A new type of repack? Must try it out!

A trip through Wally World's card aisle showed something new for me. It was a cube of cards. The sticker on the side read that it contained 75 random cards, 7 packs of stickers, and 5 packs. Sounded like fun for $13.00. Sounds like a lot of fun to bust. There was another one that contained more packs, no stickers, and a relic card. But that was twice the cost, and I'm in this for the fun. Let's bust it.

Surprisingly, the 75 random cards was very low on junk wax. Just 2 90-91 Bowmans (Coffey & Leetch) and that was it. Much of it was stuff from the last few years. A blast to go through at quite the reasonable price. The stickers were 2 packs of 08-09, and 5 of 09-10 Panini. The packs were 07-08 Victory, 97-98 Donruss, 98-99 Collector's Choice, 10-11 Upper Deck S1 and 08-09 Ultra.

Time to show off the Top 20 spoils. In alphabetical order.

08-09 Ultra Derick Brassard. No hits in the cube, but this one would be the closest thing to one. He's been putting up pretty good numbers since his move to New York this season in the Gaborik trade. The only card in the bunch that was toploader worthy.

2011-12 Upper Deck Daniel Briere. A nice interview shot, but the bonus is the guy on the left recording/photographing Briere during this. A card of someone taking a picture

2010-11 Score Rookies & Traded Evan Brophey. He's part of my top 20 for MST3K related reasons. As soon as I saw his last name, I thought to a riff from Being From Another Planet. As the name for actor Kevin Brophy appears on the screen, Servo riffs "Brophy! That's when your brother wins a trophy!"

Yesterday, a Rifftrax reference in my post. Today, MST3K. I hope I can think of a Cinematic Titanic one for Part 2 of this post.

2011-12 Upper Deck Braydon Coburn. My second Flyer from the same set to make this list. Poor Jeff Skinner.

2010-11 Upper Deck Sidney Crosby. I've started to enjoy a nice intense face-off photo lately. I can't really figure out why.

1997-98 Donruss Grant Fuhr. Not so much for the mask shot, although this one will move into the binder at some point. It's for the Blues player (Richard Persson) sliding in and trying to block the shot and appearing even to try to poke the puck away from Keith Tkachuk. I love Fuhr cards, but this card would be more surreal and even better if it was a card for Persson, who didn't have many over his career.

2008-09 Panini Stickers - JS Giguere. This will be my second sticker in the mask binder, joining an OPC insert from this year of Ondrej Pavelec. In fact, it might be the best shot in there of Giguere's two faced duck mask.

2011-12 Upper Deck Thomas Greiss. 3 mask cards in a row? Sure thing. Although I'm almost certain this a mask binder card already. 2 more to come in the second half of the write-up.

 1997-98 Donruss Dave Hawerchuk. The great Dave Hawerchuk. Yup. Dave. They did get it right on the back for some reason.

 2011-12 Upper Deck Nathan Horton. I love ice level shots. Makes everything seem larger than life.

Halfway through. 7 more cards and 3 more stickers next time for a repack that I definitely got my money's worth in terms of entertainment value.

Masked Mondays - Week #16

My favourite set of the year dropped recently, and I finally had a chance to get to the store and pick up a pack.

I'm going to resist the urge to bust my way to the complete set and simply either pick up the base set on ebay, or perhaps hunt down one at the Expo on the weekend. The one pack I grabbed contained no hits,   but still some nice cards.

Luke's wrapped up his overage season in the WHL. Undrafted in the NHL. Still, a mask binder certainty card, although the other side of his mask is far more interesting than the one that appears on this side.

A bland, black mask. He was traded from Prince Albert to Spokane during the previous season, so perhaps this was a stopgap paint job.

Another overage player. Wow. I do like the honeycomb design to go with the team's colours, but that's way too much yellow for a hockey card. Even by 1991 Fleer standards. Yowch.

Another plain mask. Although after just watching the Rifftrax interpretation of "The Apple", Moose Jaw will always be my pick for most hilarious Canadian prairie town. But only if "Moose Jaw" is pronounced by Shake from the movie.

Decoy/blocker card.  Now we're off to the decades portion of the pack. The bulk of the checklist is cards from the decades and CHL players, and the only cards I found in the pack were from this subset.

