A Wedding Present

It is a time of new beginnings. 

The last time I posted, I was on the verge of getting married and moving into a new house. I'm happy to report that all went according to plan, though not without the ongoing state of chaos and expense that comes with moving households.

But as we enter 2024, I wanted to kick off the new year, pun not intended, with a football post. At the wedding in October, I was given a set of 1984 Topps Football cards by Roger, a longtime family friend of my wife's who graciously agreed to officiate our wedding. 1984 happens to be the year I was born, and Roger had the perfect gift ready to go.

1984 Topps #63 John Elway (RC)

As a native Coloradan, and now a resident of Denver proper, I've long been a fan of the Denver Broncos. And it just so happens that John Elway's rookie card is the gem of this complete set. Roger hand-collated it himself from a case of '84 he bought long ago, and all 396 cards are there and accounted for. 

Elway is a member of the Ring of Fame, the list of retired Broncos greats that encircles the interior of Empower Field at Mile High. And he brought Denver its first two Super Bowls (after losing a few), even earning MVP honors in Super Bowl XXXIII.

Prior to becoming an NFL legend, he was famously a baseball star at Stanford. The cartoon on the card back (this is still Topps, after all), tells us that he hit .318 in the Yankees farm system.

1984 Topps #72 Louis Wright

Elway was immediately preceded in joining the Ring of Fame by Louis Wright, a cornerback for the team from 1975-86. The card back points out that Wright led the Broncos in interceptions in 1983, with six. Wright at CB gave us an early sneak peek of the type of play we eventually saw from Champ Bailey.

I had the pleasure of meeting him once at a Christmas party. Very nice guy. My dad and I even played a few rounds of foosball with him.

1984 Topps #163 Craig Colquitt

I'm turning 40 this year, and there has been plenty of NFL history that has gone by in that time. So much history, in fact, that we are well into the era of father-son NFL duos. I had never heard of punter Craig Colquitt before, but certainly recognized that surname. That's because his son, Britton, was the punter for the Broncos from 2010-2015. His older son, Dustin, also spent time in the NFL, as did his nephew, Jimmy.

I don't know if this held true for the remainder of Craig's career, but according to the card back, Craig had thus far never had the misfortune of having a punt blocked.

1984 Topps #123 Dan Marino (RC)

The other key rookie card in this set is Dan Marino, Elway's quarterback counterpart on the East Coast. They took a similar trajectory as contemporaries, but Marino consistently tops the list of best players who never managed to win a Super Bowl, joining similar ringless baseball legends like Ted Williams, Ernie Banks, and Ken Griffey, Jr.

Elway wasn't too far off from appearing on that list himself. He won Super Bowls XXXII and XXXIII, retiring shortly after winning his final championship. But he did lose three in four years, nearly sealing an unfortunate fate for the Quarterback Class of 1983.

1984 Topps #55 Dave Logan

Dave Logan is pictured here as a Brown, where he spent most of his career, but he did wrap up his career in 1984 as a Bronco. Despite that brief stint at Mile High Stadium, he's much better known in these parts for his broadcasting work, as he has been on the Broncos radio team since 1990, which is certainly as far back as my memory goes.

1984 Topps #37 Cris Collinsworth

In fact, in thumbing through this set, I was struck by just how many of these guys ended up in broadcasting. Cris Collinsworth has been on the Sunday Night Football crew since 2009, and I'll tell you, his voice has become quite recognizable.

Of course we can add Troy Aikman and Tony Romo to that list, whose careers began quite a bit after this set was released. 

1984 Topps #162 Terry Bradshaw

Here's a once-spry Terry Bradshaw, who has perhaps overstayed his welcome at Fox.

1984 Topps #111 Howie Long (RC)

And rookie Howie Long, who has shared the analyst desk with Bradshaw for many years.

1984 Topps #390 Joe Theismann

Here's one more veteran broadcaster, Joe Theismann, who used to be in the booth for Monday Night Football. Long before that, he was QB on Washington, and wore a football helmet that doesn't look anywhere near strong enough.

His playing career goes back to the early 1970s, where he spent three seasons on the Toronto Argonauts of the Canadian Football League. All three of those seasons are represented on the card back, squeezing out any room for a cartoon or fun fact.

No relation to the Heisman Trophy, which I questioned when I was young.

