Knocking 1 out of my Top 10 - Via a repack

I was at the *other* dollar store today. This is the one that has repacks as well, but they are 10 cards for a dollar, instead of 15. The offshoot to this is there aren't junk wax era cards in these. Truly a first world dilemma if there ever was.

However, the debate was moot this time, since this card was staring at me through the front of the pack.

This was the one card I needed to finish off the 2010-2011 Hockey Card Day set. I'd picked up a few packs here and there at the flea market, and ended up within one card of the set - this one. It made its way to my top 10 list, and it got crossed off today (and replaced with another set completing single).

And a mask binder card on the other side! What a great repack! What can ruin in it?

Dupes! They could at least have used the French versions.

The NESN 7th Man award might be the most obscure trophy ever pictured on a hockey card. That takes the sting off the dupes.

And the rest!

Canadiana via sportlots

I figured that my Canadians in baseball collection should probably have at least one card of a figure that comes up annually. Tip O'Neill's name is on the award given to the top Canadian in baseball the previous year. It isn't always to a major leaguer, as Rob Ducey and Larry Walker both won as minor leaguers, and it was once awarded to an amateur - Daniel Brabant.

The past three seasons, it was either won or shared by Joey Votto.

A Sunday Surprise Box

Why?  They were just hanging there at the Dollarama, calling out to me. I really should stop listening to inanimate objects.

Leading off with card sleeves? Sure. I needed a bunch of them for the group break anyhow. Since they go for $2.00 for a bag at the LCS, I've got my money back.

First up was a pack of 4 80s cards. If you are a fan of cards of relocated teams, you'd love this one. The North Stars team card is a bizarre choice, since it seems like Boston is coming out ahead on the scramble. Fortunately, the puck is just visible behind the Bruin, so it isn't that bad. I've pulled the two Whalers cards from these before, so the winner here is the Steen.

The pack with a guaranteed Superstar was next. Roy? Thornton? Recchi? The supposed superstar card is usually a more recent one, so it is nice to find older stuff in there. Roy's heading for the mask binder.

And finally, a 5 pack of 2000s cards. Leclaire's the only real keeper in this group.

So, I guess the highlight was the sleeves.

Group Break bonus #2! The rack pack on the way back.

There's a Walmart between the flea market and home, so I decided to get some sort of bonus there. Being as it was Canada, there was far more hockey than baseball, forcing me to chose between a 2012 Ginter rack pack and a 2013 Topps S2 rack pack. I opted for the former.

There were no hits, but I think we still did quite well. We grabbed some nice inserts, one of the SP cards, and all 3 minis from the packs were variants, and all 3 of those found homes outside of mine.

Here's what ended up with the picked and randomed teams:

Baltimore: No cards
San Diego: 1 card - Yonder Alonso mini (Ginter back!)

Boston: No cards
Arizona: 1 card - What's In a Name - Justin Upton

LA Dodgers: No cards
Oakland A's: No cards

New York Yankees: 2 cards - Phil Hughes base, Russell Martin mini (Ginter back!)
Detroit Tigers: 1 card - Max Scherzer base

Pittsburgh Pirates: 1 card - Roberto Clemente - Highlight sketches
Miami Marlins: Matt Dominguez base SP

St. Louis Cardinals: No cards
Chicago White Sox: Adam Dunn mini (Black border!)

Texas Rangers: 2 cards - Neftali Feliz & Elvis Andrus base
Tampa Bay Rays: No cards

Toronto Blue Jays: 1 card - Adam Lind mini (gold border)
Milwaukee Brewers: 1 card - Topps pennant "Ever Wonder..." app ad.

The only bad news out of it was that two of the cards would have gone to teams that were traded away.

The pack contained up 2 non-baseball cards, both World's Tallest Buildings cards of the Metlife Building & Burj Khalifa.

I decided to random them, and put the purchased teams into random.org.

I was hoping they'd go to the Dodgers/A's slot, since they didn't get a card, but the randomizer swung in favour of the Pirates.

Still no change in the status of the package, so there might be even more goodies added if the package doesn't arrive by Wednesday.

Group Break bonus! Flea Market repacks!

I hit the flea market this morning. Saturdays tend to be better for cards than Thursdays. I picked up 6 packs of 20 cards consisting of Bowman/Bowman Chrome/Prospects/etc. from this and last year. From those 120 cards, about 90 were on teams other than mine - an excellent ratio, even though the distribution was uneven among teams. Two groupings ended up with 19 cards each out of this. 

Due to a desire not to type out huge lists, and the fact I'll likely mix up Chrome and Chrome Prospects, I'm not going to list all of them. It is probably easier just to show the scans and the numbers.  At least the teams with only 1 card were teams from the random/bonus teams. Cards that appeared more than once were only scanned once, but listed.

