Not-So Brief History of Modern Washington Kickers, Part I.

Kicking is weird. Kickers are weird. High stress, high leverage and low usage. Finding one that can consistently deal with everything involved is not easy, as a Redskins fan, this has been pretty evident since a guy named Chip was cut in 1995. If you don't believe me, try to follow along in my Not-So Brief History of Modern Redskins Kickers, Part I.

Brett Conway: 1998-2002, 41 Games
Replaced: Cary Blanchard, Eddie Murray

Replaced by: Michael Husted, James Tuthill

Brett Conway begins the fun and games, brought in for the last 6 games of 1998 as a kick-off specialist (that's right, we carried 2 kickers for 6 games) while Cary Blanchard did the rest of the kicking, earned the job as the sole kicker in 1999, but was then cut after 2 games in 2000 with an injury settlement. Conway would come back that season and kick for the Jets & Raiders, then would return to the Redskins for the entire 2001 season, but would get hurt again after 1 game in 2002

Football Frankenset - Nov 2021

 Enough in the scan folder to post, so here we go

#60-  2020 Rookies & Stars - Allen Robinson

Best post one-shell rule throwbacks by far, great helmet, great jersey, great socks.

Check out My Everything Else

 

The non-football portion of the package, starting with a long sought after card, one of my favorite parallels of all time 1999 Finest Gold Refractors with a great photo of Mike Lansing. These are limited to 100 and don't pop up very often, this is the first Lansing I have seen in years.

Check Out My .. Football Team Cards?

 

I have mentioned my lack of interest in picking up new products and cards in general, this again shows up in my latest COMC order, which includes a few "COMC Mailbox" adds. Only 30 cards, but I wanted to highlight a few, so you get them all. Starting with the second to last 2018 Spectra Alex Smith I need for the rainbow. Only the die-cut Orange to go.

Football Frankenset - Oct 2021

 It's football season and the Skins Football Team won so why not

150 -  2019 Prestige - Antonio Brown

A first ballot entry to the Zero Year Hall of Fame, and the third appearance for Antonio Brown although both others have been bumped.

Hey, I posted something. (Its a trade package)

 

Summer is a very busy time around here and looking back there were a lot of things I got that I never posted, mostly because I let them pile up to an unmanageable point, then put things away without scanning. So for everyone that sent something that I didn't post, it is always much appreciated and just due to my own negligence. That aside, here is a post. Starting with some sticker from Panini back in the day. I don't usually do stickers, but we have Marty Howe who never got a real Bruins card and a new Neely, so both were wanted.

5 from Sportlots

I don't peruse Sportlots very often, but once in a while, I find something I want to cross off my list bad enough and that is usually where I end up. Sportlots continues to be very good at what they are good at, weird hard to find cards at reason prices, and bad at what (I feel like anyway) they are very bad at. That being filling out a large order, this might be something easier for set collectors, but as a team collector, I struggle. The above Sandy Alomar didn't come with that problem as the shipping rates went from $2.00 for a single to $16 for 2-4. So for $2.75 I picked up a refactor of a Short Term Stop for the catcher binder.

Remember Vincent Riendeau?

 

He's Back! In Pog form! That's right, my most recent trade bringing in Vinny and his gross Jofa in Pog form. I defy you not to love pogs.

2 Card Mailday (a.k.a. I don't buy new cards anymore)

It wasn't a conscious decision, there was just a general lack of excitement for new releases this year. Eventually these two cards peaked my interest from the online release of Topps T206, both were needed for the One of Every Rockies PC, Elias Diaz is a catcher card, and since Gypsy Queen dumped them I needed to get my mini fix elsewhere. Not a set that features in-game photos, but I like these cards anyway. Entering them into the collection I wondered how many other 2021 cards I had. The answer...

Blogger Reading List broken?

EDIT 8/3/2021: Seems to be working now, hope it stays.

 My reading list now only shows this, can I fix this, is there another way to do this? WTF?

RLC Custom Card Project: Darren Bragg

Darren Bragg was more or less the typical journey-man outfielder, playing on 9 teams over 11 seasons from 1994-2004. The best years of his career came in Boston, setting career highs in pretty much everything between 1997 and 1998. He signed with the Rockies in February of 2000 and played in 71 games before being granted Free Agency in July of that year. From there he bounced to the Mets, Yankees, Braves, Padres and finally Reds.