1984 Topps #287 Jack Youngblood

Jack Youngblood also did a little broadcasting work, but that was before my time. I mainly recognized him from one of the few other football-focused posts I have done, the Merlin Olsen blog bat-around.

Youngblood doesn't look all that different in 1984 than he did in 1975. In fact, 1984 Topps doesn't look all that different from 1976, at least as far as the little football helmet design element. 1984 gives the helmet a bit more team flair, and assumes that fans have learned AFC vs. NFC teams well enough to omit that data point from the card front.

1984 Topps #253 Doug English

I know Doug English even less than I know Jack Youngblood, but I am always a fan of commemorative uniform patches. All Detroit Lions wore the team's 50th Anniversary patch in 1983. which we can see on English's left shoulder. The patch marks their inaugural season of 1934, as well as four styles of football helmets worn through the years.

Sadly, their many years of futility have continued for well over 50 years by now, but they play the Rams Sunday evening, and you know what they say about any given Sunday.

1984 Topps #357 Ronnie Lott

Ronnie Lott, on the other hand, that's a name I do know. He was on the winning end of one of those hearbreaking Broncos Super Bowl losses, he's a Hall of Famer in both the Pro and College institutions, and is among the best to ever play Safety. Notably, he didn't switch to that position until 1985, and he's still listed as a Cornerback on his 1984 card.

As a baseball fan, it has become jarring to see the number 42 on a uniform. MLB retired that number for Jackie Robinson in 1997, and I don't follow any sport nearly as closely as baseball, so it's just an unusual thing to see in my personal sports viewing habits.

1984 Topps #322 Lawrence Taylor IR

Action shots were still a bit rare in these mid-1980s card sets. Jack Youngblood's photo is essentially unchanged from 1975, other than whether his helmet is on or off. A good action shot was notable enough that Topps put the best ones in a special "Instant Replay" subset. They even were kind enough to include the exact date of the photo, one of my favorite things to know about a sports card.

This one of Lawrence Taylor was taken on December 17th, 1983, as the New York [Football] Giants, lost to the Washington [Football Team]. The early part of this game went well for L.T. and the Giants, including this chaotic-looking tackle-for-loss, but the Giants were not good that year, and lost this game to the eventual NFC champions.

1984 Topps #280 Eric Dickerson (RC)

Arguably the next most important rookie card in the set, after Elway and Marino, was Eric Dickerson. The Hall of Fame running back still holds the record for most rushing yards in a season (asterisk, when O.J. Simpson played, it was only a 14-game season). He set that record in 1984, a year after winning Rookie of the Year as noted on this card.

The glasses he's sporting on this card aren't just for looks. They were prescription goggles, needed to correct a condition of myopia.

1984 Topps #228 Walter Payton

Today's last card is another all-time great running back, Walter Payton. No action shot this time, though he does have an "Instant Replay" subset card one card later in the checklist. I just really liked this close-up photo of him.

Much ink has been spilled debating the greatest baseball players of all-time, and it's hard to rank, say, Stan Musial vs. Ted Williams. The late Walter Payton easily finds himself at the very top of the RB rankings, right up there with Jim Brown, Barry Sanders, Dickerson, and more. Notably, the card back tells us that he ranks 3rd all-time on the NFL rushing list. Even this late in his career, he had plenty more in the tank, and pushed his way up to #1 at the time of his retirement. Only Emmitt Smith has eclipsed him, and with the way the game has changed, the top NFL rushing list might be set in stone for a very long time to come.

Thanks to Roger for broadening my collecting horizons with this excellent wedding gift!

The Trading Post #119: Collector's Crack

Now that hockey playoffs have started, which the Avalanche barely squeaked into, it's a perfect time to write about some football cards I won from Collector's Crack during his annual Super Bowl contest. The Denver Nuggets also had a chance to make it to the NBA playoffs, but weren't able to seal the deal in overtime on Wednesday. So that just leaves three Denver sports teams to cover, as the Rockies' 25th Anniversary season is still just getting underway.

The Broncos didn't factor into the NFL playoffs in the 2017-18 season, but everyone around here still bleeds orange and blue. My pick in the contest was for the Steelers to beat the Eagles. I did get the correct NFC team, but not the outcome. That disqualified me from the main prize, but I still came out on top when the randomizer spit out its results.