Baltimore: 10 cards (2 of Johnson & Chen)
San Diego: 9 cards (3 base of Hedges)
19 total to Ryan H.

Boston: 12 cards
Arizona: 3 cards
15 Total to Jeff.

Los Angeles: 6 cards
Oakland: 1 card
7 total to Jess.

New York Yankees: 6 cards
Detroit: 2 cards
8 Total to Jeff.

Pittsburgh: 10 cards (2 of Solis)
Miami: 9 cards
19 total to Nathan.

St. Louis: 11 cards (2 of Tillson)
Chicago White Sox: 1 card
12 total to madding.

Texas: 6 cards (That Rowan might be my favourite photo in the bunch)
Tampa Bay: 4 cards
10 total to Jess.

Toronto: 6 cards
Milwaukee: 1 card
7 total to Robert

Cubism + Group Break Update

Firstly, the package was last sighted in Dieppe, NB this morning. I've now got a 10/2 delivery date on it. Tomorrow, I'll be hitting a flea market tomorrow, where I've grabbed hand-collated repacks in the past. They should add a few more cards to people's stacks in advance of the boxes arriving. They're just in team bags or shrunk cello packs, so I probably won't do video of them. I've never found any mega hits in them, but there are big names and decent prospects. I'll post the results sometime tomorrow.

I guess I can't resist grabbing those cubes of 2 packs and 25 cards every time I head through Target. The cube itself is a nice grab on its own, and getting some cards in it is always fun. The visible packs were 11-12 Score and 06-07 Parkhurst.

These were the two visible cards. The Gomez is a 'styrotech' card, and is meant to join with a second card for a combined two cards for the respective team. In this case - Martin Brodeur. The cheapest I can find is $7.50, so Gomez will likely be forever alone.

You knew there would be some of these. These were the only 2 from these repack mainstays, but 10 1990 Bowman made up for that.

Whether from the junk wax era, or not from the junk wax era, it is always fun to pull a Mario card.

The only mask binder card among the 25 was this one. It's a nice shot of it, but it looks really bad combined with the ugly Artifacts background.

If you're goonna wipe the background, you could at least do it like this - in a manner where it doesn't hide the player.

Here's the Parkhurst pack contents. Marian is always the one who I could never remember when trying to recall who the three Stastny brother were. Peter? No problem. Anton? No problem. Marian? Problem. For me, he was to the Stastny family as Rich was to the Sutters.

And here's the Score. The Alfredsson one, which commemorates his 1000th point as a Senator, is a likely candidate to make my top 50 Senators card list, which will be happening sometime next month. Not too high though, due to an UER on the back.

I'm not sure what a game in Helsinki has to do with Alfie's 1000th Senator point. At least the stats match.

$5.00 in fun value? I don't think so this time around. The error on the Alfredsson really killed my enjoyment level.

A long-ago purchased repack finally gets blogged - Part 2

Time to dig into the other side of the repack.

I was originally interested in this repack for the ruby parallel of David Price, but the Stellar '92 Issue of Sandberg was also of interest ot me. It seemed like a neat oddball card, and I'd never heard of the set before. Turns out that it might be kinda scarce.

Only 500 of these sets? I didn't get any certificate of authenticity and production with it, though.

Darrell Brown signing autographs is nice. Lonnie Smith's facial hair might be even better.

There were no 1991 Fleer in the repack, but I still got an assortment of very yellow cards.

Back-to-back Hall of Famers? Sure, they're 1990 cards, but since the Murray is from the Best of the NL set, there might be fewer than a million of them out there.

Best card back? Pretty much the default choice with every repack is a 1993 Leaf card, and how can you vote against this one from the Rockies?

The oddest of the odd wasn't this Kmart Wade Boggs...

But this card. It's the second time I've found a card from the wrong sport in a repack, but I tend not to complain about things like that - I welcome them as repack oddness and awesomeness.

A bunting card?  I figured that would be the only reason anybody would scan a 1989 Donruss of Juan Castillo.

I don't think Howard Johnson had any base cards after this 1996 one, so this could have been the farewell card for Hojo.

As for guys from my favourite teams, there were one of each.

Incredibly great older uniforms? This side of the repack had those as well. Seriously, this might have been my greatest 50 card repack bunch, baseball-wise, that I've ever busted.

Sure, every man, woman, and child in India could have one of these, and still have a good number left over to share with their neighbours in Bangladesh. It's still a nice rookie card to have in my Expos binder.

And here's a good candidate for "least flattering facial expression on a card". And Topps even decided to highlight it with the inset photo. Did Pat Rapp run over the dog of some Topps executive?

I can't end on that photo. How about a couple more minor league cards?

They are silver parallels as well. John Anderson spent some part seasons in the bigs, while Orenduff never made it above AAA.

Best 50-card  repack side ever? For me, I'd say so.