2019 Adventures in Repacks: Part 21.1 - The Usual

I'm back at a very familiar place today, and for the next couple posts with Dollarama repacks. I'll start with the first half of a baseball 80 card hanger.

2017 Chronicles - Matt Holliday - Off an running with a very wordy base card from Chronicles.
2017 Topps - Albert Pujols

1990 Topps - Joe Oliver - The happiest player ever on a baseball card?
1991 UD - Sil Campusano

1991 Topps - Jerry Don Gleaton - Or is he?
1991 Score - Mike Witt
1989 Fleer - Daryl Boston
1989 Topps - Eric King

1987 Fleer Update - Andre Dawson - I guess someone at repack HQ picked up a boxed set of 1987, as this was the first of six in this repack.
1990 Donruss - Luis Quinones
1989 Fleer - Steve Farr
1988 Topps - Harry Spilman

2009 Topps - George Kottaras - Cancon!
2003 Elite - Gary Sheffield

2005 Bowman Heritage - Roy Halladay - An appearance of Doc is enough to make this a great repack, especially as a Heritage card.

1991 Topps - Walt Weiss - One of the classic card photos from that era.
1992 Donruss - Steve Olin
1993 Select - Andy Stankiewicz

1995 Stad. Club - Midre Cummings - Part of Stadium Club's continued legacy of interesting photos.
1989 Fleer - Jeff Pico

1989 Topps - Wil Tejada - Expos content!

1987 Fleer Update - Albert Hall - #2
1990 Donruss - Ken Phelps
1989 Fleer - Eric Davis
1988 Topps - Reds Leaders
2017 Bowman Chrome - Kyle Freeland
2011 Topps - Johnny Cueto
1991 Topps - Herm Winningham
1994 Coll. Choice - Terry Steinbach
1990 Topps - Gary Wayne

1991 Topps Traded - Devon White - Jays card #2.
1989 Fleer - Steve Lake
1988 Topps - Shane Mack
1987 Topps - Kirk McCaskill

1987 Fleer Update - John Mitchell - Mets card #1 brings the 3rd card from '87 Update.
1988 Topps - John Farrell

1989 Fleer - Jimmy Key - Jays card #3.
2013 Topps - Carlos Gomez
2017 GQ - Corey Kluber

2012 Bowman - David Wright - Visible card #2 was Mets card #2. Although I've got several copies of the card, this made it the repack I had to go for.

Another 40 next time!

The Optics

Continuing on the theme of group breaks, here's one more. Not a random this time, but a pick-your-team version. The Blue Jays are a risky buy this year, as they have a very notable rookie in products. But, I figured it was worth the shot, especially with 30 autos in a case.

The base set has one veteran card. If it wasn't for Diamond Kings being a part of Optic as well as Donruss, they might not even have had that.

The Rookie content though, that's extensive. The big gun is in the top left corner, but there's still decent content in the rest. All 5 of these folks have autograph possibilities in this. Collation of this though wasn't the best in the case, as there wasn't the Reese McGuire base card.

The Rated Prospect insert set adds another rookie to the mix.

Even more bad collation with "The Rookies" insert set, as I didn't get the Vlad Jr version of this.

But I did get the holo version of the insert.

And here's one more insert of Vlad.

I'll go through the parallels in reverse order of numbering. This isn't just any old pink parallel - this is a Pink Velocity /199.

As one can work out from the front of the card, Reese McGuire's sole appearance in the break was on this Red White & Blue 150th Anniversary parallel /150.

Purple Stars for Sean Reid-Foley /125.

Here's the big card from the parallels, and the simplest named parallel of the bunch. Black, and /25.

Autograph time!

A nice looking autograph to start off, even if it makes it look like the last portion of his name is Foly. And you get the photoshopped alternate jerseys!

Rowdy Tellez autos have been all over products this season. So, I guess I shouldn't be surprised to be adding one to my collection.

But this is a pretty nice one, it may scan purple, but this is the blue parallel. Perfect for the Jays.

The chase was successful! My first Vladdy Jr auto! Ignore the scanner filth, the actual card doesn't look as filthy. It is a nice photo as well, as he looks to launch a moonshot off of some unfortunate spring-training invitee.

How do you make that even better? How about a second one! This is somewhat of an odder card, as it features the design of last year's Optic, but that's appropriate as the back of the card indicates it probably should have been included in last year's release.

No complaints that it made its way into this year's release, though. Look, it's a numbered parallel as well!

I'll say things worked out quite well. And despite being expensive, it was about half the price of buying the Blue Jays slot in a team break of the upcoming Chrome release.

There you have it! I'll return to my more comfortable home of repacks next post.