2010 Absolute Memorabilia Star Gazing #5 Demaryius Thomas

This was a football contest, so it's appropriate for me to start off with a few football cards. Specifically, a colorful Panini card from the Absolute Memorabilia set, a name not seen in baseball circles in quite some time. The extra-colorful design reminds me of the Aurora inserts found in last year's Diamond Kings set, perhaps not surprising as this is an insert card itself. It looks like this design is supposed to be an American flag overlaid in front of some type of spacey image from the Hubble Space Telescope.

Demaryius Thomas, one of the Broncos veteran Wide Receivers, was just getting his pro career started after attending Georgia Tech when this card was printed. He and Charlie Blackmon were both Yellow Jackets in the late-2000s, so it's possible that the two Denver sports stars knew each other in their college days, much like Peyton Manning and Todd Helton attended Tennessee together.

2008 Donruss Gridiron Gear Silver Holofoil O's #32 Brandon Marshall /250

Brandon Marshall has had quite a long career, especially by NFL standards. Yet despite playing for a dozen seasons, he's never managed to make it to the playoffs. He has made it to six Pro Bowls, including his first in 2008, the year of this shiny card. I'll take a shiny card like this regardless of the sport, especially when it has a serial number on the back.

Donruss may have had some type of tabletop game in mind, as this card also came in an "X" variety, replacing the O in the upper left of this card. If you wanted to, I suppose you could make your own formations with your shiny Gridiron Gear cards. Traditionally, Os are for the Offense and X is for the Defense, and of course most football players focus on one side or the other. I feel like I have the more "correct" version of this card, but it's as good a way as any to make another parallel.

2011 Topps Prime Veteran #PV-ER Eddie Royal

I know all these names, but I haven't really followed their careers after their departure from Denver. Eddie Royal, yet another wide receiver, later played for the Chargers and Bears, but was cut before the 2017-18 season and remains an unsigned free agent. He's barely older than Charlie Blackmon, but his career may have drawn to a close. It's a punishing sport to play, and long careers are rare. There's tremendous pressure to play through the pain, lest someone younger and healthier take your spot that you might not be able to get back. The rosters are gigantic, there are a tremendous number of young athletes graduating from college every year, and you only have a short while to really make a name for yourself.

There aren't a lot of R.A. Dickeys, Randy Johnsons, or Jose Bautistas in the NFL. Just look at this Topps Prime card itself. Royal was already a "Prime Veteran" at just 25, barely into his fourth NFL season when this set hit the market.

Side note: remember when Topps made NFL cards?

Corey Seager, by the way, is in his fourth MLB season right now, and only a little younger than Royal was in 2011. I think he has a while before anyone starts calling him a "veteran".

They are very different sports.

2003 Bowman's Best Blue #130 Adrian Madise (AU) /499

I don't follow the world of NFL prospects or the annual draft, but I can only imagine that its even deeper than in Major League Baseball. Other than Marcus Mariota, I can pretty much tell you nothing about which college player ended up on which NFL team. Perhaps that's why I've never heard of Adrian Madise, a wide receiver from TCU who played in 11 games for the Broncos in 2003. That was the extent of his NFL career, but he signed cards for Bowman that year, in this case a sticker autograph that also has one of those small, square, numbered hologram stickers on the back that Topps used to provide.

It's also serial numbered to /499, probably the rarest card I own of a player I've never heard of.

2009 Topps Chrome Cheerleaders #TCC2 Amanda

Another aspect of football that makes it quite different from baseball is the presence of cheerleaders. A stack of about ten cheerleader insert cards from 2009 Topps Chrome was the main door prize from Collector's Crack; the rest of these cards were just an added bonus.

These are the first cards of their type in my collection. I've noted before that there is a pretty glaring absence of women in professional sports, as I mentioned in a post about Allen & Ginter. There are a number of women in an on-field reporting role, but more often than not, most women on-field at an NFL game seem to have pom-poms. And let's not forget the Twitter storm that ESPN launched by putting a woman in the booth next to Rex Ryan during Monday Night Football last season.

Interestingly, you might be surprised to learn who has anchored the most episodes of SportsCenter on ESPN. Not Chris Berman, not the late Stuart Scott, not Scott Van Pelt, not Dan Patrick. It's Linda Cohn, and she did an extremely interesting interview recently with Internet celebrity and Jets superfan Gary Vaynerchuk.

