Expos-ing my new Expos

Time to head into my "To Be Posted" box and grab out another bunch of cards. This time, a bunch of Expos cards. 8 can be considered a bunch, can't it?

This is from a set saluting the 25th anniversary of the Expos. I like it for a rare appearance of the stands at Jarry Park on a card. Early sets for the Expos were loaded with either spring training or shots in the road blues. This might be my first card with Jarry as part of the picture. Also, Jones hit the first regular season home run ever in Canada.

I don't know if Val Pascucci is the most Italian name in Expos history. He's a contender, though. Val would join the Mets for a cup of coffee as his career drew to a close, and is still in their system as a coach.

Did you ever have a card sitting around that you have no idea about how you got it? This is my example of that. I don't think I got this from COMC, and I'm up to date enough on my incoming mail to know it isn't from those sources. Completely random binder addition, and no matter what the source, it is on the way.

O! Henry! Numbered to 10000. Still, being a numbered card is still enough for me to add it to the hits portion of the collection.

Why would I not want a card with a fuutre MLB manager sitting around blowing a bubble?

Random Vlads to end it!

All About The Penmanship

And now, the newest quintet of inductees into my penmanship binder.

The 2014 rookie class may have been popular with collectors, although the penmanship wasn't the best throughout the class. Quincy is by far the elite of the rookie class in terms of having a consistent, legible autograph. Xacier Su'a-Filo is the only other member from last year's crop that is on my watch list.

Nick Anderson's loses partial points for going off the sticker, but he recovered nicely. I really love the way the initials stand out, but the signature is still completed - at least as per room on the sticker allowed for it.

Madison continues his climb up through the Red Sox system, reaching AAA this year. With penmanship like this, I want him to reach the bigs on that basis of that alone.

Sadly, Jackie Bradley Jr has regressed to just doing a "J B Jr" in some of his more recent cards. So, it is this that will make its way to the binder.

On the other hand, Shelby Miller's signature has remained nice and consistent throughout his short career. Lots of loops, and they are the highlights of his autograph, especially when room allows for a larger loop. All it needs now is for him to add a smiley-face to them like Jimmy Mann, and I might be ready to proclaim it the greatest signature in sports.

And there you have it!

Words Fail Me

And face it, there are no words that can enhance this image.

2015 Adventures in Repacks: Part 37.2 - Being A Player

Time to wrap up the latest repack with the guaranteed auto portion of the break.

But first, the base cards! A rangers alum, a mask binder card and a Bruin among this group. Not bad at all.

And the auto. I've had pretty good luck with these. This one joins a Zarley Zalapski die-cut and base autos of Nikolai Khabibulin and the late Pavol Demitra in terms of autos I've pulled from this product in repack based packs. That's a pretty good line-up for a product where one could pull an auto of any of the base card guys. And there aren't too many autos of Tkachuk out there, so that makes this an even nicer pull.

It was definitely worth touching the stove again with this repack product.

2015 Adventures in Repacks: Part 37.1 - Touching the Stove Again

I busted one of these back in May. While most of the repack was what I would expect from one of these. But there was a pack I really didn't think you'd find in a Wally World repack. Namely, 1997-98 Be A Player. A pack with a guaranteed auto in a repack, and that isn't mentioned on the packaging? I promised myself I'd try another one of these.

These were the conents of this one:

The relic

All the sticker packs were 08-09 Panini.

The packs were:

1 2007-08 Ultra
1 2008-09 Ultra
2 2008-09 Victory
1 2010-11 Upper Deck
1 2010-11 Victory
1 2011-12 Score

And yet again, 1997-98 Be A Player.

Last time, I lead with the B.A.P. This time, I'll save it for my next post. Since I lead with the stickers last time and worked my way down to the hit. Time to reverse things and lead with the hit!

Which is Artem Ansimov, in all his event-worn glory!

 Time to dig into the actual packs, now.

8 contenders for the mask collection, and after checking and double checking my way through the binder, the only dupe was the Bulin Wall. I like that batting average!

Here were the inserts. Damn, that Bergeron is a Bruins-y card.

Here were the parallels I snagged. The Beagle is the one-per-pack Glossy version. Rollie the Goalie makes his second appearance in the break. I'm also surprised to pick up two gold parallels in the same pack. Even if the second one is Sami Lepisto. Who I already have a gold parallel of. How in the blazes can I end up with two parallels of him without making some sort of effort?

