Still Celebrating the Holidays

While a lot of sports fans are focusing on this year's NBA All-Star Weekend, the Winter Olympics, and pitchers & catchers reporting to Spring Training... I'm still coming down from my Super Bowl high.  But I did open up a padded envelope yesterday that's getting me back into the spirit of baseball.

Pennsylvania Mike left a comment on my 2025 Topps Holiday advent calendar post.  He offered to help me out... and he wasn't joking.  It's probably easier to let this visual do the talking:

After combining the singles from my advent calendar and my buddy's duplicates, I needed 59 cards from the 200 card set.  Mike crossed off thirty-five of them:

That's a jump from 70.5% to 88% complete.  He included some key cards including the Jacob Wilson & Roki Sasaki rookie cards, plus the batting version of Shohei Ohtani and a bunch of other MLB superstars.

My set needs are down to twenty-four cards:

Oh wait, there's more.  He also sent me these three A's parallels:

2025 Topps Holiday Gold Lights #H48

2025 Topps Holiday Light Blue & White Glitter #H80

2025 Topps Holiday Gold Lights #H80

The Topps Holiday advent calendars only came with the holiday green plaid parallels, so these two parallels were new to me.  I haven't been this excited about one of these holiday sets in several years.

Thank you Mike for helping me out.  I have a stack of Tigers from the 2025 Topps Update that I'll be sending your way this week.  I still have this wicked cough, but other than that... I'm pretty much back to normal.  Plus I have this week off from work, so I'll definitely schedule time to hit the post office.

As for the rest of y'all, here is today's question of the day:

Anyone watching the Winter Olympics or NBA All-Star Weekend events?

If so, which ones?

Although I won't be watching any of the Olympic events live, I will definitely watch all of the snowboarding highlights.  I'm also interested in seeing the highlights from both of Team USA men's hockey games.

I hope all of you enjoy your Hallmark holiday!  Happy Valentine's Day and sayonara!

The One and Only

Four NFL teams have retired #12.  Three of them honored franchise legends.  One retired it for their fans.*

The Buffalo Bills retired the number to honor Jim Kelly, but have also honored the fans as well.

If you're a fan of football, you've probably heard the Seattle Seahawks fans referred to the 12s at some point.  It stems from the 12th man, which according to Wikipedia originated at Texas A&M in 1922.

In their franchise history, there has only been one player to wear #12.  I wasn't familiar with him until a few weeks ago when I decided to research the history of the 12s.  The name Sam Adkins popped up on Football Reference:

After making this discovery, I immediately headed over to COMC & TCDB to see if he had any trading cards and found a pair of oddball issues, but none were available on eBay.  This signed index card popped up though:

The seller had it up for auction, but I was busy doing something when it ended so I missed out on it.  The auction didn't receive any bids and the seller listed it again with a best offer option.  They accepted my $2.50 (+ $1.48 tax & shipping) offer and the rest is history.

I have no idea whether or not this autograph is legit, but I can't imagine a lot of people are going around forging his signature.  That being said, whoever originally owned this signed index card wrote some notes on the back.

Don't worry baseball fans.  I don't anticipate any more football posts in the near future.  Just wanted to share this not-so-random signature of a guy most of you probably aren't familiar with the day after the 12s got a chance to celebrate the second Super Bowl win in franchise history.

Go Hawks!

Happy Monday and sayonara!

Overtime

By the way, here are two new card blogs to add to your blogrolls:

#1:  Batting Out of Order

The first one is Tom's return to the keyboard.  He'll be showing off his Angels and Patriots PC.

#2:  Divas Hockey Ink

The second one is for hockey and Olympic fans. 

I'm super excited to see Tom back in the mix and happy to welcome RR to the blogosphere.

In the Hands of the Cards

With the Los Angeles Dodgers fielding all-stars all over the diamond, the odds of me seeing the A's or Padres win a World Series title in the next decade or so is pretty slim.  Luckily there's a 50% chance that one of my favorite football teams will win a Super Bowl title tomorrow.

I've been a Seattle Seahawks fan since 1981.  To put that into perspective, that's the year I started collecting baseball cards.

Back in December, I was doing some last minute Christmas shopping on Target's website when I saw some UNO Elite football boxes on sale for $4.49 each.  I picked up a few for my co-worker's kids and set aside two for this post.

I thought it'd be cool to use them for a Super Bowl sports card simulation to predict the winner of tomorrow's game.

Let's start off by looking at the two boxes...

Product Description:

Box #1:  2025 UNO Elite Core Booster Set Plus

Box #2:  2025 UNO Elite Alt Jerseys Booster Set Plus

Each box contains 4 packs and each pack contains ten cards.

Scoring:

In an effort to not only predict the Super Bowl winner, but the final score as well, each player will earn their team three points (like a field goal) each time they are pulled from a pack.  Since there are four colors variations in the game of UNO, I will turn a field goal into a touchdown (seven points) if the color matches their team colors:

New England Patriots:  Red or Blue

Seattle Seahawks:  Green or Blue

There are also foil versions inserted into packs.  If I pull any Patriots or Seahawks, they will receive a 2x multiplier to that card.