Anyway, what can I say about Amanda, cheerleader for the Baltimore Ravens? Well, Topps Chrome cards still seem to have a curl no matter the subject. And cheerleading looks like it would be an especially cold occupation in the winter months. I'll bask in the sunshine and late evening twilight at Coors Field any day of the week, but I've never braved the cold to see an NFL game, which can easily drop into the single digits in a place like Colorado. Finally, I noticed that Amanda went to the University of Delaware, which is my mom's alma mater.

2011 Topps Legends #87 Tim Tebow

I don't expect to see baseball cheerleaders anytime soon, but Tim Tebow has been the one to blur the lines between baseball and football lately. He's spent a couple years in the Mets' farm system after being cut by several NFL teams. The way the injuries have been piling up for the Mets the past few years, Tebow might make it to the Majors purely because of attrition. They're currently without a catcher, as Travis d'Arnaud will undergo Tommy John surgery (yes, as a catcher), and Kevin Plawecki just hit the DL for a month after a hit-by-pitch.

When Tebow was the quarterback for the Broncos, I remember two things. He'd miraculously pull out a win by taking the lead in the 4th quarter (or even overtime, as Steelers fans and Demaryius Thomas will recall), and he'd run the ball a lot. I kept saying he should be a running back. This card confirms my second memory, mentioning that Tebow ran the ball more in his first three starts than any QB since 1970, starting off with the very first "40-30", a completing a 40 yard run and 30-yard pass in the same quarter.

That was enough to earn him a spot in the Topps Legends set, even though his NFL career only lasted sixteen games over three seasons. But perhaps we haven't heard the last of him.

By the way, did Topps ever plan on releasing Legends or Prime as baseball sets? They're beautiful.

2017 Topps Chrome '87 Topps #87T-24 David Dahl

Like nearly everyone who trades with me, Collector's Crack included a few Rockies in my envelope. Back to the familiar world of baseball and the 1987 Topps design, here's David Dahl, who might see some playing time in the next few days, thanks to the suspensions MLB handed down following a hit-by-pitch incident.

2017 Topps Chrome '87 Topps #87T-15 Nolan Arenado

Yes, Nolan Arenado got five games for that, as did Padres pitcher Luis Perdomo. He dropped his appeal and did not play in Saturday's loss in Washington. Gerardo Parra is still appealing his four-game suspension related to the incident, so there may be a brief window for David Dahl to appear in his first MLB game since the end of 2016.

Topps has been spoon-feeding us 1987 Topps for a while, but I still enjoy seeing it. The woodgrain border doesn't really come across that well when given the refractor treatment, but the overall design clearly stands up to the MLB expansion that's occurred since its release. Topps even kept the "On This Date" theme on the card back, giving us information from the 1987 season. Nolan's card back tells us about Sachio Kinugasa, a Japanese player who broke Lou Gehrig's consecutive games record in 1987, whose streak ended at 2,215. David Dahl's card mentions Dave Dravecky's outstanding pitching performance in Game 2 of the 1987 NLCS, a series the Giants would lose in 7.

2003 Playoff Portraits #21 Todd Helton

This heavily-textured card of Todd Helton was clearly meant to look like an oil painting. Picture UD Masterpieces with brush strokes and you have the idea. It's pretty well done, right down to the swirls on Helton's ear flap.

This texture doesn't carry to the back, which just gets a glossy finish, standard for cards of this era. It's the second throwback to 2003 in this post, and the card brings yet another sport into this post by telling us that "Helton takes a bad swing about as often as Tiger Woods". In case you don't follow golf, Tiger is back. While he didn't contend at The Masters, he did tie for 2nd place a few tournaments ago with Patrick Reed, this year's winner at Augusta.

2013 Topps Chasing The Dream Relics #CDR-DP Drew Pomeranz (MEM)

I like to save relics for the end. This is from 2013's Chasing The Dream insert set, and I remember admiring the non-relic flavor the first time I saw it. I said back then that I wanted to acquire a few more, and cynicalbuddha at Collector's Crack made sure I did. Not only that, but this relic contains one of the prized purple pinstripes that often pop up on Rockies relic cards. Pomeranz has long since left the Rockies, turning in an excellent 17-6 record for the Red Sox last year, and he'll probably make his 2018 debut next week.

