Richmond was one of the last of the former players to arrive. I was very happy to meet him again after the Houston Fan Fest about 10 years prior. Bam Bam egged me on Twitter to come on out to the event, telling me that, “He’d be there,” As incentive to get me to make the drive from Austin. Very personable and easy to talk to, we covered a variety of topics in a short amount of time before I had to go.
He’s no longer a member of the Texans Ambassador program. That ended about a year ago. Now that the franchise is old enough, they have their own history and players.
Richmond inked these 4 cards, plus two others that were consignments for friends. I had probably 10 other cards, but I didn’t want to overload him. I think he acknowledged that by letting me know that he’d be up in my neighborhood maybe this year to watch a Dolphins game with a fan group and would give me a heads up.
Hadn’t gotten Henry Jones since… oh 1991 through the Bills so I thought I’d give him another shout out some 30 years later. He signed 2 of 3 cards- but omitted the one I really wanted him to sign- his Star Pics 1991 Fightin’ Illini card.
Cards: Upper Deck 1991 Browns Checklist, GameDay 1993, University of Texas Upper Deck 2011 All-Time Alumni, ProSet 1992, SkyBox Premium 1993-1994, Upper Deck College Legends 2011 Acquired: TTM 2020, C/o Home Sent: 1/6 Received: 1/14 (8 days) See Also: Eric Metcalf, Eric Metcalf (2)
Eric Metcalf is one of my favorite players during the heyday of my childhood, so I was happy to make him my first success of 2020. With so many cards signed by him at this point, you’d think that I’d written him more than once (successfully) previously- but no- the last time he signed for me was way back in 2014. How time flies!
Eric had some stellar cards over the years, and with me still needing him on his All-Time Alumni card, and his College Legends card, I figured I could shoot out a stack to him and take a shot.
Eric is one of the few pros that actually follows me on Twitter- which is very humbling. I’ve always felt that YFS guys do not get the love from the HoF that they should, and although he has been nominated on a few occasions, Eric has not gotten in.
Eric’s cards from this lot no doubt are again, epic looking. They always seem to catch him slashing out of the backfield into the open field. I loved his Upper Deck Legends entry from 2011. In fact I am surprised that they didn’t use this as his main shot on his UT cards.
The Skybox Premium came out at a time when dropping a color across a background was novel. Unfortunately these cards commanded too high a sticker price for me as I was exiting the market. I have slowly picked up one or two here or there over the years.
ProSet was done in my mind after a few packs at Cowboys training camp in ’92. I did not like how they changed the card design midway through the set and found it confusing and disorganized. I liked this version of the set and how they moved the ProSet logo down by the player name, allowing the canvas to be more free to showcase the player.
Upper Deck was a late entry into the football card market. I didn’t really think too much of their initial NFL set, however I loved their artistic subsets- especially their checklists which focused on team MVPs. The design of this card is just superb, and in a sense very timeless. I love the circle behind Eric. What possessed this artist to put that back there? It blends nicely into his helmet, and then the horizontal lines across it lower on the canvas- It’s just so delicate and well thought out.
Celebrating the game, the players, the cards, and the autographs for over 25 years.
