The Packening Goodies

If you read Dennis' posts over at Too Many Verlanders/Manninghams, he picked up a few 50 packs for 20 dollars baseball repacks through walmart.com. He then busted the lot of them. I received some of them as part of my most recent mailer from him, hitting a bunch of my PCs. Time to check out some of them!

I guess this was literally the biggest card in the bunch.

The majority of the cards in there were Mets and Jays, so I'm going to limit these teams' representation to one scanner bed each. While the shiny Delgado is a highlight, my fave here might be that Willie Collazo, since he fell under the category of guys I had absolutely no memory of with the team. He made 6 appearances with the team, and finished with an ERA over 6. But that's still 6 more than me.

Here's the Jays content highlights. I'm somewhat surprised i didn't have that card of Stroman rocking the patriotic jersey, or any of the Lineage cards.

There really wasn't as many junk wax era packs as you'd expect in this. So the Expos content was scant, but still added a few cards to the binder. And you have to love any appearance of the Wrigley ivy on cards.

Some player collections also got hit. That shiny Bowman looks to be from Bowman's Best, so I might have gotten a non-packening card mixed in with the others. Oopsie. Still shiny, though!

Cancon! Boy, that lineage is sure a spring training photo.

And let's end this part of the boxes on cards of a guy who spent the weekend in Toronto catching his son's major league debut. The 2001 one is actually a Cards Mom Threw Out reprint.

And there you have it! I'll have some non-packening stuff from the boxes tomorrow.

2/14 Monday

I've spent the past few weeks updating my 2/14 collection over at tradingcarddb. It has been actually pretty effective in finding dupes in the collection and pruning them. I'm not sure if this link will take you to my collection, which is almost exclusively 2/14 stuff at this point, but if it works, good!

It has also been pretty effective in finding obscure cards for players to hunt for on ebay or COMC. There's some of the former in this post, as well as some less obscure additions from COMC.

A bright neon uniform? A team called the Wolfsburg Grizzly Adams? How in the Sam Scratch could this not be the first card to show off?

Jan Nemecek rocking the uniforms of the Ceske Budejovice HC didn't have a chance.

Neither did Peter Cava in the uniform of the Lakehead University Thunderwolves, but this is my first Canadian university card in any of the collections.

And the ebay portion of this ends with a Peter Cava autograph.

Here's the first of 3 new entries into the collection. He spent 8 games with the New York Rangers as a 10th round pick, but saw most of his action in Helsinki.

If you didn't get enough of Prime over the weekend, here's one more. This has to be the first skate swatch in my collection.

Here's new name #2 for the collection with Swedish Gran Prix driver Ronnie Peterson. He won 10 races over his career, but died after an accident during the Italian Gran Prix in 1978.

George Ferris, inventor of the Ferris Wheel, was born on 2/14 back in 1859. Since there are no cards of his, cards featuring the Ferris Wheel certainly count towards the collection.

The only thing the back of the card mentions is that these swatches were part of the production of the movie, but nothing if they were wardrobe, or even a couch in one of the trailers. Still, a new card featuring Danai Gurira for the binders.

And there's a patch to end this on! One can just look at the photo to realize this was taken from the bottom portion of the '1' on either the back or front of the jersey. I've got some nice Alshon patches from his days with the Bears, but this is listed as game worn as opposed to event-worn. That will always push it up the rankings.

Gran Prix drivers. Ferris wheels. Grizzly Adams. Black Panthers. That's a pretty diverse group of 2/14 addition.

And there you have it!

Prime Time! (13-14 Version)

And the second box. While it does offer 7 cards on the box, there were 8 in the box, 6 of which were of the hit variety.

As before, I'll go through this in reverse order of numbering, most to fewest. I prefer the more colourful base cards in these as opposed to the more typical white and foil used in most higher end sets.

With the NHL license going away at this time for Panini, updates from earlier releases were included in this release, similar to Rookie Anthology. Looks like Magnus got his cards in late. He has spent the past few seasons in the KHL.

We're jumping quite a bit down in terms of print run, as here's a base card parallel /50. Technically, this is a holo silver parallel.

Prime Trios is definitely an appropriate name for the three swatches here. But while Nichuskin isn't a horrible player, he definitely looks out of place when placed alongside Ovechkin and Malkin.

Hey! Here's a PC card of a Kitchener Rangers alum. We go all over the jersey for these swatches. Clockwise from the lower left, there's a regular piece, a patch, a seam, and a fight strap. And you get an on-card autograph to go with it!

Not an on-card autograph, but an on-manupatch auto. Blue ink works so nicely on the white patch for a Leafs hit. I also like that you can see the patch commemorating the final season of Maple Leaf Gardens as the Leafs' home, immediately can pinpoint the photo to the 98-99 season.

Another holo-silver parallel! Casey's settled into the 4th line role with the Islanders during this playoff run, and he's in the best season of his career.

/10? And still one more card to go? What's left?

Time to unleash the hounds of justice!

It is SHIELD time!

Holy crap that's a 1 of 1! Shields are to hockey and football as the logoman is to basketball and baseball. It is the chase card in many high end sets. While you can't see it in this photo, this particular swatch comes from the neckline of the jerseys, as you can see Chiasson sporting on his OPC rookie card. Chiasson would move to the Senators in the Jason Spezza trade. That has not exactly worked out well for the Sens.

Still, this is one really great addition to the collection. While it is pretty much a keeper, I'd still consider a trade, but it would have to be something similar in terms of a 1/1 shield/logoman for a PC. Any Chiasson super-collectors out there have a Raptors logoman auto in their binders?

And there you have it!

Prime Time! (12-13 Version)

The best boxes of cards are free ones! I could have gone for quantity over quality and busted some new Platinum hockey, or some Bowman baseball, but opted for a couple Prime boxes. With the half-season in 12-13, releases were cut back, and this was the highest end Panini release.