The Card: Started with the Panini flagship design from 2019 Chronicles football, and morphed a little bit, the feathered edges almost give it a high-end product kind of feel.

Link to Project

Football Frankenset - July 2021

Trevor Story didn't win the Home Run thingy, so here is a Frankenset Post

009 -  1995 Stadium Club - George Koonce

I love Linebacker ready to strike pre-snap pics, I also love these gross Green Bay throwbacks. While I am loving things, I love that this completes the first page in the binder of the physical Frankenset.

Devilishly Good Trade

A TCDB trade with the prolific trader DukeyDevil, starting off with the elephant in the card room that has been ignored until now. Washington Redskins Football Team cards. Do these go in the Redskins binder? Kerrigan is already in there, but Davis never was a Redskin. For now these are probably going to end up penny sleeved in the Redskins keeper box, but as time goes on, I will have to figure something out. 

Comc Order: The Rest

 

Most of the rest of the COMC order, I managed to squeeze one more upcoming post out of the this, starting with the last two standard Redskins cards I needed of Brad Edwards, just a McDonalds Gameday, Police issue and a couple parallels from 1997 Pacific with the Falcons. These two were not the hardest to find, just happened to be the last two to find there way here.

My Top 10 Pickups of 2020

No, this isn't a big ball of wibbly wobbly, timey wimey stuff from 6 months ago. As a Canadian collector, almost all of my big purchases go through the COMC mailbox service, or are bought from the site directly, so here we are, a year end show off thread in June. Starting with #10, a short printed Art Monk from 2004 Fleer Greats of the Game, a card I have always wanted but never really tried hard for until this year, finally managing to pick one up for a reasonable price.

It's Here!

 

It's here! My COMC order that was shipment requested on Dec 1st has finally arrived. Now I can finally do a recap of my favorite 2020 pick-ups and actually have some content to post. Now lets see how many posts I can squeeze out of this.

TCDB Trade: The Team That Shall Not Be Named

 

Just kidding. Redskins. Redskins, Redskins, Redskins. This trade is all cards of the football team that is named the Redskins. Redskins. Now that is out of the way, you ever find a card that you think "There is no way I don't have that card", then find out you don't. The above fits into that, "The Posse" as they were called, pretty crazy for that era to have 3 receivers all surpass 1000 yards in the same season.

RLC Custom Card Project: Randy Flores

The Player: Flores is best known for his 5 season with the Cardinals, going 9-2 with 3 saves over 237 games, including a career high 70 games in 2007 and a World Series ring in 2006, but is including here for his two stops with the Rockies, the first being 8 games in his debut season of 2002, along with 2009 and most of 2010. His 2010 season was actually really good, going 2-0 with a 2.96 ERA over 47 games before being DFA'ed and claimed by the Twins in August. All told, he would pitch in 350 MLB games from 2002-2010, then would get into broadcasting and has served as the Director of Scouting for the Cardinals since 2015.

The Card: Really weird this the first 1971 design in the RLC set seeing as it is probably the first custom I ever did, but here it is, in all it's black bordered glory.

The link thing

A to Z Music Challenge

 A usual with these things I am super late to the party, but when I saw it, I thought it was pretty interesting, and the timing was good with more or less being priced out of buying new cards, my hobby budget has been going towards music.

It was also pretty easy as my collection is not only sorted into Discogs, but physical sorted alphabetically as well (at least the tapes and CD's, the vinyl is kind of all over and sorted by how much I like it right now until I sort out my shelving situation.

Prepare for serious genre hopping and lots of weirdness. I have seen this done with logos, but I am going to use my favorite album from said band. I am also (mostly) limiting this to bands I have physical releases of, so I might miss something, but if I haven't bought their stuff, they might not belong here.

 AC/DC – The first band I adopted as my own, the second concert I ever saw (Ballbreaker tour in 1996ish), and a band that still gets some play, but almost exclusively the Bon Scott era.