 Here, the  border design changes from the team colours to a generic one. Sure to make it a little more challenging for box breakers. Still, we do get a good view of Sean's Whalers mask. Binder worthy.

How can you hate a card of a man who gave the world "Honky The Christmas Goose"?

Jim Carey. Although he flamed out pretty quickly after a pair of really good season in Washington, this is another mask binder certainty. Although I'd rather have his "The Mask" mask.

And finally, someone well before my time that I'd never heard of prior to pulling his card. But anything that creates an inspiration to google the player is always a good card.

Another Sunday Surprise Box

Since I'll probably be up to my arse in Expo goodies starting next weekend, this might be my last of these for a while. Let's open up with a 5 card pack with a guaranteed HOFer.

None among this group, although I do like both cards of the Steves. But who will my HOFer be?

Sure, using a post retirement card is probably cheating. But I'll gladly not complain about rule stretching for a Parkhurst Champions card. I don't think there's a card in that set that isn't binder worthy.

Now, the 5 card pack with a guaranteed superstar.

Kessel? Whatever you say. He's decent enough, but not quite what I think of when I hear superstar. The big upside of this bunch is the Peter Schaeffer. Another one bites the dust off of list of "Get at least one card of every Senator ever".

Then again, maybe this is the superstar card. Over 5000 goals over 3 years! Let's head off to the 80s with my next 4 cards.

If you liked cards of Habs HOFers, this would have been the repack for you. Shutt and Gainey in the same pack. I'll forgive Bob's hair. It was the 80s. More HOFers in this pack than the actual HOF pack. Kjell Dahlin, I'd never heard of. He'd only have big league cards in this, the 1986 release.

And now, to the 8 card 90s pack. That sounds like junk wax stuff to me!

OK. While there was definitely junk wax here, there were keepers. I didn't have that Alfredsson card, so that's enough to make me pleased with these cards. Huard is another new face in my Sens collection. However, by far my favourite was the Esa. It's all about the tongue!

Trade w/ The Card Chop

Two weeks ago, at a card show, I came across a bin filled with team sets. 3 for $5.00. Sure! I might find some trade bait here. I ended up taking 3 with me. A 1991 OPC Giants set (already in the mail), a 05-06 Parkhurst Columbus Blue Jackets set  I have no idea why, but, I got my first ever Duvie Westcott card!

This will be the only time I will ever have a reason to post this card. I'm taking advantage of it.

Back to the team set pickups, the 3rd set was a '91 O-Pee-Chee Braves set. Yes, that's the team set that includes the pretty rare Chipper Jones OPC rookie card. It was in there, but had a dinged corner to take it down from mint condition. I had no intention of keeping the set. I just knew there was someone that had that  card on their most wanted list. I googled my way to the blog in question, and ended up trading a few cards for a few cards. Since I didn't pay a lot for the Chipper originally, I didn't want a lot. I could have ebay'd it, but I figured a fellow card blogger would get more joy from it.

I still ended up very happy, trading $1.66 worth of cards for these:

One of the two 70s Blue Jays cards I needed for my alphabetical set. It isn't numeric, so I'm not sure if it counts as a Frankenset. Yet. This one was on my top 10 list, and it has been replaced with the last 70s card I need for that.

While I am building the base set of Archives, I'm ignoring the SPs and inserts. Still, a nice Mays from the 3D inserts is nice. Although I feel very drunk looking at the card, and I'm a teetotaler.

And to wrap it up, 15 cards from the base set get crossed off my list.

I was certain I had the Dickey card, but my look through the set showed otherwise. Despite their weak start, the city is still interested in R.A., so I'm glad I don't have to grab this one at the Expo. I also love cards with secondary jerseys on, so the Strasburg is another one I'd be glad to have even if I wasn't building the set. And even Mets-loving me can welcome a Yogi Berra card.

Thanks for the great cards!

Ah, a Grant Fuhr card

YARGH! He looks like Ken Griffey Jr. from that Simpsons episode with a 'fro! I'll be seeing this card in my nightmares.

The rest of the Fairfield repack

And now, for everybody who liked the first post ... the other side!

First up, my absolute favourite photgraph of the bunch. Poor Jacob looks absolutely terrified. "I didn't think he'd throw so fast and so close to me!" He did spend a few years in the bigs, so I'm happy to know that this wasn't his only card. He's got about 60 according to zistle.