Dominion was another high end brand from Panini hockey, and they included a couple cards from it in a separate pack. This was the base design for the season, with the foil colour changing for lower-numbered parallels.

The Dominion packs consisted of one base card and a hit. A pretty nice patch on this one, obviously from the chest logo. While I usually prefer the team patch in the same direction on the card as the logo, it works here as it creates a slight flickering effect. Baertschi is still in the league, having just wrapped up an injury-shortened season in Vancouver.

Note this card is out of 60. That's the highest numbered hit in this box.

I'll go through the rest in reverse order of print run. Here's the other base card in the box. While I always prefer the original photo's background to having it wiped, at least there are team colours here.

The regular versions of these auto/relics are /249, these holo silver parallels are instead /50. You've got a couple nice prime pieces from seams to go along with the standard pieces, and only a single one-colour swatch.

The autograph portion of this box ends with this /25 gold parallel for my Senators collection. The Sens had a pair of rookies in this release, and while Mark Stone is the one you want to see, Jakob is still in the league. In fact, all 3 rookies with autos so far are still in the league, which is pretty rare from a rather unimpressive 2012 rookie class in hockey cards.

Joudrey is the only one of the rookies in this box that wasn't playing in the NHL last season. But he's paired with a fellow Nova Scotian here along with a quartet of nice patches.

And the lowest numbered card in the box was this very patriotic beauty. The window gives a hint as to the connection between these players - all 4 were members of the 2010 Olympic gold medal winners. The seam on the Luongo is so thick it is almost busting through the card.

That was a really good box of cards from a rather tough year for rookies. I'll be showing off the 13-14 version tomorrow. Note that the quad relic is limited to 15 copies - tomorrow's box will have 2 cards numbered to even fewer than that.

Monstrous Sens

I grabbed the Senators in a second Monster break this past weekend, and added a decent variety of cards to the collection. While I didn't do as well as

the last time, I still added a few nice ones, and perhaps there will be a nice bonus or 3...

Here's a sampling of some of the base cards. I really like getting AHL cards, especially if they're of people I don't have many cards of in the collection. Filip Novak and Jeff Glass (awful name for the back of a goalie's jersey) qualify here. Glass didn't make his NHL debut until the 17-18 season with Chicago. For perspective, his card here is from a 05-06 release.

Here's a handful of non-numbered cards that are inserts, parallels or SPs. That's the first appearance of this year's platinum release on this blog. He can also fit into my collections as a Kitchener Rangers alum.

And these are a teaser of what the retros look like this year. With the ariety of colour, the backgrounds are a little more subdued here.

149/149! Last one stamped! ebay 1/1!

Not an ebay 1/1. Ice didn't get a release in 12/13, so all they had was a single pack inserted into Black Diamond. I did get the only numbered card in the pack with this Silfverberg.

Another card of a guy named Filip.

That's more like it. I do have quite a bit of Anderson ink and/or relics in the PC, but the more the merrier!

It may not be of a big name, but I won't complain about any RPA for the collection. Especially when the patch includes some gold on it. Dreidger saw action in 1 NHL game over 3 straight seasons, and remained in the minors since then, most recently in the Panthers organization.

But wait, there's more!

There is also a random draw for store credit as part of this, and this week, I won it! I opted for a box of 12-13 Panini Prime and one of 13-14 Prime as well. I'll get to those over the weekend. But I also got this:

A 1/1, and not an ebay 1/1 either. While this is a Sens card, O'Connor is, more importantly for my PC - a 2/14 baby! This is the 12th appearance of his in the collection.

And there you have it! Get ready for some Prime Time this weekend, and a pair of really great boxes.

Mailbag: Wes' Grand Finale - Post #5

Yeah. I kinda forgot about this. Several times, mind you. I'd put the last team bag of cards to the side, consisting of miscellaneous hockey from the 90s forward, thinking I'd get to them 'tomorrow'. That eventually morphed into "Here's a team bag of cards. I don't think I've posted them yet. Where did they come from? Oh yeah..."

So, this is the final bunch of hockey out of Wes' Grand Finale this past January. Only a month and a half after Part 4 went up. Efficiency!

A mask binder card to start this off. This card, and a couple parallels, were the extent of Wilkinson's NHL card career. At least it was pretty memorable.

These were chase inserts back in the day with ITG releases. Or at least the Congratulations spiel on the back made it seem that way. You do have to flip the card over to realize that this is a Ron Tugnutt card.

A mask binder card for the distaff side of things. I wonder if I can still make $1 worth of a phone call with this.

The majority of the miscellany was taken up with this bunch of 1999 Prizm cards. There's a bunch of runs I'd completely forgotten about in this mix, such as Andreychuk in Boston, Khristich in Toronto and Damphousse in San Jose. But the big highlight was the Milan Hejduk, with a card I was surprised I didn't have in the 2/14 collection. I did have the numbered holographic gold parallel /480.

More shininess, with a pair of Rink Collection/Dufex parallels from Pinnacle.

A bunch of miscellany before I get to the numbered cards/hits.

Cards where the team colours match those of the parallel are always welcome. This ruby parallel is /1000.

Belfour spent three season in Toronto, but it still felt like a brief stop. Koekkoek was always a fun name to say out loud.

Finally, ending on a pair of Minnesota Wild autographs. Although it isn't the one pictured here, Josh Harding had one of my favourite mask paint jobs. When the team bus and some of the equipment was destroyed by a fire, he put the burning bus, the fire truck and the Ottawa fire department logo on the mask.

And there you have it!

Thanks so much to Wes for all the goodies, both this and with other trades over the year, and for thinking of your fellow collectors on your final pack busting escapade!