trade with too many grandersons

As most of you know the new blog Too Many Grandersons hit the blogo-spere about a week or so ago and made a big splash with his giveaway posts. On a side note it makes me feel a little guilty about having a sports blog for a little over a year and still not doing a giveaway.

Unfortunately I don't think many people want a bunch of 2009 Topps baseball or 2009 Allen and Ginter base cards. That seems to be majority of my "left over" cards so I probably won't be doing an official giveaway anytime soon. I do however need to do a cheap box break one of these days. I just need to find out what I want to break.


He sent out a Gridiron code which I redeemed for this beauty:

A 1973 Chip Glass. A pretty cool card. I now need to find out if the football cards ship with the baseball cards. I have a few cool cards that I want to get shipped to me. Out of curiosity I'll probably go ahead and get all of them sent over.

I think I've figured out what the card reminds me of and that's a Mustang emblem.


I found this one that is labeled 1967 Mustang. This seems right, but I recall some sort of emblem with a forked pennant look to it. If anybody has a clue(I don't) then please let me know.

In addition to the virtual card he sent over a bunch of "real" cards. Some cards that are just cool and some cards that help me with specific want lists.

I'm down to just 10 cards to finish up the 150 card set of 2009 Turkey Red. I'm so close that I can feel it! I've gone through periods of getting discouraged with this subset, but I'm thinking that pretty soon I'll get this one done.



Gary Sheffield charging the camera.



..and I knew that I've seen this one before. One of the 5 or so short prints that I pulled out of last years product was this really nice card of Rogers Hornsby. Sadly the Turkey Red pales in comparison to the actual photograph card.

This is the main problem with the retro cards; the designers have a tendency to make it so "authentic" looking that they make it too muddy looking or a fake soft focus effect. It's hard to explain, but in my original post I felt that the Hornsby SP was a good example of how sharp and colorful an old film print can be. The Heritage line is a good example of taking a good idea and over doing it to make it look vintage and the main photo itself suffers. I can see where a new crisp photo with an old school border might look ridiculous, but it seems like a happy medium could be found.
Don't get me wrong, despite my reservations I still like Heritage a lot. Also, don't think I'm complaining about getting Turkeys in the mail. I love all the retro stuff, I just think they do every thing with a broad brush and some cards suffer a little in the process.

Okay, enough whining about my cards, let's see what else Dennis sent over.

Here's a few more cards for a set I'm trying to finish:


the 1980 Topps Baseball set.


with a great trio of players.


Joe Morgan on the other side of a mic.


I love this set. There are a lot of nice sets over the years, but I still look at this one fondly from when I was a kid.

And lastly some nice Packers to round out the package.



I hope the Packers do well this year. My Sooners look horrible and the Mets are done so I need some team that can compete for championships this year.

A nice action shot of Ahman Green.

A card depicting Favre showing his touchdown face. He seems so decisive in this photo. I wonder what happened? Soon after this card was released he seemed to have lost his confidence in his decision making ability.

Anyway, nice cards. Thanks again Dennis!

Trade with Drew of Drew's Cards

In the blogging world there are at least two truths about posting: Almost all cards look better than the scans and almost everybody is behind in their trade posts. I have several packages needing to be reported on so in fairness I'll start with the one received first and work my way up.

Here is a trade that was completed at least a week ago, but I'm just now getting around to posting it. Drew of Drew's cards has already posted his half of the trade so that shows how much of a procrastinator that I am.

For me the sad truth about trade posts is that I have a hard time putting into words the excitement that I get when I receive a trade package in the mail. I know that a few of the cards are going to be included in the package, but it's the extra cards that bloggers always throw in that are a pleasant surprise. I'm a little vague when telling people what I collect. I don't want to be too much of a bother and honestly I really just like getting cards. So much the better if those cards happen to be off Packers, Mets, Dodgers and to a lesser degree Yankees.

So lets start off with the non-sports cards.


Shen Kou is a scientist who wrote Dream Pool Essays, which first described the compass. WGWS7 is of course a much needed card for the Worlds Greatest Wordsmiths mini set. This set has influenced me to get out and buy some of these books mentioned on the back of these cards. I'm more into older literature anyway so it isn't too much of a jump to search out older stuff. I guess I should be frank and mention that these books probably won't get bought/read until winter time. I hate the cold and I need good reading material in the dismal cold winter months. Hopefully by then I will have finished this set.