It's been a long time since a Rockie has put up a W-L record like that. But many ex-Rockies find more success on other teams. Jason Hammel had a couple great years with the Cubs, although Tyler Chatwood is 0-2 in his first two games as a Cubbie.

I was lucky to win this shipment from that Super Bowl contest. It's surprising that the contest ended over two months ago, but I'm excited to be able to write this post with a ballgame on in the background. Thanks again to Collector's Crack, and don't miss his annual Super Bowl contest once the 2018-19 NFL playoffs are set!

The Trading Post #98: Bump and Run Football Card Blog

Before the season started, the illustrious Night Owl sent an insert card from 1996 Fleer Ultra's Rising Stars set. Despite having a few in my collection already, it had somehow escaped my attention that Coors Field was the featured stadium throughout the set.

Fortunately, Trevor from Bump and Run Football Card Blog was watching out for me, offering a few more cards and getting me about halfway to completing the 10-card set. I still need to get a return package out to Trevor, but I figured today would be a good day for a post, since I'm attending my first baseball game of 2017 tonight.

1996 Fleer Ultra Rising Stars #8 Hideo Nomo

The Dodgers are in town this weekend, so who better to kick off this post than Hideo Nomo, the then-Dodger who pitched the first, and so far only no-hitter in Coors Field history. That happened to occur in 1996, the exact year of this card. I was not present for that game, but this card is a coincidental memento of that event, sort of an accidental Topps Now card.

The photo of "The Tornado", so called because of his windup, even appears to be from 1996, according to the commemorative patch on his left sleeve. That patch is for the team's 35th Anniversary of playing in Dodger Stadium, where they started in 1962. Of course, the Dodgers famously moved to the West Coast for the 1959 season, forcing them to play in Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum for a few seasons until their shiny new park could be built, which is now the third-oldest stadium in the Majors.

Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, while woefully inadequate as a properly-sized baseball park, is getting lots of renewed interest as L.A. bids for the 2024 Summer Olympics, a city that is sure to reuse the iconic stadium that was opened in 1923 if they are selected over Paris, the only remaining candidate. Several other cities have withdrawn their candidacy in response to financial pressures and voter objections, reminding us of the tremendous costs of hosting such an event.

And they're not just financial costs. As we saw in Rio, there are plenty of societal costs, especially for those living on the land where the facilities will be built. And concerns about the environmental impact are partly what led Denver to turn down the 1976 Winter Olympics, the only city ever to do so.

1996 Fleer Ultra Rising Stars Gold Medallion #4 Cliff Floyd

That fact is something that Montreal knows better than most. Olympic Stadium, where the Montreal Expos played between 1977 through their departure after the 2004 season, was plagued with cost overruns and structural problems throughout their tenure. The stadium was built for the 1976 Summer Olympics, but wasn't fully paid off until 2006. Now the city doesn't even have an MLB team to show for it, thanks to a variety of reasons.

Cliff Floyd never became the star he was expected to be, only getting one All-Star selection throughout his 17-year journeyman career. But he was a good candidate for this insert set, and Trevor not only sent the base card, but also the Gold Medallion Edition parallel, which you see here. This parallel just gets a tiny bit of extra silver foil around the logo, quite a bit different from Gold Medallion parallels found in the main set.

1996 Fleer Ultra Gold Medallion #459 Eric Davis

Maybe Fleer used so much gold foil printing those up that they had none left over for a little 10-card insert set. But I'm a little surprised they didn't even emboss Floyd's card, as they did with other insert sets in the 1996 Ultra set.

I'll give your eyes a minute to recover before we move on.

1996 Ultra Rising Stars #6 Chipper Jones

There are several players found in this set that could be part of the mythical "Hall of the Very Good", like Jim Edmonds, Ryan Klesko, Nomo, and maybe Manny Ramirez. But Chipper Jones is the only one of the ten that's a sure-fire bet to be voted in to the real Hall when he's eligible next year. As the card mentions, he was runner-up for 1995 NL Rookie of the Year, losing out to set-mate Hideo Nomo, the fourth of five straight Dodgers to win the award. But Chipper, whose stellar career ended with a frustrating loss in the first-ever NL Wild Card game, did indeed become a future MVP candidate as this card predicted, even winning it in 1999.

