You've Got Mail #65: Cardboard Collection

At one time or another, everyone has to do a card purge. That's what Colbey of Cardboard Connections is currently doing and he's offering up some quality pigskin cardboard currently to be claimed, no strings attached. While I'm not really a football collector and I'm trying to pare down my football collection, I couldn't resist some old school vintage cards. I laid claim to this lot and a few days later they landed in my mailbox. I've never heard of any of these guys so let's so through them one by one and see how their careers went down.

Bob Baumhower played his entire career for the Dolphins and was a 5-time pro-bowler and was a first team All-Pro in 1983. This is a 1978 Topps card and I really like the design with the team name down the side and the player name up top. Baumhower looks a bit disgusted or annoyed in the photo, not sure which, but perhaps he needs to go have a beer with Hank Hill and his buddies (and that's my obligatory Boomhower joke).

David Logan was a nose tackle for 9 years from 1979 to 1987 mostly with the Buccaneers and one season with the Packers. He was a three-time first team All-Pro and had 137 career fumble return yards. While I don't really consider 1987 Topps vintage, it's still a nice simple design. It's interesting that Topps didn't use the 87 baseball design for this, that would have been a really neat set.

Here's a 1973 Topps card featuring Mel Tom, who played 10 years for both the Eagles and the Bears. That's about all that can be said.

1975 is one of the more fun designs of 70s football with the color banner for the team name and the helmet featuring their position. Mike Tilleman was in the midst of his third season with the Falcons here, having joined them in 1973. He also played for the Vikings, Saints, and Oilers during a 10-year career.

1974 Wonder Bread

Paul Warfield is smiling. Heck, if I was featured on a Wonder Bread card, I'd be smiling too! At first I though this was any other standard run of the mill card from the 1970s but when I flipped it over, nope! It's from the 1974 Wonder Bread All-Star series! 1974 was Warfield's last season with the Dolphins, having accumulated 27 receptions for 536 receiving yards. He was also a member of the Pro Bowl that season (having also done so seven other times). All totaled, he played 13 years for both the Browns and the Dolphins.

By the way, here's the back of the card which I just couldn't resist showing off. I like the picture and instruction on showing the proper way on how to catch a pass. Also, note that the card number is in a slice of bread. How cool.

Anyway, thanks to Colbey for offering up these cards. I've definitely learned some new things about some otherwise forgotten players.

The Homecoming Parade

A sure sign that fall is upon the little town where I live is the return of high school football, with the biggest game of the year being the annual Homecoming game. I'm not sure how it is in other parts of the country, especially in big cities, but every year there is a huge parade down the main road out to the high school which is just outside the city limits. Hundreds of people come from everywhere in town and all the smaller surrounding villages and set up shop along the road, with some even tailgating, in preparation of the parade.

I personally didn't have to do any of that. All I had to do, along with my son and my wife, was to walk down a few feet to the corner and take in the parade. Living just off the main road in town definitely has its advantages sometimes. Anyway, the parade set off from the city park around 6:00 and reached my street roughly a half hour later. We could tell it was getting close as traffic has ceased and the faint sound of snare drums inched towards us. Then it came, marching steadily westward up the hill, past the IGA market, and through a small batch of trees and arrived with great fanfare. I was ready to document its arrival with my camera (aka iPhone) in hand.

As you can tell by these photos, this was the marching band and color guard. I considered trying out for the band once in middle school, but seeing as you had to pay for the instrument and the fact that I was (and still am) horrible at making music of any sort, I passed on it. My favorite shot here is the one I took from behind after the color guard had marched past. 

These are the floats made my each class. I'm not sure what the theme was and was confused as one of them said "Seven Mile High" on the back of it. The problem is that there is no Seven Mile High School, everyone from Seven Mile goes to Edgewood. Logistical deficiencies aside, the only float that made any sense to me is the one that says "Let the Knights Fall" as that's who we were playing in the game, the Northwest Knights

Nearly every high school sport was represented in the parade, from ladies volleyball and ladies golf, to the cross country team and football and cheerleading squads from varsity all the way down to the K-1 team.

Along with Trenton, every fire department and rescue squad in the school district was represented as well, including the rural ones from local townships.

Of course local businesses have to get involved too. Lake Bailee is a recreational park and gun range that hosts an annual haunted hayride. I've never gone to it as there is one in Springboro that is really good, but maybe one year I'll go down to check this one out

This photo should give you an idea of how long the parade was. Past the fire engines in the photo, it was just simply local businesses in cars. Not long after this we headed back home as my son was staring to get bored and it was nearly time to get settled in for the evening as I had work the next morning.

