One Card Only: I'm Still 12

Your totally immature card of the day:

We have a Finest Atomic Refractor of Torrey Smith. Sure, this card might be shiny, but why would one call this an immature card?

Finest Atomic Refractor Torrey Smith.

Oh.

At least that's still better than what Hector Olivera got on his Archives Snapshots card.

Two Breaks for the Price of One

And now, the second break in which I got a free spot, and got the Leafs spot.

One of the products in this was Portfolio, which was such a fun set for photography. While there are often celebration photos in sets, the post-game goalie congrats don't get enough love. So, here's one of them getting the honour on this rookie card.

Here's the rest of the base cards. Portfolio wins big here, with a new Kadri for my Rangers alumni collection, and Borje Salming's classic helmet is always welcome.

Here are some numbered cards. As his name would indicate, Christopher Gibson was obviously born in Finland (Finnish mom, St. Lucian dad). Now that's the fun type of story that belongs on the back of a card. Of these, I'll be keeping the bottom 2, but the top ones will likely become part of a future serial numbered insanity post.

My first of two Leafs hits was this on-card autograph. He only spent parts of one season with Leafs, and is in the KHL now.

How about some literature to end it?

It is pretty threadbare in terms of text, but this and the Craig should be enough to cover the cost of the break.

Some keepers. Some not so much, but a good pair of breaks overall.

Two Breaks for the Price of One

I got into a random mixer group break recently with LCS/Breakers Clouts&Chara. The randomizer landed on the Bruins for me, and it is time to show off the loot.

Starting with some base cards. And a nice view of the MSG ceiling on that Horton, which I'm sure I've posted before.

Some Select base.

And my first look at this year's Trilogy release. A little too much gold for my liking on this design. Unless you're releasing Gold Standard, it probably should be toned down a bit when mixed with the white.

And 2014 SP Authentic wraps it up. 4 different jerseys spread across 4 cards. Nice.

And those SP Authentic cards lead into the first inserts of the break, coming from the UD update portion. These really aren't traded cards, as both were Bruins coming into the season, and Smith had appearances in several other releases. This was the closest Svedberg came to getting a base card in anything for this season. He's been in the KHL the past two years.

Here's an on-card auto of someone else who is back in the KHL at this point, after appearing in 9 games over the past couple seasons for Boston.

Sure, this is a simple one-colour swatch. But it is a one-colour swatch of a Hall of Famer.

And a second on-card auto ends the hit portion of this break. Probably not going to keep this. While it looks nice on the black & white photo, it really doesn't hit any of my collections. Strange that I'd prefer a plain white swatch to an on-card auto, but that's the way things go sometimes.

Finally, the title of this post becomes relevant. If you enter into one of their random breaks, you get a chance at a free spot in their next random break. My name came up for the free spot there, so more cards came my way. Unfortunately for my collecting tastes, it landed on the Leafs that time. But I still got some nice cards from that, and those will be in the next post.

One Card Only: One Reason

I bought this card just because I liked the Charlotte Checkers logo. The attached autograph is a bonus.

I said I had a reason. I didn't say it wasn't a silly one.

2017 Adventures in Repacks - Part 3: Drugstore Cardboy

A pair of hangers while at the Shoppers Drug Mart to get some sweet, nourishing codeine is always a nice bonus. The price is up a bit from the last time I did this (.99), but Parkhurst is always an interesting bust, and the 05-06 Ultra gives a shot at cards from that excellent rookie class. Let's dig in!

So much for chasing the top rookies, even though I did land two of them. Jay McClement isn't a superstar, but he is still active in the league twelve + years later, so that isn't too bad of a pull. A pair of horizontal mask binder cards are an acceptable way to round this out. Not a bad pack at all.

Both repacks had a pair of loose cards in behind the single pack.

An interesting group in the Parkhurst pack. My previous two busts of this product in repacks landed me a Mike Bossy auto and a numbered David Schultz card, so the law of averages catches up to me and this was just a base pack. Still, black & white photos are always interesting, and the Atlanta Flames jersey lurking behind Bourne ups that card's interestingness (and yes, that's really a word).

And here's the other two loose cards.

No major card this time, but I can't complain one bit about the content of the packs.

Yet Another Raptors Post

Whether from my COMC box or from group break, time to show off the latest cards for my Raptors binder.

Leading off this post is a base card from Panini's base set. There's a couple things going for this card. The photo of Jonas is on acetate, with the crowd in the background. As a bonus, one of the women in the photo is wearing a shirt with 'We The North' on it. A great way to sneak the team's rallying call onto a card.

And there's a pronunciation guide to his name on the back. I don't think anybody, myself included, got it right on the first, second, tenth, fortieth... attempt.