Another card so nice, they gave it to me twice. Any Jack Lazorko fan boys out there?

A pair of painted cards for my binders. I never knew that they did minor league portrait cards.

Another pair of Hall of Famers on this side of the repack. It's neat that the honorary captains were given cards in the insert sets.

This parallel was another one of the visible cards. For those that care about such things, the others were a 2005 Bowman Heritage Matt Morris and a 60 Years of Topps Derek Jeter reprint.

While he's not one of the guys I collect, I always like pulling cards of El Presidente. It is all about the memories of watching Sunday afternoon 'El Perfecto'.

If you liked Joel Skinner Donruss cards, you'd have loved this repack!

In addition to the Stinnett posted yesterday, there were 3 other Mets cards in the pack. Not much, but a Met card is a Met card. The Leach is nice and glossy, and Jack Savage is what Dime Box Nick would call a Zero-Year card. Savage has appeared in the exact same # of major league innings for the Mets as I have. I blame the visible can of Skoal.

Finally, the package said to "Look for memorabilia cards!". I didn't expect one to show up, but there was one. Not one that I'm going to retire on, but I won't complain about it:

Not a bad haul for $5.00.

The ol' "What Game is that from?" game!

This was among the 50 cards lurking on the other side of the Fairfield repack. It was quite junk wax, but I still worked my way into the teens for keeper cards. But, a closer examination of one of them made me decide to have some fun.

Using only baseball-reference, is it possible to determine when the photo on this card was taken?

OK. So it is a 2006 Upper Deck card, so it can be surmised it was from the 2005 season. The player on his way to first appears to be a Cleveland Indian on his way down to first. The Twins are in their home whites, so we can whittle things down to a home game against Cleveland.

There were three homestands against Cleveland during the season. Santana didn't start in the first one, but did on 6-2-2005 during the second one. That appears to be a "C" on the jersey. The only player on the Indians with a "C" as the first letter in his last name was Coco Crisp. Against Santana, he struck out twice, and hit a home run. Santana never fielded a ball in play with Crisp at the plate in that game.

Off to the final homestand. Santana started the second game on September the 3rd. Again, Crisp is the only "C" playing that day.

The first two times to the plate, he flied out. The third time? "Bunt Groundout: P-1B (Front of Home)".

By jove, I think we've got it!

On the first pitch of the 7th inning, Coco Crisp dropped down a bunt, which Santana fielded and threw on to first for the out.

Another trip to Target, another Fairfield baseball repack

Another 100 cards for $5.00. I was considering grabbing a hockey re-pack this time, but stuck with the baseball. The package promised "Look for memorabilia cards!". I didn't expect to find any, but it turns out there was one lurking in there. Nothing major, but it was a nice unexpected find.

I'll post that one tomorrow. Today, the 50 cards on the left hand side of the package.

This visible card was the reason I settled on this particular repack. A Carlos Delgado card I didn't have! I have several minor league cards of his, but those feature him at A ball in Dunedin. This has him at AA in Knoxville. $5 is steep for the choice, but I figured there would be enough interesting stuff among the remaining cards to make it worthwhile.

The two oldest cards in the repack. No complaints, though.

A card so nice, they gave it to me twice! This would also happen in the second group of 50 cards on the other side of the package.

It would have been more appropriate if it were this card that showed up twice in the pack.

The more I come across them, the more I'm convinced that catcher's mask cards should move into the hockey mask binder. There only seem to be a couple in each set that would qualify, so trying to acquire them wouldn't exactly be a Herculean task. The only problem is I have to identify the catchers that wore that style, and hope that an image featuring them is visible somewhere so it can go on my wantlist.

Hey! A new Kelly Stinnett for my 2/14 binder!

And another Canadian on a card as well.

Only two 1990 Fleer in the repack, right beside each other. And both players who passed way far too soon. Depressing, but this one was still the most depressing repack I've ever opened.

I had to break out the google to figure out which set this card was fun. 1989 Donruss Baseball's Best, apparently.

I know somebody who'd be interested in the photo on the back of this card!

And to finally round out this portion of the pack, a trio of Hall of Fame cards. No complaints about this!