Tales of a JBF Mega-Box - Chapter 4 (of 6)

Continuing on with the Atlantic division. As before, these are a fraction of the cards for all the teams you see. I just didn't want to scan what was close to 200 cards.

There's really no rhyme or reason to the order - just the order I scanned the cards. A nice way to start with one of the least-flattering nicknames in hockey history - "Red Light" Racicot. Continuing on through the 9, we've got an interesting photo of some sort of kerfuffle on the ice with Oldelin. There's another guy who, when you google him, his name autocompletes alongside 'slash', for good reason.

That'll do it. 1993 Leaf means that you must highlight the back as opposed to the front of the card. I've got several of that Carey Price mask shot, but still like the close-up. And finally, a base card from the Montreal centennial set.

The Detroit portion of the box sure was shiny, I'll give it that.

The Senators portion was probably the smallest of the entire Eastern conference. But, I got a new Spezza for my mini collection, and a dupe of the Dany Heatley card that made my top 50 list. I had it at 47, but if Dany's departure were more pleasant, it could have been higher.

Tampa leads off with the Denis Savard. He spent a season and a half there, and I completely blank on it. Dan Cloutier is another one I blank one. There's another Black Friday card hiding in there, the second one of the box, with three more to come. 79-80 Retro parallels are also nice surprises.

More 1993 Leaf among the Panthers.

The Dion Phaneuf card is a red mirror parallel, #'d to 250. I'm really glad that the Glenn Anderson shows part of his 1000 point ceremony as opposed to just a generic photo that mentions the 1000 plateau. Mark Greig seemed to show up way too often in my junk wax pack busting as a Whaler, so seeing him with the Leafs was another "he played there?" moments.

The slug logo era. Ouch.

It just so happens that this wrapped up with my favourite pre-Senators team. Gold parallels and  forgotten rookies highlight this bunch. I've forgotten how long Tuukka Rask has been with the Bruins. There really were a lot of those 2003 ITG foil cards in this portion of the trade.

Maybe it was appropriate that the Bruins happened to end up last, as both of the hits from this division were of the Bruins variety (check out the Bruins name right above the green swatch). And the awesomeness of Panini Classics speaks for itself. Even though Juneau's name is once again spelled without the proper accenting of Joé.

8 more teams done. 14 more to go. I should be able to finish this before the end of the playoffs!

90 Masterpieces! Plus one!

Not bad for $10 at the flea market.

And darned if I won't show off all 90 cards. And if you were a fan of the Winnipeg Jets, you might think you were in heaven with this release 9 cards into it. Unfortunately, those 4 were the only cards they got. Corey Perry looks like he should be in a boy band on his.

Some of these in the second batch are really like - especially the Quick and Duchene. I'm guessing Alfredsson was still active and considered a Red Wing at the start of the season, so that's why he's a Red Wings.

Something spooked Kyle Turris! The Brodeur card is really nice, considering it was probably painted pre-Blues and pre-retirement.

You can really see the strength of the in-game paintings up against the posed photos in this batch.

Paul Statsny's card looks like a police sketch they'd release to the media as a person of interest in the rash of lawn jockey thefts plaguing suburban St. Louis. Hiller might be the only person with a new team in the set that warranted an in-game painting. Although I am sure I missed someone either on the base or SP portion.

Seth Jones' card is proof the puck doesn't need to be in play for the painting to be nice and intense. Parise joins Corey Perry as the victim of the boy band syndrome.

You knew that since this was Upper Deck, the Gretzky card(s) would look good.

Patrick Marleau looks asleep in his. And Anze Kopitar looks like he's whacked out on cough medicine.

Here's the second and last Gretzky of the base sets. There were also SPs of him on the Kings and on the Blues.

And the last group of 9.

Considering I paid for these what I'd pay for shipping along for this base set from other sources, I'm happy with this. I also grabbed one of the flea market repacks, which I'll get to at some point during the week.

And the Plus one.

via ebay, my first Alfredsson on the Red Wings hit. And it might be the only one that I'll ever add. I can't recall the Wings wearing black last season, I'm guessing this is still a Senators sweater. This red frame is /85,

Redeemed!

It may have taken almost two years, but this

has turned into this:

This is actually a pretty good pull now that I have the card, since it is an on-card autograph as a redemption. All the gold parallels at COMC appear to be stickers. So, this was more than worth the wait in that regards.

Here's the back of the card. Not only on-card, but /50 as well!

Mailbag *3: Shoebox Legends, Condition Sensitive & $30 a Week Habit

Mailbag time! This time, a quick recap of a trio of packages that showed up so far this week.

Let's go through this sequentially, in the order of this post's title. This nice vintage Mets card isn't as poorly cut as this scam would make it seem. I just laid an egg when it comes to cropping this image.

Fortunately, I did much better when it comes to these. The top 3 are actually cards from the Topps Team Sets, complete with the NYM prefix on the card number. From there, there's Heritage and shiny among the cards on the bottom of this sixth. A nice mix.

And what better way to wrap the PWE up with a pair of Delgados.

The other envelopes were of the bubble variety.

