Its Gotta Be The Shoes

A one card post today, but a cool one. I picked up this Gary Payton 2014-15 Panini National Treasure Sneaker Swatches shoe card late last year. I’ve always thought that shoe relics are some of the neater and more unique relics.

A Welcome Care Package

I just received a care package from Jon from A Penny Sleeve For Your Thoughts, which I very much so appreciate. He was wondering how I was doing and sent some cards and a DVD too.

The DVD is from the 2007 Season Ticket Holder package and includes highlights from the team’s 30-year history. It was narrated by Dave Niehaus, the voice of the Mariners from 1977 until his death in 2010, and just hearing his voice brought back some wonderful memories of watching baseball over the years. A lot of happy memories.

New additions to my Steve Kerr collection, Sonics collection and Mariners’ collections. There were more cards sent but I only scanned about half of the cards.

I have been working on my Edgar mini-pc and now I have my first Edgar relic card.

The Mariners just retried Edgar Martinez's number and in conjunction with the ceremony they did an Edgar Martinez bobble head SGA and his bat has a light on it that works. I am not a bobble head collector and have picked up only a couple of Griffey SGAs but I do plan on picking up one of the Edgar Lights Out bobble heads when they drop down to realistic prices.

It's a light bat (bobblehead)!

Edgar Martinez Bobblehead Night—with fully functioning light bat—is August 11th. https://t.co/hczcHnsOrT pic.twitter.com/q938N0JS3H

— Mariners (@Mariners) June 5, 2017

The last two cards are a Buhner and Edgar 1999 Upper Deck Black Diamond Triple Diamond #/1500. I had the Buhner card on my wants list so that is a number card off the list. I haven’t built an Edgar want list yet, I am making some changes in my collection so I do plan to create one eventually.

A Trade Package From Twitch Part 1 of 2

In a time when my spending is completely halted as far as cardboard is concerned trade packages have become a welcome distraction of sorts. I still have the fun of ripping a package open, flip through cards and organize them. My most recent package has come from Twitch, AKA Lonestarr.

It was an amazing package that includes Mariners, Seahawks, Sonics and comic cards. All my favorite things. There were well over 100 cards so I cannot cover them all but here are some of my favorites beginning with the comic cards.

There were quite a few Marvel cards with my favorite Marvel movie being well represented; Guardians of the Galaxy. Rocket Raccoon is my favorite Marvel character and is one of my secret PCs.

When I got back in to collecting in the early 1990s I only collected sports cards but I was talked in to checking out comic cards by my best friend and he introduced me to the early Impel sets, this 2015 Fleer Retro took me back.

Next up is the DC Universe with some 1995 Skybox DC Legends and 1996 Skybox Firepower Outburst. The 1995 DC Legends is a chrome set, here are Count Viper and The Baron and the 1996 Skybox Firepower Outburst is embossed.

There were not many basketball cards but the ones that are included are perfect for my collection. The first one is a 1994-95 Flair Steve Kerr, who is one of my secondary PCs.

One of the best Sonics ever, Gary Payton, and one that would have been one of the best if the team wasn’t stolen, Kevin Durant.

Since the card had a printing error, it appears that someone accidently put the team name and logo of a fictional team on the card, I fixed it.

A pair of Seahawks QBs rocking the Elite design; 2007 Donruss Elite Hasselback and 2015 Panini Elite Russell Wilson.

Shaun Alexander has been my non-QB favorite player for the Seahawks and Paul Richardson has potential but has taken off yet as a receiver but I do dig the 2014 Topps Fire designs.

I close with a 1938 Churchman’s Boxing, these cards are from England and I have a partial collection but I did not have this Harry Mizler so this was a great vintage addition.

AI, Durant And Warren

My recent COMC order included a large portion of Ken Griffey Jr but I always like to pick up some of the cards off of my personal want list. Usually these are cards that I have on my list that are essentially Gray Whales that I don’t consider unless they are on sale. Here are some of the cards that I had shipped following COMC’s Black Friday sale.

I wouldn’t say that Allen Iverson is one of my player collections but I do seem drawn to his cards. He was arrogant and lets not even touch on his feelings about practice but he is probably one of the most prominent guards of his generation and possibly an all-time Top 10 shooting guard. When it comes to basketball, I have pulled AI hits more than any other player so I kind of became a mini-pc collector by default.

These cards are from the 2012-13 & 2013-14 Panini Crusade releases. They both are from the Crusade Blue checklist.

This card is from the 2014-15 Court Kings release, specifically the Rookie Royalty insert. As I have said before I refuse to collect any player wearing the jersey of the team stolen from Seattle but I do have a couple of cards of Durant in a Sonics jersey and this card is now the top of Supersonics collection. Oddly this card rarely shows up but when it showed up for sale on COMC for a couple of bucks I grabbed it up quickly.