Biggest name on a base card in the repack? Probably this Malkin.

Favourite card? Probably this farewell card for Brian Rafalski.

The only Sens content in the repack were these two stickers. Beggars can't be choosers.

And of course, a bunch of really loud, really shiny team logo stickers were in those sticker packs as well. I've now got about 2/3 of this set solely through repacks.

And that's everything except the BAP pack. That's tomorrow. While it wasn't on par with my pull from Thursday, it is still probably in the upper range of autos one could get from those packs.

Two Autos for the Price of One

One.

Two.

2015 Adventures in Repacks: Part 36 - And My Best Dollarama Repack Pull

I've been surprised with an onslaught of junk wax in the past from one of these, but I usually get my $2 of fun from them, if not exactly that in book value. But this time, I definitely got past the $2 value mark.

First up, a pack of 1990 Score. It was the Canadian version, so that meant that the two Hartford Whalers cards were likely needs for Shoebox Legends.

Namely, these two.

Is the superstar in this pack the Eberle or the Iginla? When in doubt, vote for the shiny one.

The 80s pack was pretty interesting as well. You've got a Hall of Famer, but the big winner here is the Duguay and the white guy 'fro from 1981 Topps. Ron would outdo himself on the 1983 issue, but this is still pretty great. And it would definitely put me at the $2 worth of fun factor by this one card alone.

But the big card was yet to come. The final item was a pack of 06-07 Parkhurst.

An appearance of an old school Rockies jersey? Nice. An appearance by Rick Middleton? Even nicer!

An on-card autograph of Mike Bossy!?!?

F'n incredible! I knew my repack love would hit paydirt at some point. And boy, did this one ever! I doubt this will ever be topped from a pack at the Dollarama.

And the new 2/14 binder inductee is...

Anton Lesser! I've watched Game of Thrones approximately never, but when I go through imdb looking for 2/14 birth dates, I always like to check to see if someone has been in a show or movie that has or is likely to have a card set. That's how Danai Gurira of Walking Dead and Enrico Colantoni of Veronica Mars made it into the collection, and that's how Anton Lesser made it in.

This is also the first autograph I have of a male in the 'other' portion of my collection. The only other one is wrestler Hamada.

And finally, I have completed adding the hockey portion of my 2/14 list to my zistle list and that means all 4 of the major team sports are now there. So, if you're looking for stuff to send me, now it is a lot easier to avoid dupes!

Back tomorrow with more repack action!

O Canada!

Time to sample the latest hockey release, 2015 Team Canada Juniors.

Here's the pack. This is the first of many this season that will be featuring Connor McDavid on the front. I opted for 2 packs of this product.

Nice clean design. Full bleed throughout most of the base, with the border, such as it is, being red, white and maple leafy. No difference between the women's portion and the junior portion in terms of base design. The silvery card is a Hydro insert base. They fall at a rate of 1:5.

Here are the backs of the cards. Typical UD. Usually, I'd complain about partial stats, but since the stats on these are limited to international play, they probably aren't truncated that much.

And here's pack 2. This was one of the odder packs I've ever opened. Mainly because it was the first one I've ever opened that contained both a dummy card and a relic hit. The women's jersey cards are a little tougher pull than the men's, falling at 1:30 as opposed to 1:20. So, I'm quite happy to get this, which I'm assuming is the first women's jersey relic in my collection.

Still, getting a dummy card instead of a couple more base cards is kind of a bummer. UD doesn't have the typical Topps "Packs with a relic contain fewer cards" disclaimer on them.

And I do realize that I'm criticizing a pack that contained a hit. What an  ungrateful soul I am.

Outgoing Mail Alert!

Are these zip codes familiar?

26505
27314
32803
33511
35750
60586
If so, I sent something your way either Friday or this morning.

ObCards:

I just did my last purchase of 2015 Topps football packs, and have updated my wantlist at the side to include my 80 or so set needs. However, my last pack, technically a hanger box from Walmart, had a couple interesting cards, at least 2/14 wise:

Not only did I add the 60th Anniversary base insert of 2/14 baby Alshon Jeffery.

But also the blue (Walmart only?) retail parallel.

And with those two cards, Alshon leaps past David Garrard into 4th place overall on the football list.

