P-Town Football Finale!

It's time to take that final dive into that big box of goodies that came from P-Town of Waiting Til Next Year blog.

It's been a wonderful journey full of fun items along the way.

Today we take a fun trip in time with football.

Memories come in full burst when I see Topps football. I know many of you complain about Topps baseball, but, when you take a look back at something you can't have anymore such as Topps football, it makes you appreciate having the baseball opportunity. Exclusive licenses are the worst thing, YES THE WORST THING, in this hobby. I would take a redemption card in every box if I could have companies with multiple licenses to give us variety. And I won't take that statement back.

I love the sideburns for Mr.Cook. You don't see those today either.

My man Walter! I have always been a Sweetness fan. Happy to add any of his cards when I can. I really want his rookie. Hopefully someday.

Normally a card without action photo bugs me, but this '69 Topps is so bright and colorful that how can you complain.

Steve Largent. One of the Seahawk greats. I really like the Seahawks throwbacks more than today.

John Jefferson. Gotta love a good sideline shot sometimes. I actually like the design on this set.

Bo doing some Ballet. Pro Set put out some great looking photographed cards.

I don't mind early Fleer too much, unless it's 91 baseball. That's just terrible.

Randall Cunningham was a very versatile QB. Played on a few teams but I will always recognize him as an Eagle.

Jack Concannon 1965 Philadelphia Philly Eagles QB. This is a sweet card.

 

Jaws.

Jaws 2.

 

Sorry. No Jaws 3.

A big thanks goes out P-Town for the awesome box. Much appreciated. I still have some stuff set aside for you to go PWE when I buy some more stamps.

The P-Town Yanks

It's time to go back into that big box of goodies that came from P-Town of Waiting Til Next Year blog.

The next two days I will wrap up the cards I found in the box. I do have other mail days I really need to post, but P-Town's is the longest waiting one at this point. So I think it's best to call it a wrap.

Today, was the last part of his card giveaway I claimed. The Yankees. Like I said in an earlier in this series, I was afraid to find way too many double Yanks so I at first hesitated at claiming it. But, then gave in.

I am glad I did.

There were obviously some dupes in the group, but not as many as I thought. There were actually quite a few great cards I added to my Yankee PC.

Starting out with these cards. My Yankees PC strength is everything from 85-now including some of the Yankees past. These cards fall in that section but are new. Someday I hope to add more vintage to that PC especially of guys like these.

I do have this Brien Taylor. I just posted it as a constant reminder of some poor Yankee moves over the years.

Neon Deion rookies.

  

My man Bernie! A couple of rookie adds.

I do have this card as well, but I just like the design and appeal of it. I don't mind owning a second copy especially since this one is in better shape than my previous one.

Buck looks lock and loaded to manage some players.

Some new Don's for the second biggest PC in my Yankee collection.

I fell in love with this Cletis as soon as I saw it. Really cool.

Here are a couple of standout players. Yes, pun intended.

DJ and Bernie. Actually didn't have these. Very impressive.

Metal rocks. I especially liked this design with the city backgrounds. One of my favorite 90 product lines.

Showing this off just cause

I am not sure if I missed the boat on having Yankees from this Topps flagship, but they are all new.

including DJ

And Mr. Torre. THE GREATEST MANAGER OF ALL TIME. Yes, I will say that loud and proud.

And some older Yanks to help add to that PC. I like the Nettles.

 

Well, there you have it for the Yanks portion of my P-Town mail day. The finale we will be heading to the gridiron and it will be a worthy trip so stay tuned.

Dribbling Back At Some Memories

It's time to go back into that big box of goodies that came from P-Town of Waiting Til Next Year blog.

Today we take a glance at some NBA cards that come from an era I loved the game. I never missed a game on TV. Well, the only option I had was NBC as our antenna didn't pick up the big channels and my parents couldn't afford cable. So I would go out in the middle of winter while my father sat inside watching the TV to make sure I hand turned the frozen metal in ground antenna til the channel was clear or close to it. I didn't mind being the one going out to do that as I didn't want to miss my basketball games.