B.T.O. – Every time I have moved or set up a new sound system, “Not Fragile” is the first song I play to break the ice, the riff is what “Smoke on the Water” wants to be when it grows up. Ignore the hits "Takin Care of Business" and "You ain't seen nothing yet", those songs are bad, just check out anything Fred Turner sings on. Runners Up: Burzum and about 5 bands named Black something.

Corrupted – ‘C’ is probably the easiest choice, the band I have the most releases from, 33 according to my Discogs and at least one version of every release, is this Japanese sludge band that sings in Spanish, I acquired most of their stuff early, but the “El Dios Queja” 10’ is probably the most I have spent on a record. This band is probably the biggest reason I got into vinyl, as most of their stuff is only in that format.

Danzig – Danzig and the Ramones made up most of my early listening, the old stuff is still classic and there is enough interesting in the newer stuff to keep me interested, also lots of Misfits and Samhain which could be lumped in here as well.. Honorable mention to Darkthrone, especially the "Panzerfaust" album.

Electric Wizard – I count Dopethrone as one of the heaviest albums of all time, the rest of the stuff still gets some play, see Supercoven and Black Masses, but Electric Wizard earns a spot on this album alone.

Forteresse - Métal Noir Québécois at its finest, although it is a little embarrassing that even as a Canadian, I speak no French have to use google translate to find out what they are going on about.

Godspeed You Black Emperor! – This and the closely related “Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band” (See the album “Horses in the Sky”) or whatever they are calling themselves at the moment were a big part of a rougher period in my life, and I still hold some reverence to these albums for being there at that time. Album shown is F♯ A♯ ∞.

Hate Forest – Black Metal from Ukraine, “Battlefields” being one of my all-time favorite albums. The guitar tone, the vocals, the tempo, everything about this album just crushes you. Also not much competition at 'H'.

Iron & Wine – No other musical project has inspired my guitar playing more than this one, I always loved the fingerpicking and spent countless hours learning I&W songs. I actually bought my first microphone to record a cover for a long forgotten fansite/webforum compilation years ago. Just ignore pretty much anything recorded from around 2007 and newer, also known as the crappy "World Music" era..  Iron Maiden comes in a close second.

Judas Priest – So many great songs over the years, from the early Rockier stuff to the later Metal stuff, just a great band. “Desert Plains” still get the blood pumping. I don't own much Priest so I am going to take the easy way and post a Greatest Hits, although this was probably the first double cassette album I ever owned, so points for that. Jesu gets and honorary mention as I own a bunch of their stuff.

Khanate – One of my favorite bands from the period between my card collecting years, also known as the spending all my money on records period, evident by the fact I have multiple copies of their releases, and despite the fact I hate picture discs, I have two of theirs. Album shown is Capture & Release. Vocals not for the weak of heart.

Looking Glass – “L” doesn’t carry much for options, the Canadian drone/ambient project Loscil almost made the cut, but Looking Glass is the pick, Brandy is a great cheesy song, but they have some other great stuff including the amazing “From Stanton Station”

Megiddo - This is how I want Black Metal to sound, dirty, heavy, raw, mid-paced and smashed full of riffs. A band I have loved since finding them on Unsung Heroes Records many years ago . Also Canadian. Mgła comes in a close second, with My Dying Bride deserving a mention.

Nick Drake – Maybe cheating by putting this under “N’ and not ‘D’, but ‘D’ has much more competition. I just absolutely love Nick Drake, everything he ever did is great, but Pink Moon does it for me, subtle an not as heavily produced as his first two albums.

Om – Meditative doom band formed by 2/3 of Sleep, very cool, laid back stoner/doom. All of their releases are good, but according to my last.fm account Pilgrimage is my most listened to. I was spending a lot of time on the Southern Lord forums at this time and was buying a lot of related stuff, (see also Khante).

Pink Floyd – What do you need to say about Pink Floyd, go watch “Live At Pompeii” and tell me that is not the greatest band to ever live. I am going way out in left field with "The Final Cut", but I love the album and can probably sing the whole album off by heart. I find "The Dark Side of the Moon" overproduced ( I don't need horns in anything). Honorable mention to John Prine.

Quest for Fire – A great Canadian Stoner Rock band with one of my favorite vocalists in Chad Ross. Album shown is the self titled.