I added a couple of 1996 Pacific Chris Warren Litho Cel cards. These cards were an interesting idea originally coming out as promotional cards, these are the ones listed as Cel-000, and then later as part of the regular Pacific Litho set. When you line up the four levels (Bronze, Silver and two cels) you are supposed to see a color image of the player. I picked up two promo cards and one cyan cel insert card. I will eventually pick up the other cards to put together the image but it isn’t a rush and when I paid about $1 for all three I was happy.

See, Seattle Can Win... Just Not As Often As Others

Last week following the Seattle Sounders won the MLS Cup I had written a post about Seattle championships and I just realized that I did not save it but here is the best shot at what was in my original write up.

Now that the Sounders have won the MLS Cup Championship a team from Seattle has won a championship in every professional sport except for the Seattle Mariners. This list does not include college teams, minor league teams, semi-pro teams or leagues that only the most die-hard fan would know about (sorry women's soccer, rugby, lacrosse, ultimate Frisbee and roller derby), only the leagues/teams that were accepted as "Professional" or top league at the time they won their championship.

The Seattle Mariners were a MLB expansion team in 1976 and in the team’s 40 seasons between 1977 and 2016 they have gone to the playoffs four times, making it to the ALCS three times but they have never made it to the World Series.

The Seattle Supersonics were an NBA expansion team in 1967 and in the 40 seasons between 1967 and 2007, when the team was stolen, they went to the playoffs 22 times. The team made it to the NBA Finals three times; 1978, 1979 and 1996, winning the NBA Championship in 1979.

The Seattle Storm were a WNBA expansion in team in 2000 and in the 17 seasons between 2000 through 2016 they went to the playoffs 12 times making it to the WNBA Finals twice, winning both times in 2004 and 2010.

The Seattle Seahawks were an NFL expansion team in 1976 and in the 40 seasons between 1976 and 2016 they have gone to the playoffs 15 times. They have gone to the Super Bowl three times, 2005, 2013 and 2014, winning the NFL Championship in 2013.

The Seattle Sounders were a MLS expansion team in 2007 and beginning their first season in 2009, this is not counting the team’s origin in the NASL in 1974 and USL time since. In the 8 seasons between 2009 and 2016 they went to the playoffs each season. They have gone to the MLS Cup Finals once, winning this year. In addition to this championship they have been US Open Cup Champions four times and they won the Supporters’ Shield once.

Now you are probably thinking “But Corky, how can a team from Seattle win the Stanley Cup? There isn’t even a professional hockey team there”

Well the answer is the Seattle Metropolitans, the first American hockey team to win the Stanley Cup in 1917, twelve years before the Boston Bruins won the Cup in the NHL.

The Seattle Metropolitans were an expansion team in the Pacific Coast Hockey Association (PCHA) in 1915 and in the team’s 9 seasons between 1915-16 through 1923-24 they went to the playoffs 7 times. They made it to the Stanly Cup Final three times in 1916-17, 1918-19 and 1919-20, winning in 1916-17 and tying in 1918-19 with the Montreal Canadians. The Stanley Cup in 1918-19 was suspended with Seattle and Montreal tied 2-2-1 due to the Spanish Flu outbreak.

I can also include MMA/UFC fighters

Randy Couture is from Everett and went to school in Lynwood, both about 20 minutes north of Seattle. In his 14 year MMA career he was the UFC Heavyweight Champion three times, UFC Light Heavyweight Champion twice, the UFC Interim UFC Light Heavyweight once, the UFC 13 Heavyweight Tournament Champion and is in the UFC Hall of Fame.

Benson Henderson grew up in Federal Way (Where I lived half my life), about 20 minutes south of Seattle. In his 10-year MMA career he has been the WEC Lightweight Champion once, the WEC Interim Lightweight Champion once, UFC Lightweight Champion once and he fought for both the Bellator Welterweight Championship and Bellator Lightweight Championship in the last 8 months, losing both times.

How about a couple of wrestlers from the Evergreen state?

Greg “The Hammer” Valentine was born in Seattle and in his 37-year career wrestling mostly in the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA), World Wide Wrestling Federation (WWWF/WWF/WWE) and World Championship Wrestling (WCW) he won over 20 Heavyweight Championships, 16 Tag-Team Championships and a dozen or so various championships. He is also in 4 different Hall of Fames.

