I'm kind of, sort of a Blazers fan in the sense that I live 10 minutes from Portland. But I am not a die hard. I appreciate it when there are quality players/people on the team, but don't go out of my way to see games or collect the players. Of course, when they are doing well, the whole area seems to rally around them, and gets really fun, and easy to get caught up in. I remember 1990 and 1992, and the whole area was really on fire with fandom. It was a lot of fun.
So recently I was gifted with a stack of mostly Blazers "stuff'". The reason I received the stack was actually kind of sad. A fellow collector in the area had been putting away stuff over the last couple of years for an older Blazer fanatic. This stuff was not top of the line, more like a pile consisting of any old thing that he didn't want to keep, but that he figured the old guy might appreciate.
There were posters, magazines, newspapers and yes, a box of cards. Unfortunately, when my friend went to deliver the bounty, he was told that the old guy had recently passed on. Very sad. Anyway, my friend needed to share that story, and we had a good talk. He then asked if I would like the stack o' Blazer stuff, since he was probably going to throw it away if I didn't. I said sure, and here are the best parts.
First off, I am not going to show any of the cards. I know, this is a card blog. But they were just about 800 Blazers commons from the past 30 years, and only a few of you would even be interested. So...
Some mini-posters from BP gas stations. Probably from 1990 or so? Clyde was the face of the franchise, but folks around here still talk about Kersey and Porter. Duckworth was a fun and interesting guy, and Buck Williams was a very underrated beast and a huge part of the Blazers success in those years.
Overall, pretty interesting stuff.
Definitely some interesting stuff here. I'm always intrigued by local issue posters, prints, and promos - especially of a team that doesn't have a huge national following. I'm bummed the Blazers got bounced early this year. Hopefully it will be Dame Time in the finals sooner or later.
ReplyDeleteAwesome stuff. Old newspapers are fun to collect... because they're literally pieces of history.
ReplyDeleteThe biggest star is Doc, about to block Lucas's shot. Kareem was okay though.
ReplyDeleteOh man, I am super jealous of all the Blazers stuff and local nostalgia!
ReplyDeleteI used to help cover sports for our high school newspaper when Stoudamire played for another school in our league. Then he spurned Oregon for Arizona, so he wasn't exactly a favorite of mine. But eventually that Blazers trade happened, and he was a pretty important player for awhile.
Very cool items
ReplyDeleteBack around 1992 or so, when we were living in Beaverton, my mom went to an estate sale of a longtime Blazers fan, and ended up bringing home a couple boxes worth of Blazers ephemera for me. 9 or 10 year-old me was pretty excited about this treasure trove (which she got for next to nothing), there was everything from magazines, to Memorial Coliseum giveaways. There was also a first edition of The Breaks of the Game, which was kind of rare at the time, and probably shouldn't have been tossed into one of these boxes. Feels like a lifetime ago though :(
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