Jones' career mostly overlapped with the Braves' residence at Turner Field, one of the key venues built for the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. Of course, the Braves moved to the new SunTrust Park for 2017, making Turner Field one of the shortest-lived MLB ballparks in recent memory.

Like many Braves of the era, Jones (or C. Jones, when Andruw was his teammate) was a thorn in the Rockies' side, and many fans in the Rockpile, the center-field bleacher section where this Coors Field photo was taken, got a distant view of him at the plate. I only saw Chipper in person once, on April 28th, 2007. Jones went 1-4 with 2 RBIs and a walk that day, behind a strong pitching performance by John Smoltz.

I remember having awesome seats for that game, right behind the visitors' dugout, so close you could hear the Velcro rip when players removed their batting gloves. That game also happened less than 24 hours before Troy Tulowitzki turned an incredibly rare feat, an unassisted triple play, one that Chipper himself lined into while hitting from the left side.

2014 Topps Green #117 Anibal Sanchez / Bartolo Colon / Hisashi Iwakuma LL

That about does it for the Rising Stars cards, but Trevor wasn't done there. I mentioned that I like green cards, so he found a couple for that preference of mine. This league leader card from 2014 Topps is obviously one of the green-bordered parallels, a shade that clashes slightly with Bartolo Colon's Athletics jersey. Anibal Sanchez took the top spot that year with an ERA mark of 2.57, a player who threw a no-hitter in 2006 that couldn't have come at a worse time for my fantasy baseball championship run. Hishashi Iwakuma rounds out the top three, while ex-Rockie Ubaldo Jimenez squeaked his way into the top-10 as a Cleveland Indian.

Three photos is a lot to squeeze onto a card to begin with, but somehow the green border makes it feel more crowded. It makes me appreciate the single-photo League Leader cards that Topps is using this year.

1994 Stadium Club Team #116 Willie Blair

The green theme carries on with this one of pitcher Willie Blair, and it's from an infrequently-seen team set that Stadium Club put out in the early 1990s. As in 1993, only a handful of teams were represented in this set, and while I do run across the Rockies from time to time in the Denver area, finding other teams is surprisingly difficult. In case your chosen team appears in this set, keep an eye out for First Day Issue parallels. At the end of the day, this is still Stadium Club.

2006 Fleer Ultra #147 Matt Holliday

Fleer and their family of brands found themselves under the ownership of Upper Deck in 2006. They wouldn't have much longer to go, but they did put out this Fleer Ultra set, keeping the full-bleed design going for a little while longer. A simple band of silver foil with a little upside-down crown on it gives us the player, position, and team, along with a redundant but more stylish printing of the player's last name above that.

Holliday is hitting in Wrigley Field here, as we can see Cubs catcher Michael Barrett behind the plate and wearing a hockey-style mask. You can even barely make out the bear logo on the top of his helmet. I wasn't that up-to-date on my decade-ago Cubs catchers, so I had to break out the magnifying glass for this one. In that same area, we can see that Holliday, uniform #5, is using a bat labeled #19. This was way before Charlie Blackmon, so that bat belongs to Ryan Spilborghs, currently part of the Rockies' on-air TV broadcast crew.

2017 Topps Gypsy Queen Autographs #GQA-RT Raimel Tapia (AU)

The "hit" of this trade package is an on-card autograph of Raimel Tapia, one of the Rockies' top prospects. In fact, Tapia was just called back up to the Majors yesterday, so he might even play a bit tonight. Trevor put this one in an Ultra-Pro penny sleeve, easily the highest-quality sleeve I've ever seen. It's thick, almost like that sealed Mickey Mantle card that Topps put in their 1996 Factory Sets, if you ever ran across one of those. But more than that, it even has a little Ultra-Pro hologram on the back in the lower left corner. I might have to pick up a few of these for my higher-end cards.

I wasn't really aware that 2017 Gypsy Queen was even out yet, as it's not something I tend to seek out until it hits the discount boxes. But it's a nice card for the autograph collection, and I hope it will become a conversation piece if Tapia lives up to his potential.

I'm awarding extra bonus points to this card for its obvious location inside Coors Field, with a great, if a bit blurry, shot of the manually-operated out-of-town scoreboard in right field. It's blurry, but I think there's just enough information on the Giants/Cubs matchup we see under Tapia's right arm to date this card to September 4th, 2016. Those white numbers on the right side of the scoreboard signify the current pitcher's uniform number. 47 on the Giants facing 41 on the Cubs translates to Cueto facing Lackey, in Chicago.