Daniel Bryan is from Aberdeen, about 2 hours west of Seattle and is also the birth place of Kurt Cobain. Bryan wrestled professionally for 17 years, which includes 6 years in the WWE, and he won a number of championships. In the WWE he won the World Heavyweight Championship once, WWE Heavyweight Championship three times, Intercontinental Championship once, US Championship once and Tag-Team Championship once.

Seattle may not compare to New York, Boston, Montreal, Chicago or LA when it comes to championships but when you consider that when Seattle teams have made it to their respective Championship game/series they have gone a decent .545% (6 out of 11 chances not counting the 1918-19 Stanley Cup that ended in a tie). Occasionally the Emerald City teams can put up the big win.

Holding Out Hope!

Two weeks ago someone within the NBA, an unnamed source, let it slip that once the upcoming NBA collective bargaining agreement is completed that the NBA would begin to look at possible locations for expansion and that during the discussion of expansion it came up that the #1 location on the table is Seattle. The source even went on to say that “An hour after Seattle approves their arena, they’d have an offer in hand” in regards of an expansion team.

 

Chris Hansen, a hedge fund manager, has been trying to work deals with the City of Seattle, King County and Washington State to get an arena built that would bring an NBA team back to the Emerald City as well as a possible NHL team. Hansen has said before that his intention is to make any new arena an NBA/NHL ready arena.

When the rumor came out about the possible Seattle expansion Hansen went in to overdrive to get something together but to no avail the City Council voted 5-4 against an arena being paid for using a bond measure. Not to be dissuaded Chris went to look at other options and yesterday announced that he will privately fund the arena. In his Memorandum of Understanding to the city and NBA is that he will use private funds from a group of investors to fund the $200 million to build an arena with the agreement that the city vacate a section of city owned property near Safeco Field (Mariners) and CenturyLink Field (Seahawks) for the arena and that the NBA will commit to a team for the city by November 2017. Additionally, he has offered private money to upgrade the local streets in anticipation of higher traffic connected to the Sonics games.

 

The offer now goes to the Seattle City Council for another vote and then obviously the waiting game for the NBA to make a decision on expansion.  

 

This is amazing news for Seattle fans and if things do work out I would expect the NHL to turn to Seattle with an expansion team. With the NHL’s expansion in Las Vegas the NHL will be at 31 teams in 2017 with an unbalanced Western Conference. Adding a team in Seattle for 2018 or 2019 would even out the conferences and with a move of the Las Vegas franchise from Pacific Division to Central Division a Seattle franchise could slide right in to the Pacific Division giving each Division 8 teams.

Just imagine, a rebirth of both the Seattle Supersonics and Seattle Metropolitans.

The X-Man Cometh

 

In the 1980s in to the 1990s the Seattle Sonics had some major talent with major personalities.

Obviously Gary Payton, The Glove, comes to mind. He is one of my mini-PCs and he ran things in the Pacific Northwest even leading the Sonics to NBA Finals in 1996, losing to the Chicago Bulls, before eventually getting a ring in Miami in 2006 and ending up in the Hall of Fame.

There was Shawn Kemp, The Reign Man, who was drafted straight out of high school (ignore his 1 semester at community college) and was a master of the slam dunk. He was also part of the 96 team that went to the NBA Finals but unlike Payton he never won an NBA Championship but he is in the running for the most kids by different mothers, currently sitting at 7 kids from 6 different women.

I do love my Suns and I love my Sonics so it is fitting that one of my favorites played for both teams, no not Tom Chambers but Xavier McDaniel, The X-Man. He was in the NBA for 12 years and had a decent career, he never won any major awards, championships and definitely doesn’t belong in any type of Hall of Fame but I dug him because he always looked so intense and his shaved head added to it.

He is the type of guy that I want to collect, not because of accomplishments but for some reason you will never be able to explain why. He is one of my “Just because” PCs, I collect him just because.

Part of the fun of collecting the X-Man is that his cards are laughably cheap, I am not joking either, this 2012-13 Leaf Metal Basketball auto #2/10 ran me .99 cents plus shipping. That is part of being a decent player on good teams, he showed up on many checklists simply because he was on the right team so now he has a number of relic and autograph options for very reasonable prices. I only have a couple of McDaniel's cards but they are all Suns and Sonics cards only.

The downside being a Leaf card is that there are no team names or logos but it is obvious which uniform he is wearing and I was drawn to the green parallel because it all connects together nicely.

Some Sea-Town Pickups

My day has been a long one and I planned on posting earlier but my Prism tv service went down and I ended up on the phone with a rep for nearly an hour. Sadly I told him it was an issue with the router and that it needed to be replaced when I first talked to him but we had to go through the steps anyway. So now a tech is set to be here tomorrow morning and before long I got sidetracked doing some research and I realized I forgot to post.