Box #1 will represent the first half of the game with the first two packs representing the first quarter and the last two packs representing the second quarter.  Box #2 will work the same way except they'll represent the third and fourth quarters.

Checklists:

I analyzed the checklists for both teams.  After thirty minutes of trying to balance things out, I ended up removing any players (like Kendrick Bourne and Tyler Lockett) who are no longer with the Seahawks or Patriots.

That ended up giving the Patriots a big advantage with five cards listed in each product, while the Seahawks only had three in each.  To make things fair, I added two current Seahawks who are featured with their prior teams from each set.

Here's who I'll be looking for...

Okay.  I think everything important has been covered.  If not, I'll make adjustments on the fly.  Let the Super Bowl LX sports card simulation begin...

First Quarter:

2025 UNO Elite Core #120

Drake Maye gets the Patriots on the board first with a field goal, but a Rashid Shaheed was sitting a few cards behind:

2025 UNO Elite Core #149

Although Shaheed is wearing black and gold for the Saints, this card is a color match to his Super Bowl team.  Seahawks take the lead with a touchdown!

Here are the eighteen other cards in the packs:

I was happy to pull the Josh Jacobs for the Packers PC and my nieces will be excited to add the Cowboys and Lions in this break (especially the shiny St. Brown) to their collections.

After fifteen minutes, the score is:

New England Patriots 3

Seattle Seahawks 7

Second Quarter:

Both defenses stepped up in the second quarter with zero Patriots or Seahawks in these two packs.

Shaquill Griffin made an appearance.  He's played in a pair of games for the Hawks this season, but is currently on their practice squad.  Even if he was on their Super Bowl roster, he didn't make this ten card roster, so he doesn't qualify for any points.

The halftime score is:

New England Patriots 3

Seattle Seahawks 7

Third Quarter:

Twenty more cards.  Zero Seahawks or Patriots.  I sure hope the real game has more scoring than this.

Three quarters down and the Seahawks hold a four point lead:

New England Patriots 3

Seattle Seahawks 7

Fourth Quarter:

I realize both of these Super Bowl defenses are elite, but this is a little extreme.  Eight packs.  One Patriot.  And technically zero Seahawks.  Thank goodness the Seahawks traded for Shaheed in November.

Final Score:

 

New England Patriots 3

Seattle Seahawks 7

If this was the actual score, it'd be the lowest scoring Super Bowl ever.  The current record is held by Super Bowl LIII (Patriots 13 vs. Rams 3).

Sadly simulations and reality are two different things.  We'll see who the real Super Bowl LX Champions are in a little over twenty-four hours.

I was planning to watch the game at my friend's house, but I'm sick AGAIN.  I'm on antibiotics this time around, but don't want to risk spreading it to my friend or her mom.  So it'll be me watching the game at home by myself.  Hopefully the Hawks pull out a victory and redeem themselves after that Super Bowl XLIX tragedy.

I'm sure other blogs have already asked you, but it wouldn't be a Super Bowl post without this question:

Who do you think will win the game?

Who are you rooting for?

I'm nervous about picking the Seahawks (and jinxing them), but I've watched them a lot this season and they look really good.  I'll say they win 24 to 20.

Happy Saturday and sayonara!

To Cut or Not to Cut

There's no shortage of Shohei collectibles out there for collectors to collect.  That's what happens when a once in a generation type of athlete comes along.  Unfortunately his collectibles are usually attached to high price tags.

But every now and then, they're part of generous care packages.  Today's post features two huge additions to my Shohei Ohtani PC.

The first one is a uncut rookie card from a box of 2018 Topps Big League:

Angus over at Dawg Day Cards sent me a large padded envelope back in December that I finally opened up over the weekend.  It was filled with a few nice additions to my collection that I'll share over a few posts.  

2018 Topps Big League Box Card #B3

My first thought was to cut the Ohtani out, but there's no way I could do it as cleanly as my photo editor.  So I ended up keeping it intact.  Here's a look at the other side of the box:

As soon as I saw this box, I knew it would pair perfectly with the large store display shown above that was part of Ryan's advent calendar.  I placed it with Ohtani's 2025 Topps flagship card to give you some perspective:

I'm still figuring out the best way to display this cool collectible.  I could hang it up in my classroom, but honestly I'd love to find some wall space for this in my office.  We'll see how things play out.

While I'm showing off new additions to the Ohtani collection, I figured I'd show off an action figure of him that has been hanging up in my office for a few years:

2021 Topps Big League Super 7 1959 Variation Figure

I still have a bunch of items from Ryan's advent calendar and Angus' care package.  I'll be sharing them here and there over the next few months, so stay tuned.  Thank you Ryan and Angus!

Here is today's question of the day:

When it comes to box bottom cards or uncut sheets of cards, do you tend to keep them intact or do you cut them out?

Although I have cut out cards, if the box bottom or uncut sheet is in good condition, I'll usually keep it intact.  In fact I have several boxes dedicated to storing oversized items like these.

That's it for today.  Happy Thursday and sayonara!