Happy Victoria Day!

I'm still awake, so I might as well get my annual Victoria Day Victoria post out of the way early. This might also be the most prominent appearance of her other Widow's Peak.

2020 Adventures in Repacks: Part 21 - Dollarama Duos

Today, it is a 15 card hanger and another Surprise bag from the Dollarama.

Starting with the hanger, there were actually 16 cards in the pack, making a nice even way to show off the cards. Also, both cards visible featured the Panthers. There some nice stuff here with an early Ryan Smyth appearance, and a nice patriotic card of Smyth's future Edmonton teammate with Gagner.

2 Rangers alums top-to-bottom with Rice and MacInnis, and that Brett Hull was a pretty junk wax famous card, so that's definitely $1 well-spent.

And your Surprise Bag contents. All cardboard this time!

Only one real notable photo here is the Adam Deadmarsh on the bottom. There's a trio of players making their first appearance in NHL uniforms on UD cards, Ference, Regehr and Saprykin, but Saprykin is the only rookie there with the others having Team Canada cards.

Not one, but two inserts in the pack. 1:23 for the All-Star card and 1:72 for the Ice Gallery. That's pretty good for a repacked pack.

While the promised HOFer in the pack is the Shanahan, the Potvin card with the pucks is a certain keeper, even for a Leafs card. The image also reminds me of the famous photo of Grant Fuhr and the pile of pucks.

70s and 80s was all 80s, with Acton looking like everybody's 1989 Industrial Arts teacher.

And an AHL card in the misc. pack. Fine by me to wrap this up.

A couple tough insert pulls and the Potvin give the nod to the Surprise Bag overall, but both were solid.

Monstrous

With the Expo postponed, I decided to still do a card-related splurge with the funding I had set aside for the show. The LCS/breakers were hosting their milestone 11000th break, and I decided to take a show. This was a draft format, but unfortunately the randomizer was none too kind to me and I ended up with the 26th pick.

Fortunately, my beloved Senators were still on the board at the time. While I wouldn't get the chance at a mega-super-rare legend, at least I'll be able to add some really nice cards to the ol' team collection.

Here's a sampling of the base cards I got for the Sens. There's definitely a good variety here.

As well as teaser of the inserts and parallels. The Allure card is from the SP portion of the set.

As for the actual hits, I'm just going through them in the order they uploaded. First up is this swatch from the guy who is probably the face of the team at this point.

Here's a step up from a higher-end release, with an on-card autograph to go with some relics. Condra stuck around for 5 seasons in Ottawa, not bad for a 7th round pick. He's still on this side of the Atlantic as well, playing last/this season in the Avs system.

Here's the first big pull, a Black Diamond card containing a pair of diamonds. Brannstrom was a first rounder for the Golden Knights, and came to the Sens as part of the Mark Stone trade. He was one of the more-hyped rookies going into this season, which he spent going between Ottawa and Belleville. It brings something quite different to the team binders.

There's a pretty nice grouping of rookies from last season. While the randomizer wasn't nice to me in the draft, I did land this 4 way relic.

Big card #2. The RPA out of the Cup is the primary chase one for the year. This would have been massive coming out of Hammond's incredible rookie run carrying the Sens to the playoffs. While things have cooled off along with his career, the memories of that run make this a certain keeper card. And bronze on a Senators patch is always great colour to see.

Given the circumstances of Hoffman's departure from Ottawa, his relics really aren't desired by me anymore.

Ugh. Next please.

There's an improvement. The 12-13 rookie class was pretty bare, but the Senators were one team that seemed to do well with their cardboard class that season, with Jakob and Mark Stone. Jakob went west to the Ducks in the Bobby Ryan trade. Another on-card auto, and it looks like that patch comes from the face on the logo, which makes it probably the first of that type of swatch I have.

A pretty boring manu-patch. If Puempel had stuck around in Ottawa, I probably would be more interested in this card, perhaps trying to finish the rest of the puzzle.

I was bummed by this at first, as the break took place in the period when Panini wasn't accepting expired redemptions. But now they are again, so maybe I'll be showing off something similar to this in the future.