With this card I have both Holliday minis cards. I don't care so much about the different backs. I've got a nice start to a Matt Holliday collection and this will go nicely with the other 2010 minis.



Aaron Kampman chrome. Who doesn't love chrome? I do. It's great. Nice to get a card of a lineman in action. He's actually with the Jaguars now, but the card is still cool.

This is a great shot of Donald Driver against division foes Detroit Lions. Foe isn't much of a description. The Lions almost always seem to be last in the NFC North.

A.J. Hawk returning an interception against the Chiefs in 2007. I did a little sleuthing and the Pack only played in Kansas City one time in A.J.'s career and he had an interception in that game that he returned for ten yards. Or at least I think so based on a quick scan of his stats in 5 seasons. The game was played on Nov. 4th and the Packers won 33-22.



I haven't seen much of the Packers this preseason and I have yet to watch Ryan Grant play. He's one of my favorite RBs to watch.

I don't have any of these UD Spectrum cards. They're nice and shiny and look good juxtaposed together.


Finally the always photogenic Jose Reyes.

... and yes, even though I shouldn't have to say it, the cards look way better in person than they do in the scans. This was only a small sampling of the cards that Drew sent over.

The cards were much appreciated. Thanks for the cards Drew!

Thanks for reading!

Best painted cards i've seen!

I came across these cool NFL cards when I went to the flea market this last Saturday. I try to make it a point to check out the flea market whenever I can.



Anyway, I picked up four "packs" of different sets of cards. They were cheap enough so I was just happy to at least get the card that was pictured on the front.
In this pack of cards the dude included cards 1-24.

They're detailing the first 24 years of Super Bowls. I'm guessing this is a subset from a bigger NFL set of cards, but I'm not sure.

If so, I'm wondering if they are all painted like this or they just had this subset as a painted set?



If it is a whole NFL painted set I'm going to try and collect that. Or at least see if the guy comes back next week and buy up as much as I can find.


I really like these painted cards, much better than anything I've seen recently.


It's going to be hard for me not to show off every card front to back in this post.

This card reminds me of in the old days when a quarterback would drop back to pass they really dropped back about 10-15 yards behind the line of scrimmage. Even in college now the QBs usually do a one step, three step drop and get rid of the ball. Sometimes they scramble or get flushed out of the pocket, but nothing like before when it was a design of the play for a quarterback to run backwards before letting go of the ball. I'm no great historian of NFL or football in general, but I'm guessing that Bill Walsh and 49's were one of the first teams to have significant changes in their passing game as well as different theories in pass blocking. If anybody has conflicting ideas on this let me know.



I think he's the first Native American QB or player in the NFL. He played college ball at Stanford. Hopefully my guy Bradford will do well in the NFL next year. What am I saying? Jim Thorpe played pro ball and is Native American Indian. I think maybe he's the first American Indian Heisman winner.





Is it just me, or does it seem like teams made more consecutive trips to super bowls back then? Maybe it's parity or salary cap stuff, I don't know. It just seems like random teams have a better chance to be a part of the big game.



In my opinion this is the worst looking card of the bunch. Mostly because of the way Randy White is placed on the bottom of the card. Not so much his position but they way the background looks. I wish they could've blended the backgrounds together better instead of that blocky looking background. This is the only dual MVP card in the bunch.


I love the detail in his hands and facial features.


Their are actual game photos on the back of the cards.


Immaculate Reception?




Pretty cool detail in the helmet. I didn't realize the Dolphins logo had those little lines outside the ring. I think they should have the dolphin tail obscured by the ring so it looks like he's jumping out at us.






All these Cowboys cards are making me hungry! Especially the Chuck Howley card. Pizza Hut used to have these posters of Dallas Cowboy players that they were giving away as part of a set. They were painted in the same style as these cards on a canvas like paper stock.

I found some in the attic this summer and my dad gave them away. I'm not much of a Cowboys fan, so it didn't matter much to me. Hopefully on my next trip to my parents I can see if I have any more laying around.