Ramones – Just simple fun and catchy, 3 chords, short songs, 1-2-3-4, get in, get out, no messing around. So much respect for these guys. "Too Tough To Die" isn't my favorite album by them, but it's my favorite album cover. Loco Live would probably be my favorite, but pick any live release by them really.

Summoning - A controversial choice as I own 26 different Sloth (Ohio) releases, but the Tolkien inspired Black Metal band Summoning gets the nod. Epic and bombastic, hard to pick a release as Stronghold is great, but Oath Bound has been getting more spins recently.

Thorns – A big part or the early Norwegian Black Metal movement, I started a fansite back in the day (grymyk.cjb.net) and got to correspond with a few former band members a couple times. The split with Emperor gets the album pick for the inclusion of "Ærie Descent", and that the double album version was probably my first "big" ebay purchase, back in the old money order days.

Ulver – Norwegian Black Metal pioneers that moved into their current state of a kind of Synth Pop. Despite the genre hopping, I do like most of the bands output, including the new one, "Flowers of Evil". They narrowly edged out Urfaust, the tiebreaker being that I have the album cover from “Nattens Madrigal - Aatte Hymne til Ulven i Manden” incorporated into an arm tattoo. (Actually, I probably should have picked Urfaust with the album "Verräterischer, Nichtswürdiger Geist")

Velvet Cacoon – Another super weirdo project that was seemed to be as much about internet rumors and inside jokes (look up the diesel-harp if you want to go down that rabbit hole) as the music, but was still pretty decent washed out Shoegazy/Ambient/Black Metal. Not a not of competition at "V" either. Album shown is "P aa opal Poere Pr. 33"

Wall, Colter – A fellow Saskie, have seen him live twice and both times were great, all his stuff of good, and I have all of it. Nothing like a cold Great Western and some Colter.

X - Nothing to speak of.

Young, Neil - If you total all the hours I have spent listening to music, Neil Young ranks in the top 3 for sure, I have seen him multiple times and every time was great, such a big catalog it's hard not to find something that fits the mood. (I honestly didn't intent to have so many Canucks on this list, it just happened).

Zpoan Vtenz – The only option under ‘Z’, a folky Black Metal band from Lithuania, only released one album and I happened to pick up a copy at some point in time. I don't own any ZZ Top and it would be too easy to put them here.

 Damn, that was fun. Who's ever idea that was, have a drink on me, Brother.

Football Frankenset - April 2021

The scan folder is full enough to post while watching the NFL draft, so here we go.

002 -  2008 Upper Deck Rookie Exclusives - Ryan Clady

I really wanted a card featuring the blue turf of Boise State, so here it is. Clady also had a pretty damn good career, 100+ games played, 4x Pro Bowl, 3x All-Pro, 2x 1st team All-Pro and a Super Bowl ring.

008 - 2011 Topps - Blair White

White didn't have much of a career, but at least he got a great photo on his 2011 Card.

018 - 2002 Score - Randall Cunningham

Randall Cunningham had a really weird career, from a star with the Eagles, followed by injuries, retirement, a comeback with the Vikings, going 15-1 and being named All Pro, to backup in Dallas and finally, one season as a backup in Baltimore.

037 - 2007 JOGO - Kelly Bates

A beauty of a Grey Cup celebration, with a bonus for a local guy who I have met a couple times.

 129 - 2011 Topps - Lawrence Timmons

Another from 2011 Topps, this time a sweet throwback with a bonus "Defensive player with ball" shot.

218 - 1999 Score - Rich Gannon

Always weird to see a guy taking a beat down on his own card.

256 - 1993 Playoff - Seth Joyner

This may be one of my favorite base cards of all-time, special teams shots just have so much going on, love it.

262 - 1997 Score - Dale Carter

I don't notice seeing this much anymore, but the mid 90's had a real helmet on backwards thing going on. Also just noticing how grossly off-center this card is.

325 - 1993 Skybox Impact - Anthony Munoz

Not much going on here other than a Hall of Fame lineman? That is, until you notice the Bucs logo in the corner from a short lived comeback attempt, that I didn't either didn't know about or remember until seeing this card recently.

551 - 1991 Pacific - Brett Favre

There is just something fascinating about Brett Favre in a Falcons uni, so until something better at number 551 comes along, here we are.