Shasta Bobblehead

This blog likes to cover all kinds of collectibles. A few years ago, one of the biggest trends in collecting was bobbleheads. Every sports team had at least one bobblehead night where you got a free bobblehead for attending the game.

Bobbleheads weren't just for sports. They ranged from Kip's Big Boys to Barry Manilow to Jesus. The quality of the bobbleheads ran from the cheapest thinnest plastic that broke easily and weighed nothing to high quality, extremely detailed products.

Of course the University of Houston had to jump on the bandwagon. One of the UH bobbleheads is the mascot Shasta. Shasta is in a football uniform (no helmet) carrying a football in one hand and an American flag in the other. It is a fairly high quality with quite a bit of detail. Overall, I think it is a very nice collectible.

It was distributed at a UH football game a few years ago and was sponsored by Coca-Cola.

Special thanks go to a generous Coog for donating the Shasta Bobblehead for the blog. I won't mention his name in case he wants his privacy, but he was generous enough to offer the bobblehead and wouldn't even take money for postage. His philosophy is it's just Coogs helping Coogs... something we can all aspire to.





Shasta visiting my office in Las Colinas, TX. I should take her to visit the Conference USA office which is just down the street. And yes, I used "her" despite the football gear. I'm a traditionalist who still believes "Shasta (she hasta) have a winning ball club. Shasta have the best."

Want to Help?

Cougar Cards is a blog intended to stimulate interest in University of Houston athletics and collectibles. I receive no income from this site and I’m not asking for financial contributions.

There are several ways anyone can contribute though, but first let me explain my long term goals. I plan on continuing with this blog, but I would also like to create a comprehensive collectibles site with dynamic content. For an example, see http://www.dukecard.com/dukecard.html. I’m a little ambitious, so I’d actually like to have pictures of every card available or as many as possible.

So how can you contribute?
1) Blog entries – Write about any Cougar collectible you’d like. You can be a one-time poster, an infrequent poster, or post on regular intervals.

2) Technical/Programming Assistance – I am not a programmer. I can do some pretty basic programming, but I’ve never written a web application so any assistance would be appreciated. If you can provide advice, answer questions, or even do some programming, I will be happy to have any assistance.

3) Gather pictures – There are over 10,000 cards with Cougars that I am currently aware of. Ideally I’d like pictures of both the front and back of each of these cards. I’ve really just started so I only have about 100 pictures at this time. I’ll probably never get pictures of them all, especially by myself, but the more the better. If you have any of these collectibles, you can provide images from your personal set. If you don’t have any, you can do what I do and find images on eBay or other sites.

4) Comment – I don’t have a lot of traffic to this site, but I have had over 800 visitors since the site began or about 6 per day. Out of those 800+ visitors, I think I’ve receive 6 total comments. Any feedback you receive would be greatly appreciated. Let me know what you think of a featured collectible, a card you’d like to see listed, my writing style, or just general comments. If you don’t know how to comment, click on the Post a Comment link if you’re on an individual post, or click on the number of comments if you’re on the home page.

If you’re interested in helping, please e-mail at cougarcards@yahoo.com.

1994 Signature Rookies Tetrad Signatures #53 Anthony Goldwire

Some players like Elvin Hayes are superstars in college, high draft picks, and instant impact players in the NBA. Other players have more challenging professional careers. One such player is Anthony Goldwire.

Goldwire was a junior college transfer to the University of Houston where he played 2 seasons, '92-'93 and '93-'94. The '92-'93 team made the NIT tournament with a 21-9 record in Pat Foster's last season as coach. The '93-'94 team had a very poor 8-19 record under first year coach Alvin Brooks. Despite that Goldwire made 2nd team All-Southwest Conference both years, was SWC newcomer of the year in '93, and is 10th in all-time assists for UH. He was drafted in the second round by the Phoenix Suns.

Over the years, Goldwire played in the CBA, ABA, 2 European League teams, and nine different NBA teams. While never a superstar, he had a long professional career that he and the university can be proud of.

Today's collectible is the 1994 Signature Rookies Tetrad Signatures #53. The front of the card shows Anthony taking a shot against Baylor in a UH uniform. It is hand signed and numbered on the card. The back of the card provides some information on Goldwire's UH career.

1981 Topps #17 Otis Birdsong

Congratulations to Robert "Fluff" McKiver for his 52 point night against USM on Wednesday. Anytime a player reaches a benchmark like that, it's time to review other great scorers in UH's past.

Fluff was only the 4th player in Cougar history to score at least 50 points in one game. The first to do it was Don Boldebuck on 2/7/55 when he scored 50 points against Sam Houston State. Next was Lyle Harger on 2/16/63 when he scored 50 against Trinity.

Elvin Hayes is the other player to score at least 50. He did it 4 times with his biggest game of 62 points on 2/24/68 against Valparaiso.

I was surprised to hear that Otis Birdsong never scored 50 in a game. Otis has the second highest season average in UH history at 30.3 points per game in '76-'77. It's amazing that he could average that high and not score 50 points. That shows his ability to consistently score every game. Hayes is 1st, 3rd, & 4th on that list.

Today's collectible is the 1981 Topps #17 of Otis Birdsong.

2008 Senior Bowl Donnie Avery

Donnie Avery is participating in the NFL Draft Combine this weekend. Good luck to him and to all Cougars trying to make their way to the NFL or any other professional football league.

Today's card is Donnie Avery's 2008 Senior Bowl Card. These cards are given away at the Senior Bowl Fan Freezy.

1991-1992 Kellogg's College Greats #11 Hakeem Olajuwon

Hakeem "The Dream" Olajuwon in his college uniform. How could it get better? Well... it's a food product based card which, until recently, have frequently been very cheap and cheesy looking. That's true here too, but it's still a nice card.

On the front of the card, Hakeem looks great going up for the dunk. The red border accents the uniform and picture well. The yellow Kellogg's logo stands out, but it doesn't distract from the rest of the card. The classic skinny UH logo is also on the front.

The back of the card is very basic... skinny UH logo, Kellogg's logo, & Raisin Bran logo at the top. The name, position, and jersey number are listed. Awards and honors as well as college stats for his enter Cougar career are listed. It's great to own a card that has fairly complete stats for reference.

Football Card Checklist

A list of Cougar football players and coaches collectibles is now available. It is available in both pdf and Excel versions. Besides the links in this post, they will also be available on the left under checklists.

There are 4386 cards/collectibles for 142 players/coaches. The list is based on November's Beckett so I'm sure there are already plenty of cards to be added later.

That's one step closer to my comprehensive list. A list of golf cards is still needed. Baseball, basketball, and even football need to be updated. And I'm working on my programming skills so hopefully my dream of creating UH collectibles software/website will become a reality.