Chronicling a Group Break - Part 2

Time for part 2!

Starting with the Pelicans content. Already, 2 of the 3 players featured here have moved or been moved to new teams, with only Holiday remaining. I do like that all 3 are sporting different uniforms in their photos.

It does feel strange to show off the biggest card in this post so early, but when it is the only other Pelicans card, I guess that's how it works out. This will probably be one of Davis' last on-card autographs with the Pelicans, and given how his time with the team drew to a close, I'm really surprised he was still willing to sign these cards, and not just leave it to a sticker.

Only two regular base cards for the Grizz.

But in this case, the team's rookie content makes up for that. Here's a pair of Jevon Carters that I've already put aside to send off to former blogger, still WVU collector Bob Walk the Plank. Here's the first appearance of XR in the break.

Gold Standard also makes an appearance as Yuta Watanabe makes an appearance here. He's only the second player in NBA history to be born in Japan, and both of them have been named Yuta (Tabuse). That will change when Rui Hachimura debuts in 19-20.

Rookies and Memphis means one should prepare for a lot of Jaren Jackson Jr. Obsidian makes its break debut, and its appearance is the most interesting.

As unlike with the rest of the base cards, this isn't listed as a Chronicles card, but actually listed as Obsidian. With this, and the PREVIEW stamp, does that mean that we can look forward to an actual Obsidian set?

2 more new sets as we hit the numbered triple J cards, with Elements and Elite Black Box debuting. I liked how Elements looked in Chronicles baseball with the use of different photos, and it looks just as nice here.

Chronicling a Group Break - Part 1

It seems logical to move from Rookie Anthology into Chronicles, as it is a set with few cards with the base design per pack, and lots of different looks throughout. Normally, I'd grab the Raptors in a group break of the stuff, but they're pretty threadbare this year, with no variety at all. Just base cards, and an autographed base of Serge Ibaka. With all respect to Serge, that's not enough to get me to grab them.

So, I went the random route. I landed the Knicks, the Grizzlies, and a Heat/Pelicans combo slot in this. The latter had none of the rookie design variants in the set, but still a nice variety among insert autographs. I'm doing this over two posts, so let's split these two up and show off the Eastern teams first with the Knicks and Heat.

The Heat spot didn't bring too much to the table, but the Pelicans side of that combo will more than make up for that. I do like Wade got a nice card to salute his career as it drew to a close.

At least there was a low numbered parallel in there with the Heat position.

The Knicks spot got me my first card of Dennis Smith Jr in Knicks attire, And we get an alternate uniform as well.

For this franchise, blue parallels are pretty appropriate.

I guess you can afford to get a little punny with the 'headlines' used on the chronicle cards when you've got to create write-ups for 700 base cards.

It's about time to finally get into the portion of the sets that chronicle other Panini sets. The top features Playoff, Luminance, and Marquee, with Panini football, and a chrome version of base cards. I like the team colour usage on the Playoff, and the darkened arena look of Luminance. Those would look beautiful with a silver or gold pen autographed version. Maybe next year?

Even numbered cards can be considered part of the base, but for the Plates & Patches portion of the set, the base are actually /249 while this red parallel is /149.

Kevin Knox was a lottery pick last season, going 9th overall. With his base cards, Elite, Studio and Phoenix make their first appearance. I hoped the Studio would take a page from their first baseball releases instead of the recent basketball release to create an interesting card. Alas.

Allonzo Trier was an undrafted player who made the team and got some pretty good reviews of his rookie season. Crusade, which has shown up as both a standalone and insert set in recent Panini releases, gets its first card here. Given my love for Fred VanVleet in Toronto, I always pull for undrafted players.I'll return to Trier shortly.

Hit time! While just doing the last name is only a step up from doing just your initials, I do like how you almost get a star sketch from the H in his name. Sometimes, a little thing can elevate an auto.

And here's a new set to make an appearance. While Timeless Treasures was an insert hit in recent Donruss basketball releases, this one, with an on-card autograph definitely gives more of a vibe of when Timeless Treasures was a upper-mid range standalone set. Camby was the Raptors second first-round draft pick in franchise history. While he had a fine career, that draft also included Kobe Bryant, Ray Allen and Steve Nash.

That's pretty nice. But that's not the big card from the East.

This is!

Gala inserts are the chase cards in the set. It is hard to see the numbering on this, but the Gala cards are limited to 8 each. SSSSPs! They are beautiful, but considering what they're going for on ebay, I'll probably be sending it off to COMC to recover the cost of this break and then some.

Halfway there! I'll shift slightly westward in the next post with cards from the Grizzlies and Pelicans, and if I'm going to sell one of the better cards from this break, I might as well keep a nice one as well.