Thursday, September 10, 2020

I got Blazed

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.



Next up, very little Blazers in this bunch.  But maybe a guy the Blazers could have had????  Jordan mags are always welcome, and the 2 Clyde Card Magazines are nice as well.


Mostly local newspapers chronicling some of the big moments in sport!

The local take on Big Mac

A local high schooler who ended up making good.  Can you tell who that is without reading the caption?????

Here is a closeup of the caption.  He was a pretty big deal around here, won 2 state titles in high school.



And my favorite item from the stash, this 'TrailBlazer Portfolio'.  This was apparently given out by a local bank to customers in 1978.  The artist was Michael Lundy.

There were 11 total prints, one in color.  They are on some nice thick parchment like paper.  Decent quality.  They have been in the folder for most of the last 42 years, but are still not mint.  Some dinged corners mostly.  Here are a few.



And a close up of the color print, Maurice Lucas.  Not a lot of star power on that Blazers team, but a lot of decent players.




The biggest star on any of the prints was Kareem, playing some soft D on Lionel Hollins.

Overall, pretty interesting stuff.

6 comments:

  1. 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.

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  2. Awesome stuff. Old newspapers are fun to collect... because they're literally pieces of history.

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  3. The biggest star is Doc, about to block Lucas's shot. Kareem was okay though.

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  4. Oh man, I am super jealous of all the Blazers stuff and local nostalgia!

    I 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.

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  5. Back 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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