Now I have satellite and skip by any games that are on. This era of the NBA seems greedy, the players bounce around from team to team, same teams win, and the game has just changed. Terrible.

The group of NBA cards had a good amount of cards from 1992-1993 Topps. I didn't post them all and only did the important ones.

It felt like every rookie card was in there except the biggie, Shaq. But these will still go well in my NBA rookie binder

 

Here were some of the bigger names I recognized from the group.

There was even some gold parallels of a couple of rookies along with some vets in the 92-93 Topps mix,

 

And this guy who we all know.

Speaking of rookies, here are a couple more I found in the box.

There was even this guy in the box as well. Love me some Wilt.

And then I stumbled across a winning coach with some amazing hair...

And finally dug these out to post on my 90's Twitter page. There were a few reminders in P-Towns box of why we need Upper Deck to be more apart of our hobby again.

These Collector Choice cards I grew up collecting. It was an affordable fun product. The base cards always caught my eye as a youngin' because of the photography for some of my favorite players.

 

Some good NBA adds here for my PC or simply just discussing material that has attached memories. Sometimes the memories are what mean most to me.

Coached

So far my July posts have been a lot of mail day ones.

That will have to be a common thing for this month.

Some of the mail days this month were big and some were small but were all equally great and appreciated.

One of the bigger ones came from P-Town of Waiting Til Next Year blog. As I previously mentioned, there was so much in that mail day, that a breakdown had to happen as it wouldn't all fit into one post. Not even close.

Today we look at a few coach cards I found for a coach PC I don't speak much about. I mostly look for the guys I knew growing up but will add some of the newer coaches of today when cards are made of them. It's definitely becoming a less common thing with smaller checklist sets-most sets seem to have 100 veterans and 50 rookies-and more autograph or material content. It's probably why I don't set collect anymore. As a team collector, I want the team. Give me that head coach, top olineman, punter, kicker, and full back. I want em!

Since those don't exist much, let's take a look at a few I found in a time period where they did.

Marv Levy. I best remember him coaching the Bills through most of the 90's. He took them to 4 straight AFC Championships but couldn't ever win the big one.

Jerry Sloan was an incredible coach for the Utah Jazz. Another coach like Levy however that went to the big game, but couldn't pull off a win. Of course when you face the games greatest player in MJ, that task became a 100 times harder.

Tom Landry on the other hand, big time winner. Landry won two Super Bowl titles (VI, XII), five NFC titles, and 13 Divisional titles. He holds the NFL record for longest tenure with one team.

Another Super Bowl Dallas Cowboy champion coach was Jimmy Johnson. He won two titles with the team as well with the big trio of Aikman, Smith and Irvin and now I watch him on the NFL Fox pregame show. One of the best NFL pregame shows out there.

And finally, Joe Gibbs. He won three Super Bowls all with the Redskins. He did so well that Washington brought him out of retirement in 2004 in hopes he could replicate his performance. Well, I think Joe forgot how much the game changed as he struggled two out of four years and the other two he suffered early playoff exits. But, he still will always be remembered as one of the coaching greats.

 

I also failed to mention he is a NASCAR team owner. Guy has always kept himself busy. He at one time employed one of my favorite racers in Tony Stewart where Stewart won two championships.

I keep wishing there was at least one product for each sport that incorporated coaches. I know Panini did with it's Prizm basketball and that was cool. But, baseball and football need their love soon to. Hopefully one of the companies will read this and jump on it. I am sure I am not alone in wanting at least one expanded product.

Four Sports Turn To Three

Well, here we go.

I have decided to make a few changes on here again. Gone are the segments. I just don't know what it is about them, I just don't like sticking to them and feeling limited on what I am writing about. At least if I do reviews and mail days I can let things flow freely and that's the way I feel most comfortable to write. It also gives me more room to write unlike the segments for Sets Of My Childhood which simply was a few paragraphs. I do still plan on chasing those sets still and you can find all of my needs under the Sets Of My Childhood needs tab but not previewing them anymore on here unless they are apart of a mail day.

Some other changes you may have noticed is updated tabs and a cleaner interface. Another change to come still is a new blog header. I am not sure if I will use the lettermen still to build it or start from scratch.  But I felt some mid-season changes were needed.