Tapia got on base a few times that day, and advanced to third twice when DJ LeMahieu was at the plate, once in the first after being picked off but advancing to third on the pitcher's throwing error, and again in the 5th when DJ hit a long fly ball. Hard to say which of those two scenarios this is, but I'm leaning toward the 5th inning, since it seems like Tapia has slightly less a sense of urgency than if he had just escaped being thrown out.

2012 Absolute #44 Demaryius Thomas

With Trevor running primarily a football card blog, it should come as no surprise that a few Broncos made it into the envelope. Demaryius Thomas, one of the Broncos star wide receivers, looks like he just made a catch while playing against the Minnesota Vikings. Panini was resurrecting Donruss brands way back in 2012, using the Absolute set for this card, along with a little inspiration from Upper Deck thanks to the copper foil.

I never played football as a kid, but I've watched enough to know that the way DT is holding the ball out in midair like that is just asking for a fumble, especially since it looks like he's about to block an incoming Viking on his right.

Football cards are significantly easier to date than baseball cards. You know the year the card was printed, you can usually make a good guess as to whether it's a home or away game based on the jersey, and as long as there's some indication of who the opponent is, that's pretty much all you need.

This photo was taken on December 4th, 2011, as the Broncos were visiting the Vikings. Thomas had 4 catches for 144 yards, on the way to a 35-32 win. The Broncos won it with a field goal as time expired, which was pretty typical of the way the Broncos won games in the Tim Tebow days.

2016 Prestige Xtra Points Green #63 Von Miller

This is a road game, as the Broncos typically wear the all-white uniforms away from Denver. I can't determine the opponent, but that's okay, as the shiny green foil more than makes up for a bit of ambiguity. The front of the card also has a rainbow finish, and the rest of the background behind Miller fades into the darkness a little bit.

Miller, the Broncos' star outside linebacker, has been racking up sacks for several seasons, amassing 73.5 since beginning his career in 2011. No Bronco has ever been on the cover of a Madden video game, but Miller was briefly the "cover athlete" for the iOS/Android mobile version of the game. Whether he was on the splash screen or the icon, I don't know. But that alone sets him apart as a Bronco. He's sure to become a Ring of Famer when all is said and done, and his MVP award earned during Super Bowl 50 is only a small part of that.

So that catches me up on trade packages, but I still have plenty of birthday gifts and card show purchases still waiting their turn. Thanks again to Trevor, and here's hoping the Rockies keep up the great season so we're not waiting for the Broncos by the time August rolls around.

Offseason

Offseason? What are you talking about, Adam? The season just began!

Well, I do realize that baseball is not the only sport out there. While hockey playoffs started last night, basketball playoffs are about to, and the first of golf's four Majors just wrapped up, football is definitely in offseason mode.

1999 Upper Deck Victory #83 Shannon Sharpe

Which is as good a time as any to show some contest winnings from Daniel at It's Like Having My Own Card Shop. He posted various groupings of four cards, and it was our job to figure out which one was different from the other three. Apparently, I did well enough to win a few Broncos cards, bumping my entire collection of football cards from maybe five binder pages to about seven.

I don't have a lot of football cards. Or many cards from any other sport. Hockey's a little bit higher, but when I say my collection is 99% baseball, that's rounding down. Still, it's an action-packed sport (perhaps too much so, say neurologists) and can make for some great cards. Here, Tight End and now-broadcaster Shannon Sharpe is evading a Washington defender.

Though the Broncos just won their third Super Bowl, most of these cards are from the late-1990s era of their first two wins. Shannon Sharpe was a key member during that period, and this is probably my first card of him.

Because there's only one game a week, and because it's rare to have a repeating matchup in a season (outside your division, anyway), football cards should be significantly easier to date than baseball cards. However, this Sharpe card has me a little bit stumped, because while the Broncos definitely played Washington in 1998, it was in D.C., and Sharpe is clearly wearing a home jersey here. Regardless, I'll go with Sept 27th, 1998, because that's the only possibility based on the copyright date and the new Broncos jerseys.

