum, so many of the cards have gum stains and the sheets were cut utilizing a perforated system that left remnants of the perforations on the card edges.

There is a great website at www.toppsmexican.com that is loaded with information.

What's Your Best Cards?: Football Edition

I was talking to a friend who is getting his son into collecting and he asked me what my best card was. This got me thinking as I really pay no attention to card values other than what I am will to pay for the cards I want. As a team collector I am usually after team sets and commons more than high value cards, so I don't really have any huge value cards. This led me to go through some boxes trying to decide what my "best" cards were. Here is what I came up with for my best football card, after passing through my small  1977 Topps Mexican collection, I stumbled on 2004 Playoff Prime Signatures Sean Taylor /Chris Cooley . This card could have been a lot better, but Sean Taylor never signed any cards for card companies, but as a Cooley fan having his signature is nice. It's serial numbered out of 199 and is a nice thick card with the auto inside the card similar to a relic. I also found 2 Sean Taylor relics, one I forgot I even had and a super super Certified Materials numbered 21/25. So a simple question led to a nice browse through my collection, if anyone else reads this and wants to share, "What's your best cards?"

Custom Prestige Baseball (This is NOT a Tebow Post)

Panini has been pimping it upcoming Prestige Football line by releasing photoshops of Tim Tebow and Peyton Manning in their new jerseys. While I could care less about Tim Tebow or the AFC in general, the thing that jumped out at me was how nice these cards looked. With Topps going into another year of baseball cards with no real competition these are the kind of sets that we are missing out on. Instead we get the "surfboard" base set, Heritage is fine but nothing new or exciting and another set of Allen & Ginter that looks just like the past 5 years of A&G. This design reminds more of something that Score would do and in my eyes it blows away anything Topps has done in recent memory. I spent a better part of the afternoon making a baseball template for this design, and upon completion, I would definitely chase a set of 2012 Prestige Baseball.

Needed Nine (Want List Updated)

With my recent Sportlots.com orders my most wanted list has changed, I have updated the original post to reflect what I now have and have come up with a few more to add to the list

Acquired August 2012

Ed Bahr 1984 TCMA Playball 1946 #40
I know very little about this set, but it features the only card of Ed Bahr. I think the scan shows the mini version of the set. Bahr was born in Rouleau, Saskatchewan, home of the filming for the show "Corner Gas". He is one of six players to be born in Saskatchewan and make the major leagues, pitching in 46 games over the 1946 and 47 seasons. He did serve in the U.S. military so it doesn't look like his family stayed in Canada long after he was born.

Redskins trying to win Offseason again

I was away all weekend and missed all the Redskins trade stuff until this morning. I looks like the Colts will take Andrew Luck and the Redskins traded up to probably pick Heisman Trophy winner Robert Griffin III. It looks like another stupid Redskins making a off season splash, but looking closer, it might not be that bad. They only lose 2 first round picks and a second and the 2014 first rounder is so far away it is only valued as a 3rd this year going by the draft value chart. My worry is that this reeks of Shanahan trying something desperate to keep his job and this buys him a few years to develop RG3. As a longtime Skins fan, I have become pretty pessimistic on the moves they make, but this might be the one that turns the franchise around, or he could just be another Heath Shuler or Desmond Howard any one one of a long line of busts and failures.

Mailday: Sportlots Part 2

My final package from Sportlots.com helping to widdle down the wantlist. A sweet Charlie O'Brien featuring his hockey style mask. I wish guys would get a little more imaginative with the artwork on these like they do in hockey. Most of the rest were Rockies including Bubba Carpenter and Garvin Alston from the most wanted list, a silver Topps Total Alfredo Amezaga, a Blue 2012 Pomeranz, a nice catcher card of Joe Girardi and a Zero year card of Tony Eusebio who never played a regular season game for Colorado. Finished up by a couple Redskins from the last Super Bowl years, before Dan Snyder ruined the organization and turned the team into a laughing stock. The Williams is from the oversized Gameday set.

CotD: 2006 Heritage Sean Taylor #80

Sunday will mark four years since Sean Taylor's death. Taylor was my favorite player, someone who gave hope to an organization that has had little hope since Dan Snyder took over. He had everything, size speed and natural instincts for the ball, and there is no reason not to think had he stayed healthy, that Taylor would have been a Hall of Fame player, and one the greatest to play the safety position. I remember following him from the Hall of Fame game in 2004 in which he intercepted two passes, returning one for a touchdown in his pro debut. As a Redskins fan it was exciting to his progression from a rookie having to earn his playing time under Joe Gibbs to a potential star earning his first Pro-Bowl invite in 2006. The 2007 season is when this really started to come together for Taylor and he was playing at an Defensive MVP level. Then tragedy struck and he was shot in his home during a home invasion and died in hospital the next day. I think one of the reasons we love sports is that it is an escape from real life, but this is one of those times when real life reminds you its always there. I still remember the 10 man defense to open the Buffalo game, leaving Taylor's safety spot empty to begin the game. Unfortunately the Redskins are on the road Sunday, but I hope whoever is covering the game with make some mention to remember #21.