Best Mail Week EVER Part 5: Honoring My Roots

With a lot of actual needs out of the way, I was free to spend ridiculously on the site. And so I did, starting with a few cards that honor my childhood football heritage - most notably the New England Patriots.

The first card is an oddball that I discovered while searching for Adam Vinatieri cards. While it's sad that he left the Pats for the rival Colts and won titles there, I'll still never forget all his heroics for the Pats in the first and second bowls that we won. Super Bowl XXXVI, the Pats first win, is especially meaningful, so it was absolutely amazing to be able to pick up a piece of that game in the form of this card:
I have no idea exactly what it is, but according to the back of the card that little field goal post shaped relic is actually from a goal post from Super Bowl XXXVI. That, to me, is super cool, even if it's from the goal post on the other side of the field that had nothing to do with Vinatieri's kick. It's just nice to have a piece commemorating that game, which was the first professional sport championship I ever experienced as a fan (the Red Sox, Celtics, and Bruins obviously followed over time) and still remains one of the fandom high points of my life. It's also cool to honor Vinatieri for his time in New England, even if it is long gone.


My other Patriots pick up belongs to a guy who never left New England, even taking a pay cut to stick around. He won't be Canton Bound (at retirement he ranked 82nd in catches and 145th in receiving yards), but from 1995 to 2006 in New England it didn't get much better than Troy Brown:
This card was remarkably cheap to me, but I'm sure it's appropriately priced given the lack of fanfare surrounding Brown outside of New England. The guy was a gamer though, with the 2001 Super Bowl season acting as the peak of his career. In that ridiculous season, Brown went off for 101 catches, 1,199 yards, and 5 touchdowns. He also ran 11 times for 91 yards. He then added 29 punt returns, with 2 returned for touchdowns. He then capped all that off with 6 receptions for 89 yards in the Super Bowl and a Championship.

The rest of Brown's career wasn't as statistically flashy, but the guy still did a lot for the Patriots even when numbers didn't show it. So I'm glad to have his auto join my small collection of Patriots autos, as he's definitely one of my favorite Patriots of all time.


The final card I picked up is the rookie card of my favorite quarterback as a kid. And it's someone kind of random - Warren Moon:
I love the look of this card a lot, and I especially love that the card includes his CFL stats on the back, since it's hard to discuss Moon without including his CFL career. Without the CFL stats Moon was still a great player, with his 49,325 passing yards and 291 touchdowns each good for 5th all time. With the CFL included, however, Moon would be second all time in each category, with his yardage only about 500 yards short of the leader Brett Favre.

If there's a knock on Moon it's that his teams never did well in the playoffs (after all, it was his Oilers that fell to that famous Bills comeback in the early 90's). But few quarterbacks could sling it as well as Moon, which makes me excited to finally have the guy's rookie card. This baby will definitely be in my collection a long time.

Up Next: More splurge spending, but more random