Just a base Raptors card of someone I didn't have one for yet.

A great dunking photo of current fan-fave Norman Powell from the backboard camera. This photo also made a shiny re-appearance on the Bird's Eye View insert set in this year's Hoops release. That one is currently sitting in my COMC inventory.

The cheapest card of the Raptors' top 2016 draft pick was this one. And this Utes card still counts among my Raptors cards.

And the only Raptors hit in my COMC box was this one. 19 games with the Raptors was still enough for Panini to attach a sticker to a Raptors card for him. His only Raptors cards were hits, so it was this as the cheapest option to add one of his cards to my collection.

I didn't get any base cards from the Raptors in an entire case of Court Kings, but did manage one in a mixer that had 1 box of the product.

2016 Absolute and 2016 Totally Certified make their binder debuts with this pair of DeRozans. I love the visible logo in the background on the Absolute.

I'm sure I have a complete DeRozan jersey by now. I don't mind plain white swatches on cards like this, since it is a different colour than the other swatch.

I've already got an autograph and a /25 parallel of Pascal from an earlier break and box bust, so here's my first relic of his. His minutes have dropped lately with Jared Sullinger making his debut, but I'm still happy with getting more of his cards into the binder.

And there you have it!

2011 Topps Football Jumbo Box Break - Pack 2

And back to this with the second pack.

Andre Gurode - Starting off this one, an offensive line card.
Dwight Freeney
Dexter McCluster
Rob Gronkowski
Robert Meachem
Peyton Hillis

Tom Brady - Another throwback uniform
David Harris
Steve Smith
Tony Romo
Tramon Williams
Mike Williams

DeMarcus Ware - What a gorgeous horizontal photo choice. Perfectly framed.
Calvin Johnson
San Francisco 49ers Team Card
Indianapolis Colts Team Card

Green Bay Packers - Super Bowl Champions - If there ever was a card for this video, this is the one!

Cameron Wake - What a surprise. A Cleveland Brown getting tackled.

Cameron Heyward - The rookies start with Ironhead Jr.
Lance Kendricks
Akeem Ayers
Niles Paul
Ryan Whalen

David Harris - Gold 1063/2011 - And here starts the insert portion.
Michael Turner - Topps Town

Jerry Rice - Super Bowl Legends - I'm guessing if there is nobody from the other team in the photo, it is easy to consider the subject a Super Bowl legend.

Faces of the Franchise - Sam Bradford/Steven Jackson - FotF still with the team they were list as the face of in 2016. 0/4 so far this box.
Tony Gonzalez - Game Day

Andre Johnson - 1950 Bowman - Here's your mini!

Ndamukong Suh - And here's the start of the second run of base cards - starting with 307 pounds of flying terror for some poor Dolphin. Maybe even a future teammate?
Marques Colston
Chad Greenway

Maurice Jones-Drew - You don't see many helmetless photos any more - especially for an on-field photo.
Colt McCoy

Kris Dielman - 2 OL cards in the same pack! WOW!
Shonn Greene
Elvis Dumervil

James Harrison - And two helmetless game photos as well.

Jason Witten - Stiff arm!
Mike Vick
Hines Ward
Mike Tolbert
Clay Matthews
Terrell Suggs
Corey Liuget
Austin Pettis
Luke Stocker
Ryan Kerrigan

Daniel Thomas - And there's the final card.

Nothing too mind-blowing, but some interesting cards nonetheless.

One Card Only: All About the Penmanship

Not only is the /10 card the lowest numbered card in my penmanship binder, this card of QMJHLer Louis-Filip Côté is an easy contender for the nicest looking signature in the collection overall.

Since he used the both the circumflex and the aigu accent on his signature, I figured I should as well.

Black Friday 2-14 Additions - The Hockey Portion

Time for this short series to draw to a close with the final sport.

This card was lurking on my top 10 list for a long time. Finally, it dropped to a reasonable price level and I nabbed it during the BF sales. A memorable throwback design with a very 1971 (or 2014 Archives insert) look to it, but just different enough to keep the lawyers away. And that suit!

With MVP being part of the e-pack program, some of the parallels and inserts are absurdly cheap on COMC. Here's one of those cheap cards.

And here's another!

This is the second appearance of this image in the binder. This point-collection redemption joins a prime jersey swatch that I grabbed at the past Expo. At least it is an interesting photo across the two cards.

Victory really changed up their Stars of the Game insert series for the 2009-10 release, opting for more of a comic book motif. It really looks different from the white-bordered base cards in the set, and might be my favourite look for this insert set.

Finally, the only hit I added was this Ehlers swatch. I really like that this is a light blue swatch, not the most common colour available for Jets' swatches.

There you have it. Something non-2/14 related tomorrow.