After seeing that Condition Sensitive pulled this from one of his GQ boxes, I looked for a card that might pry this from his hands, succeeding with a Tulo all-star relic. I'll just ignore any mentions of "spinal stenosis".

Since it looks like I'll be building this set this year, as I await any news about how the SPs will be handled with Archives. Here are my favourites among the base cards i got. Nolan because it is one that even if it isn't SP, his are still tough to come by in dime and quarter boxes. And the Gossage is just a great photo that looks great in GQ form.

Painted Alfie! One of the cards I really wanted from this set.

And a painted version of an already painted mask. While I didn't like the one pack I had, I kinda like these base cards more than my original excursion. Which might lead to a base set pick up. Actually, be on the lookout for a few more posts from Masterpieces over the next week or so.

Random Bills! A pretty nice mix. Dancing Kenneth Davis wins this card battle.

And on to the envelope that just showed up today.

How about starting with some more Delgados. Robert wasn't sure how many would be needs, but I think there was a pretty good batting average with these.

And here's some more for my Alfie collection.

And a nice shiny mask card for that binder.

And to wrap things up, here is an auto from one of my favourites. While I like the cityscape back of the card...

and the fact the back of the card is an Ottawa history lesson, as opposed to a Peter REgin history lesson.

So, the only way to wrap up a Mailbag * 3 post is with a Thank You * 3.

Tales of a JBF Mega-Box - Chapter 3 (of 6)

Time to continue this 800 ct box worth of hockey with a division-by-division work through. LEading the way, the 8 teams of the Metropolitan division.

And I'll start with Washington, for the simple reason that...

it is a good place to post the second of the two Starting Lineups that were in the package. This is the Jim Carey. It does seem like a good addition to my mask collection, if it were flatter, since the (removable) mask mask that came with it does include a pretty good representation of the eagle/aces mask he wore around this time.

As for the individual cards, way too many to show, but I'll hit the by team highlights.

Leading off with the Capitals. A couple nice highlights here. There's a SP of Langway, a Scott Stevens for my Rangers alum collection, a Black Friday card, and an appearance of the Kolzig Godzilla mask.

Columbus did present a plethora of Rick Nash cards, but we had a couple 'Oh yes, Federov did play for them" reminders. And a three pack of gold/shiny parallels.

More Scott Stevens in the Devils portion. Brian Gionta seemeed towin this battle in terms of volume, but I like the Jeff Friesen for the same reason I like the Blue Jackets of Federov. I'd completely blanked on his stint there.

Wow. While I did remember Roenick's time in Philly, I'd blanked on that jersey style from that mid 00's time period. That's probably a good thing, in retrospect.

Their cross-state rivals had plenty of cards from the usual suspects. Malkin. Crosby. Lemieux. I had no clue what set that middle card was from. COMC research showed it to be from something called " In the Game Be A Player Signature Series Retrospective". While I love the Black Friday card and the great photo on the Malkin, the winner here has to go to the throwback uniform on Guerin.

There were Staal cards among the Penguins, but they were dwarfed in volume by the Staal cards with the Carolina Hurricanes. The big win here are the two new Brandon Sutters for my 2/14 collection, with these being my 21st and 22nd cards of his.

Unfortunately, this Gaborik was a dupe for my 2-14 Collection. But, this Rangers portion of the set does show the insane variety of sets that made at least one appearance in the box. BTW, that's a Kitchener Rangers, not a New York Rangers jersey on the Steven Rice. The local rink board advertising and his sudden ascending to the captaincy are the big giveaways.

The best "Photo on the back" goes to the Rangers.

The Islanders were the sparsest of this division for base cards, but there are some winners here. the fisherman jersey isn't a winner in the traditional sense, just a nice oddity. But the team recovers with a 79-80 Retro parallel, and the best photo of this division with the perfectly timed Ray Ferraro.

But the Islanders recovered nicely, with a pair of hits. Love that Butch Goring auto - one of the better names in the history of hockey. He doesn't have that many autos available, so I'm really glad to add this one to my collections.

8 teams down. 22 more to go!

This Way to the PWE

I'm not feeling the verbosity tonight, so here are the highlights from a PWE sent by Mark @ This Way to the Clubhouse, in return for various Mets, Bills and Gabriels.

Starting off with a nice shiny card. As I've said, since I'm not busting much Heritage this year, so I'll gladly accept any Blue Jays/Mets via trade. The regular Jose Bautista is a short-print this year, as expected, so this Chrome /999 is even nicer, as I've become somewhat of a Joey Bats completist.

Neat cartoon on the back as well!

First up, a Chrome variation. And now, a photo variation out of Update. This glove kiss squashes the generic pitching photo on the base card with ease.

Back-to-back days with 1998 Metal cards. AWESOME!

And a trio of Larry Birds for my Celtics collection. The easy winner in this one is the middle card, which features the style of jacket worn by many of the greatest enhancement talent on WWF, AWA and NWA television every weekend. Ah memories. Thinking that Tony Leone and Mario Mancini actually had a chance.

So, there's a trade recap. Thanks for these goodies, and I'll continue to keep my eyes peeled for hovkey Gabriels.