Best of Luck

Woke up and Team USA had a 1-0 lead.

Mike Eruzione Signed Puck

*This signed puck was a flea market freebie from 2013.  I turned a Pokemon find into some free items.  One of them was this puck signed by the captain of the 1980 Team USA hockey team.

As I'm starting to write this post, Team Canada has tied it up.  Obviously I'm rooting for Team USA, but I've got nothing but love and respect for our friends in the north.

1997-98 Donruss Canadian Ice National Pride #1

**If this card looks familiar, it's because it's the third time I'm showing it off on my blog.  That's how much I love it.  It's one of my favorite hockey inserts from the 90's.  Gretzky only suited up for Team Canada once in the Winter Olympics (Nagano 1998), but represented them a bunch of other times during the Canada Cup tournaments in the 80's and 90's. 

As we head into the 3rd period, best of luck to both.  May the best team win.

Happy Sunday and sayonara!

Overtime

Jack Hughes scores in overtime.  Team USA wins.  What an amazing 3rd period.  Honestly I thought Team Canada was going to win with their stellar play and all of their shots on goal.  Kudos to Connor Hellebuyck.  He made some insane saves.

2012 UD Goodwin Champions Memorabilia #M-BL

***Brian Leetch represented Team USA in three Winter Olympics.  In his third and final appearance, he helped Team USA win the silver medal in 2002.  Anyone remember the team who took home the gold?  Yup.  Team Canada.

Unfortunately I don't own any cards of Hughes or Hellebuyck, so this Leetch will have to do.

A Beary Cool Set

One of the coolest things about being a "team collector" is you're often exposed to some team issued cards you might not see often unless you live in the area.

Today's post features a book of cards and postcards featuring a dozen Oakland Athletics from the 1987 season.

I'm not sure how these were distributed, but according to the inside cover... it was "given as a Public Service in Wildfire Prevention".

This particular book was sent to me by Angus over at Dawg Day Cards back in December.  I had seen the cards and postcards pop up on TCDB awhile back, but never owned any myself until now.

Inside there are twelve perforated pages.  Each page contains one card and one postcard like this:

The postcards are designed to be colored with colored pencils.  As a collector, I will keeping mine uncolored.  Here's a peek at the back:

Each of the twelve postcards features unique illustrations.  Due to lack of time, the Reggie Jackson is the only one I took the time to scan.  I did however take the time to scan each of the cards and postcards.

Here's the complete set of baseball cards:

And a closer look at what the back of the cards look like:

Each of the backs have a unique Smokey the Bear cartoon illustration that comes with a public service announcement.

Here is the set of postcards:

These aren't just postcards in name, they are actual postcards intended to be mailed to people:

And rounding out this post is the back of the beary cool Smokey the Bear card from the cover of the book:

Based on the response from my To Cut or Not to Cut post from a few weeks ago, some of you might think I'm crazy to tear apart this book.  Don't worry.  The day I pulled this out of Angus' care package, I went out to eBay and bought an extra one to keep intact.

Thank you Angus!  This is truly an awesome addition to my Oakland A's collection.

Everyone else... here is your question of the day:

Do you have a favorite team issue?

1983 Granny Goose Oakland A's #35

The first sets that popped into my head were the early 80's Granny Goose Oakland A's sets, but I'm pretty sure they were only released with bags of chips and not issued by the A's.

1984 Mother's Cookies #2

It didn't take me long to decide on the 80's Mother's Cookies SGA sets they'd pass out at games.

I've written about my brother taking me to Candlestick and the Oakland Coliseum for trading card day on several occasions.  They'll always have a soft spot in my collection and I'm still actively trying to hunt down the ones I don't have.

Looking forward to reading your responses.  Heck... maybe it'll inspire me to add a few more team issues (even if they aren't the A's or Padres) to my collection.

Happy Tuesday and sayonara!

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.