I guess by now you can tell that I'm going to upload every card in the subset.



Sort of works, doesn't it?




I didn't realize they would be this nice. I only picked them up because of this Bart Starr card on the front.

Another benefit of the painted cards is that when chipping does occur it just looks like the background is unfinished. I still can't tell if this card is chipped on the left edge or if that is just from the painting.

Doesn't matter anyway, I love these cards. They're going right into the binder. All this for only 25 cents is a pretty good deal.

Score Football- 2009 52 pack

The other night I picked up a pack of Score Football. Not just any pack though, it was a 52 card jumbo pack. I was hoping to pull a Peterson or at least a few Packers or former OU players.

I wasn't able to do that, but at least I pulled a few players that I have heard of before.


The last time I saw these two guys they were running all over us in the Fiesta Bowl. Funny how all of last season flew by. When I saw these cards I was really surprised that they had played last year in the NFL.



Here's another guy that I thought was still at Rutgers.


According to the back of the package, the odds were Scorecard (400 cards), Glossy (400 cards), Gold Zone (400 cards), Red Zone (400 cards), End Zone (400 cards), Artist's Proof (400 cards), Inscriptions (400 cards), Hot Rookies (30 cards), Hot Rookies Glossy (30 cards), Hot rookies Scorecard (30 cards), Franchise (20 cards), Future Franchise (20 cards), Young Starts (20 Cards), and Score 1989 Reprints (10).


Whew that was a lot of typing. I looked up these stats only after ripping the pack open. Seems like a lot of different parallels to the base set which might be a little confusing to some people like myself. Also a few different inserts.





It sort of explains why some of the cards were shinier than others. I guess that's the difference in glossy and regular cards. I just thought that some of the cards were "newer" looking than others. This is a Glossy Rookie card I guess.



The inclusion of college stats on the back is nice. I like the layout of the card, even though all the diagonal lines took some getting used to.



I pulled a Hot Rookie cards of Beanie Wells who played for Ohio State and who is now a Arizona Cardinal.


The design of the back mirrors the front with a black and white version of the player with a little bio. I like the inclusion of the team logo on the upper left.


This A.J. Hawk card is one of the non-glossy ones and the only Packer I pulled, which sucks.



This is one of the "Young Stars" inserts. It looks a little like they went overboard with the HDR, but I like the way the player jumps out of the background.

I only pulled one of these, but I'm guessing that they are mostly of players entering their second year. From his bio it doesn't seem like he's much of a star, but I've never actually heard of him. Who knows, maybe he's a stud. The bio mentions him being hurt, but I would think that this guy:


... should be included as a "Young Star". I don't know much about these inserts, so maybe he's got his "Young Star" card and I just don't know it. According to the bio he was third in the NFL in rushing with 1,715 yards. I'm not sure, but I think A.D. and maybe L.T. would be the other two? I really like that it's a game shot too. It breaks up the monotony of the craziness of the borders and the insert cards.





Here is a comparison of the backs of the two cards. The Forte card is more straightforward with his rookie year stats on the back whereas the Torain card has a little bio. I'm guessing that's pretty much standard for all the inserts. I really like the look of the team logo in the lower third of the card back.

THe Franchise and Future Franchise cards really stood out to me mainly because of the player cut-outs against a crazy blue background.


I'm not familiar with Lee Evans. I thought Lee Evans was a 1950's starlet.


The Matt Cassel card was a really nice pull though. Hopefully he'll play as good in St. Louis and he did with the Patriots.

The crazy color splashes and diagonal lines took some getting used to, but I like the artwork and layout of the fronts and backs of the cards. I think it's cool that they mention the college team of the player on every card, even the veteran cards.

I could never get over the fact that the cards seem a little like they were meant for kids though. Their a little too crazy for me, but since they're so cheap I might have to pick up a few more jumbo packs or a box sometime. If I remember right the blaster was not a good deal in that it only included like 7 packs of 11 cards or something like that for $20.00. That seems a little steep for this product, especially when the jumbo's go for $4.97 for 52 cards. It'd be nice to pull a few of the players I like so I'm going to have to grab a few more of these.