Here are a couple of recent pickups of Seattle athletes just for fun

1995 SP Legendary Cuts Jay Buhner Legendary Lineage Patch #50

Any time I can add a bad ass Bone patch to my collection for under $7 shipped I am cool with it. The card would be ideal for his signature under the patch but there is no way I am sending this for a TTM request. I have sent a number of requests to Buhner and he has never responded so if anything it would be one to bring to a show to get him to sign if he ever does a show in the Phoenix area.

2013 Bowman Inception Mike Zunino Blue parallel #/75

I love the Inception releases and this one has been on my list for a number of years so I am happy to add this to my Zunino collection.

 

1997-98 Metal Univese Gary Payton Silver Slams

Gary Payton is one of those athletes that I am considering adding as a PC but I don’t want to have to many player collections, not to mention Payton’s cards can be high dollar. I love this card because it has a pinkish/purplish hue and it really stands out.

This was a TTM/IP autograph that I picked up. I am really picky about what signatures I get just because they can be easily faked so I check every swoop, loop and twist before I consider buying something like this which I did and felt comfortable.

 

Trade Completed IV(b)

Today I am going to cover the Seahawks, Sonics and Suns that Bo sent me in the package that I started covering yesterday.

 The selection of Seattle Seahawks runs from the early 1980s through the 2000s and included some of the best to ever wear the navy and green. Included in the bundle are players like Sherman Smith, the first Seahawks RB (and current RB coach), Rickey Watters, Joey Galloway, Walter Jones and Lofa Tatupu (not one of the greatest but one of my favorites).

Here are some of my favorite cards:

Anything with Steve Largent is a win

Believe it or not I did not have a Boz rookie until this one got in to my hands. He was a bust as a professional football player but he was a complete success as the personality “Boz”. I wouldn’t say that I idealized him, far from it, but I did respect his play. When he wasn’t injured he was a dominant linebacker and as a high school linebacker I wanted to play that way. I even changed my jersey number to 55 when I switched positions to linebacker during my sophomore year (1987) after he was drafted by the Seahawks. Even now I still like him and have a small Boz collection.

The Seahawks have had some lethal running backs but I would rate Shaun Alexander as one of my favorites, tied with Lynch. And once again Bo hits a need for me and included a Madden 07 Shaun Alexander card. I have always wanted to pick up the Alexander Madden 07 & Madden 08 cards but I just never bought one, now I can scratch this one off of my “Want List” 

I got a little over 100 basketball cards, a mix of Seattle Supersonics and Phoenix Suns and one Steve Kerr that I needed for my collection.

I begin with the set that brought me back in to collecting sports cards, the 1992-93 Stadium Club set and my favorite basketball player ever Steve Kerr. He took the Arizona Wildcats to the 1988 Final Four, he holds the NBA record for highest career 3-Pt Field Goal Percent, won five NBA Championships with the Bulls and Spurs, built a dominant Phoenix Suns team while the team’s GM and as a rookie coach brought the Golden State Warriors to the NBA Finals.

Next up is my second favorite NBA team, the Seattle Supersonics.

When I saw this card I thought it was so cool. I have some neat Payton cards like the GP Scorers Club autograph I pulled from last year’s 2013-14 Immaculate Collection Basketball, but this card shows the epitome of GP’s ball handling skills as he flies through the air with a burning ball.

Then there is the ever-fertile Shawn Kemp (7 kids with 6 women). His high-flying aerial acrobatics were amazing to watch. As an added bonus the 93-94 Stadium Club includes Kemp flying in for a layup over Steve Kerr.

A couple of fan favorites: Detlef Schrempf and Xavier McDaniel, the X-Man also played for the Suns.

 

Going from the Pacific Northwest to the Southwest desert it is time to take a look at the Phoenix Suns, my favorite team. Any conversation about Top Suns will always include Kevin Johnson. KJ, now the Sacramento mayor and main reason the Kings are not in Seattle, was the skilled ball handler that led the team before the likes of Steve Nash. Like the Gary Payton 1995-96 Skybox I got a KJ version too and again it is a perfect example of how he controlled the game with the flaming ball.

Dan Majerle was a shutdown guy and could slam a ball with power, hence the Thunder Dan nickname.

A card with both KJ and Thunder Dan? Oh Snap!

There were three cards that are among the more unique cards in the package, three 1996 Collector’s Edge Key Kraze cards featuring Steve Nash, Ben Davis and Reggie Geary. Two Arizona Wildcats drafted by the Suns in 1996 (though neither played a game for the team) and one of the greatest NBA Point Guards.

 

This was such an amazing package that I am going to have to dig deep in to my collection and come up with some special for Bo.