And this ends with a pair of Mark Stone auto/relics. It is kinda a toss-up as to which one of these I like more. The Scripted Materials does offer a pretty unique item with the auto being on the patch itself. And it is an ebay 1/1 as well! But the photo on the Ultimate card is so much nicer. I lean towards the second one based on photo quality, and that it matches nicely with the Brady Tkachuk RPA I got in a prevous break.

And that's it. While I didn't get my money back, I definitely got some great additions to the PC.

More Credentials

I guess I kinda like the recent Credentials Contenders-ish release from UD. So here's another box!

I didn't get any Sens cards in the box, so I'll lead the way with a former Senator.

Here's four more base cards, from the numbered portion of the set. As with most of their numbered rookie base sets, the higher thought of a rookie is, the lower the print-run. So, in a few years I can look at this when MacEwen is the star and the others are in the KHL.

Parallels! Here's a red!

Here's an acetate. These are only used for some of the rookies, so they really can't be considered parallels in the traditional sense.

One more parallel, and this is the lowest numbered one I've landed in this. It can't be seen that well, but purple rookie parallel is /10.

The back of the card shows the writer might want to work on their homophones. Unless it really was in vein, which sounds painful.

Inserts! Here's the Rookie Science ones.

I was hoping the science would have something to do with restorative powers of soup.

And the Star of the Night inserts.

Here's a familiar insert from the first time through. It is interesting that I didn't get the unnumbered base version in either box, but I did get the /99 versions from both.

Here's a new insert. I figured a 'through the boards' insert set would feature a 'hard hits' theme, but nope, just another acetate. I wish they'd cropped the photo a little higher to create more of a look of actually looking through the glass.

My first box landed me an acetate auto redemption. This one should give an idea of what my Adam Fox will look like when it shows up.

A new insert, and an actual autograph that I don't have to wait for makes for a fine box.

As a Matter of Artifacts

Another box - let's see how unbelievable these advertised hits are!

I'm not going to go pack-by-pack through this, but still feel the need to highlight one of the regular base cards. And this one was the first one out. Without a Sens card, this seems like a logical one to show off.

Here's some more base cards from the numbered 'stars' portion of the set.

This redemption will turn into a Connor Clifton base card at some point.

A pink parallel.

I guess we can start the hits portion of this post with a pair of swatches from Ben Bishop.

I guess this is a sorta parallel. The vertical rookie relics are /499, with these horizontal versions are /199. I like this more colourful card over the two white swatches on the Bishop.

And I guess this is the unbelievable hit in this box. I saw the shield logo on the card and thought it was one of the Wild Card rookie redemptions until I got a better look at the card. This looks like it will turn into a Cale Makar /25 auto when it arrives, so this is definitely a nice pull. Eventually.

And when the Artifacts redemptions start rolling in, at least I'll have some ink to show off as well.

2020 Adventures in Repacks: Part 20 - Saturday Surprise

A Surprise Bag for this weekend, which contained this content:

Nothing but cardboard in this one.

The Original 6 pack was Detroit, and half of them were cards from the "Foil isn't very legible" years. That's Slava Kozlov in the top corner, and Aaron Ward in the bottom left.

That's a pretty good goalie pack! 3 mask binder candidates anf the only one that isn't is a Sens card. I like that average.

And there were two HOFers in the HOF pack. The big one for me is the Scott Stevens which is moving into the Rangers alum binder.

And one more Sens card, and one more mask binder card in the Ultra pack.

That was a perfectly acceptable $2 spent.

PWE Chronicles

The mailbag opens today, and out comes a PWE from Kerry @ Cards on Cards that is was nothing but Raptors.

Is Kyle Lowry really the Franchise player now? With the Championship, I can't really think of a better candidate. Maybe someone such as Vince Carter would be the bigger star, but Lowry is the guy I think of with a lengthy stint with the team, the team's success and player success.

But Siakam might be a candidate to knock out Lowry out of the position long-term.

This super-excited Serge Ibaka is the only other card from this year's calendar of releases. I could totally see myself going for a one page rainbow of this photo.

One more card featuring last season's champs, though!

The PWE closes with a pair of cards back to the mid 00s and the less-memorable era from the team. I just wish they'd also highlighted the player MoPete was going past on his card instead of blending it into the gold of the background.

Thanks for these, and I hope my not-PWE has made its way to Oregon safely!