Enough with me rambling on about change, lets get to the box of goods that P-Town of Waiting Til Next Year blog sent me.

The cards today will be apart of an ongoing showcase of his big card dump off where he had multiple boxes of cards to let go. Originally he had set aside just the non baseball stuff for me, but in one of his posts mentioned that maybe I would go for more. I at first questioned grabbing the Yankees, but thought I would get a bunch of doubles being from the era there were. As he posted that nobody had yet claimed the Yanks almost a week later, I felt it was a sign that they were still available for me to claim. So I did. I mean, it was free cards.

So not much longer after the claim, a monster of a box arrived full of a variety of cards from multiple sports.

Today I take a look at some Classic Four Sport Cards from 1992. I think these pre-draft cards are a fun set to look at and even have some big names within. There were 325 cards in the set to collect and boxes right now are pretty cheap for $15 each.

He sent a good 800ct box full so I will roughly just break down some of my favorites I found.

Phil Nevin was never really a big name, but he was a decent player who bounced around many organizations but I felt like I knew him most for the Tigers. Currently however, he wears pinstripes as the Yanks third base coach.

Jason Roidambi, sorry you all know how I feel about PED players, was a powerful hitter but had his reasons for being that. I liked his time with the Yankees but that * still stands over him in my opinion. Jason did manage 440 home runs for his career.

Jon Lieber. Bet you haven't heard that name in some time. But, he was a decent pitcher who spread himself across many organizations but best known to me as a Cub despite his one season in pinstripes. Lieber was 131-124 in his career with a 4.27 ERA.

THE CAP! Love the photograph on these and not at all complaining about owning two of Derek's pre-draft rookies.

And we end baseball with a look at the Yankees greatest draft pick of all time.....(yes that's sarcasm). This card is only featured because the photo I found interesting in the set as most are action packed ones.

We take a look at some basketball player highlights next.

Lonzo. Man he added to the Knicks and Heat rivalry of the late 90's . Thats when the NBA was at its beest. Now it's just full of crybabies, three good teams and a bunch of overpaid players.

Christian Laettner will be best known for his time at Duke and his shot against Kentucky jn the 1992 Regional Final. Even though he did spend 13 years in the NBA. Go Duke!

Dikembe is not only a fun name to say, but he was a well respected player in the NBA. Especially on defense where he dominated. He was easily one of the best shotblockers and defensive rebounders in the game's history.

Latrell was a great player but mostly known for his controversy on and off the court which continues today. He usually is known for not choking on his shots, just choking his coach.In 1997, he had an incident in which he choked coach P. J. Carlesimo with his time with Golden State. He actually helped lead the Knicks to the NBA Finals against the Spurs in which they lost. This was the last time I watched an NBA game or series as the Knicks downfall started afterwards and only got uglier.

I didn't see a lot of highlights in hockey, so this four sport is turning to three as we end with my favorite sport, football.

Rocket!He was best known in college sports especially for his return capabilities.

Dave Brown. Any Giants fan knows how this guys career went. Down the interception tube. But, he was still in an era I enjoyed collecting so I still seek out Brown's cards. The 90's were a trying time after Phil Simms retired for Giant QB's as they went through multiple ones including the next guy who was even worse than Brown.

Tommy Maddox. Guy played amazing for the Pittsburgh Steelers but was a complete waste of time in big blue. The guy won a Super Bowl ring even but only because he backed up Big Ben. He also played well for his time in the XFL which returns in 2020. It was terrible to watch the first time around, not sure what they will do to fix it the second time around.

Keith Hamilton was the Hammer for the Giants defense in the 90's racking up 63 sacks in 163 games in big blue uni.

And finally, Phillippi Sparks. It's like spelling Mississippi. Who is probably best known now for being Jordin Sparks dad. If you don't know Jordin, she won the 6th season of American Idol. But Sparks had some ups and downs with the Giants at corner.

There were definitely some great PC adds above and this was only the beginning. There are five other parts to this series so it will be fun ride that you will want to come back for.