One last shot, this time of my son watching the parade.

The next day was the actual homecoming game itself, which Edgewood soundly won over Northwest 42-14. It's always a good day when the football team wins the homecoming game and it's even better when the whole area comes together to enjoy a community event like this.

You've Got Mail #26: Play at the Plate

To help kick off the #Supertrader festivities, the co-chair of this wacky little group, Brian from Play at the Plate, broke into a box of UD Ultimate Collection and shared his findings with the group. My stuff from the break showed up in a nice little PWE along with some friends to accompany them on the journey.

My haul from the UD Ultimate Collection break. This is my first experience with that particular brand at it's pretty cool. I'm pretty happy that I got a Homer Bailey RC autograph.

Some 2008 UD Documentary cards. In theory, this is a good idea and I give Upper Deck credit for thinking outside of the box but I can't imagine anyone putting the set together of who knows how many cards. No wonder this was a one and done product.

Brian also threw in a nice assortment of Bengals cards for my Bengals binder. The nice thing about doing this blog is that not only has my Reds collection ballooned to epic proportions, but my Bengals collection has seen a nice sizable bump as well.

Thanks to Brian for the great PWE and for busting the box of Ultimate Collection for the group!

Two Jumbo Packs of 2015 Panini Prestige Football

My wife got me some retail jumbo packs of 2015 Panini Prestige football as part of my Christmas haul. As good luck for the Bengals in their playoff game against the Steelers last night, I decided to crack into them. The Bengals had the lead with roughly 90 seconds left, however a lot of selfishness, cockiness, and general buffoonery ensued as the defense melted down and handed the game to the Steelers on a silver platter.

Let's not dwell on the negatives though ... we've got cards to look at! Two packs at 40 cards per pack with four green extra points parallels per pack and a mere $10 was spent on these. Let's dive in.

The highlights from the first pack:

Got eight cards here I'll keep of some top line quarterbacks and good wide receivers and running backs. The design on these is really clean with the full logo on the bottom and the names in silver.

Each pack has four rookies at the end of it. I'll be honest, I'm not familiar with any of these guys but wanted to show these as an example of what's included in each pack.

As promised, the four Extra Points parallel cards included in each pack. It appears to be two rookies and two veterans included in the parallels. We'll see if that holds up in the next pack.

A few extra cards I pulled out. There's an insert in every pack so the Gurley represents that. Also, I have to show off the lone Bengal from the pack.

That was pack one. How about pack two?

I have to start off the second pack with this:

This Marcus Mariota was the best pull of either pack. It appears to be some sort of silver foil insert but all I know is is that it's a really cool card of the second overall pick in the draft.

Some of the top guys I pulled in pack two. These are all going in my football binder.

Hey, double the Bengals in this pack! The Dalton is a really nice shot of him. It's too bad that he went down with a thumb injury this year but A.J. McCarron played pretty well in his place.

Again, the rookies from the pack. The only one I've heard of from this group is Duke Johnson, mainly because I'm a regular reader of Dawg Day Cards, the fine Cleveland Browns blog run by Angus.

Finally, the parallel cards from pack two. I know Petty and Garcon but the other two not sure of.

I've got the Falcons, Browns, and Broncos cards already earmarked for trade packages. Opening some football is something I don't really do often, especially because I'm really only into Bengals cards, but a little variety never hurt anyone.

Christmas Goodies!

I hope everyone had a good Christmas! My in-laws came and went, Christmas Eve was a blast with 14 people at the house and my uncle and I making and emergency run to the liquor store for Limoncello. Today was the day that my wife and I exchanged gifts to ourselves and judging by the above pictures, I'd say I made out pretty good.

First off, I got this box of 10th Anniversary Allen & Ginter from my family. It came along with two bonus packs. I'm really excited to crack into this soon.

My wife got me a bunch of packs and blasters from Target, including Allen & Ginter, WWE Heritage, two of the Topps Update holiday boxes, and two jumbo packs of Panini Prestige football.

With some of the money my in-laws gave us, I picked up this Panini Contenders blaster during a post-Christmas Target run.

Finally, to store all of my "good stuff" (autographs, relic cards, vintage, and stuff I just generally like), my wife got me this awesome Reds themed storage box.

I go back to work tomorrow and am working 8am-11pm for the next three days but I'll be breaking into this stuff soon. Stay tuned!