Final Prestige Basektball Post

Probably the final one. I think. Unless I find a cheap box somewhere. Here, I grabbed the Raptors in a case break of the product, and there was a case of the high-end Luxe release. I got in late, and got a good deal on the Raptors. I figured if I hit a card in Luxe, I'd be happy. At about $250 for a box of only 4 cards, I thought it was worth it to take a $20 bet that there would be a Raptors card in there.

But, first the Prestige.

Not so good for the base, getting only 3 of the 6 possible Raptors. But, I now have the regular base card of Bruno Caboclo from this set, the Plus version and now the Premium version.

But, I did get 3 numbered parallels out of it. It was kind of a surprise to get the same number of parallels as base cards. All numbered differently as well!

No hits from Prestige, but I was really hoping for something from Luxe.

And it came through.

Oddly die-cut, but a nice on-card autograph /60 of the Raptors' 2014 #1 draft pick. I've ended up with a good number of Caboclos through breaks this year. He actually has a pretty good auto, and he's easily in the upper percentile when it comes to Raptors penmanship. Which is ghastly throughout the team.

1 new, die-cut Bruno is a really nice add to my Raptors collection.

But it is even better when it the case also nets me a beautiful patch. This is the gold parallel, and is, suitably for a nice patch like this, low numbered to just 10. I think this comes from the 'O' in Raptors, since it seems to be a little too large to be from the nameplate on the back. Also, the other patches on ebay seem more likely to come from Raptors as opposed to Caboclo.

But when the patch is as nice as this, I don't care too much about is specific locations.

This should be my final basketball-only post until Hoops hits the market in about a month. So for those that hate these posts, enjoy a vacation from them!

2015 Adventures in Repacks: Part 35 - My Repack (still) Has Fleas!

To recap, this is a brick of about 45-50 cards for $5.00. Usually, these also contain a hit of some sort. This one had an auto, and it was really unexpected.

2015 OPC Mark Stone - Visible on the front, and the reason I grabbed this. Mark debuted in 2012-13 sets, but finally played enough to be considered a rookie, and was   a nominee for the Calder last season. A nice start.

2013 Select Jack Johnson - For a Wolverines collector
2013 Select Jiri Hudler
2013 Select Keith Yandle
2013 Select Sen Couturier

2012 Rookie Anth. Jack Johnson - And another one...

2015 OPC Gabriel Landeskog - And, should I not build the set, one for my Rangers collection.
2013 Titanium Ed Jovanoski
2013 Titanium Karri Ramo
2013 R.A. Mike Smith
2013 R.A. Ilya Kovalchuk

2013 Select PK Subban - A pretty good base pull from a repack.
2013 R.A. Jonathan Toews
2013 Trilogy Doug Wilson
2013 Trilogy Jordan Staal

2015 OPC Roberto Luongo - See what I said about Landeskog, only substitute mask collection for Rangers.
2013 Crown Royale Joe Thornton
2013 Ice Alexandre Burrows
2013 Showcase Patrick Kane
2013 Showcase Ryan Miller
2013 Showcase Derek STepan
2015 OPC Devante Smity-Pelly

2013 Trilogy Erik Karlsson - Sens card! WOO-HOO!
2014 Showcase Braden Holtby

2014 Showcase Brett Hull - Another player that is always a fun pull.
2013 Showcase Jonathan Toews
2013 Showcase Theo Fleury

2001 Titanium Radek Bonk - Another Sens card! And it is Shiny!
2015 OPC Nathan MacKinnon

1994 Classic Cammi Granato - And here's the auto. It isn't certified, but who, despite her HOF status, would forge a Cammi Granato auto? Still a keeper, and a nice oddball auto.
2013 Select Dustin Brown
2013 Select Evander Kane

2015 OPC Matt Nieto - He is so baked. If this were a Sportflics card, his eyes would be like Hypnotoad's.
2012 Cerified David Backes
2012 Certified Patrick Kaleta

2013 SP Game Used Terry O'Reilly - A love finding base cards of people who haven't had them regularly.

2013 SP Game Used Grant Fuhr - Grant is a little more common, but I still wanted to showcase that mask.

2013 Showcase Wayne Gretzky - It wouldn't be a flea market repack without Gretzky.
2015 OPC Markus Granlund
2014 Trilogy Sean Monahan
2014 Trilogy Kyle Okposo
2014 Showcase Henrik Zetterberg
2014 Showcase Adam Henrique
2013 Certified Tuukka Rask

2013 Titanium Jarome Iginla - And it ends with someone that only had a handful of base cards as a Bruin.

Another $5 worth of fun!