1991 Score #496 Simon Fletcher

1997 marked the year of the new logo and jerseys, leaving the old blue and orange in the history books. Denver is much more into the Broncos than any other professional sports team, and you still see quite a few of these jerseys around. Though they have similar colors to Washington, the Broncos are playing the Chiefs here, their longtime division rivals. I don't really remember anything about Simon Fletcher, but this was the only card that had the old jerseys, so here it is.

You've probably noticed by now that I'm dancing around using the actual team name of Washington, and unless you're living under a rock, you've probably heard about the controversy around their team name. "Chiefs" seems to be fine, as do the "Braves". So the NFL isn't the only sport with Native American names. In fact, looking through the various native-themed logos of other teams, Washington's probably had the least offensive logos of them all, even since the early 20th century. But that name. Wow.

It's a bit of a relief that most of the team names in Denver are named after geology (Rockies, Nuggets) or various phases of water flowing downhill (Avalanche, Rapids).

But in the naming controversy, I have to side with the challengers on this one. Of course, the name of a football team is a drop in the bucket compared to the high unemployment, racial profiling, poor education, and general lack of opportunity that exist on Native American reservations (and among most minority groups in this country, for that matter). But an offensive NFL team name is just one consequence of the attitudes that led to all the other problems.

And while I think the name should be changed, I'm sure plenty of people on this continent could care less, and would rather have electricity and running water than a 32nd non-offensive NFL team name.

1999 Donruss #38 Ed McCaffrey

Anyway, yeah. Football. If you collected Donruss cards in 2001, you probably ran across the 1999 Donruss Retroactive insert set. Donruss didn't release a baseball set in 1999 or 2000, but in addition to their resurgence in 2001, they created an insert set using 1999's design and team assignments. Little did I know they actually released a football set in both years, whose design influenced their insert product in 2001. I thought they just made it up from scratch all this time.

These are the things we miss when we focus on just one sport.

There's a little bit of foil in the upper right, and while it's a good action shot, this one looks pretty overexposed to me. Perhaps it's just the printing. And more than the Chiefs these days, the Patriots have become one of the Broncos' main rivals, especially in the playoffs.

2000 Private Stock #30 Ed McCaffrey

Here's another one of my favorite Wide Receiver of the era, Ed McCaffrey. He's still well-liked here, and even has a line of mustards and condiments that you sometimes run across in local supermarkets.

Pacific didn't save their odd cards for baseball, as this premium card from Private Stock applies a bit of rotoscoping to McCaffrey's photo. If you saw Waking Life or A Scanner Darkly, you know what I'm talking about. And this card was printed before either of those movies were released. But there's a slight error on the back, as the paragraph refers to the Broncos winning Super Bowl XXXIII against Green Bay. Though they did win SB33, Pacific put one extra Roman numeral in there, since the Broncos' win against the Packers was in SB32.

1999 Bowman Chrome #114 Marcus Nash

I don't really remember Marcus Nash either, but the thing I tend to appreciate most about football cards is how they vary slightly from the baseball design. Topps' 1994 Football design replaced a home plate with an oval football shape. And this 1999 Bowman Chrome card replaces the black woodgrain (just now noticed that) in the baseball set with the color and texture of a football. The texture is just in the appearance; it's not actually raised. But how cool would that be?

I don't know if all players signed their team name and position on the football set, since on the baseball side it's just a facsimile autograph. And I don't have nearly enough football cards to compare. But this certainly stands out from the ocean of black borders that Bowman is known for.

1998 Playoff Momentum Hobby #74 Rod Smith

Rod Smith was another important member of the Broncos' first two Super Bowl wins, and he got this shiny Playoff card to show for it. It's thick, but there's hardly anything to differentiate the front from the back other than a couple logos, the card number, and the copyright date. Displaying this reversed in a binder page wouldn't obviously stick out like most other cards, although the back does have a slightly less eye-catching pattern in the silver border.

2000 SP Authentic #25 Terrell Davis

And now we come to Mr. Mile High Salute himself, Terrell Davis. He won the Super Bowl MVP award in XXXII, the first Bronco to have that honor, and followed that up with an excellent 1998 season with over 2,000 rushing yards. Sadly, his career declined quite rapidly after that, as he never really recovered from a serious knee injury he experienced in 1999. He got this textured SP card a couple years before his official retirement, but though his excellent career was cut short, he still walked away with two Super Bowl rings and legendary status in Denver.

Thanks to Daniel for these cards, as they certainly mixed things up around here!