2022 Adventures in Repacks Part 7.1 - Hanging Around

 

Back to the box of repacks, and this. I break these into 4 posts. 25 cards each, with each lead by the visible card.

Not a bad starter card with a Canvas entry, dating to before they became plentiful on COMC thanks to e-packs. The photo is surprisingly dull for the insert set, though.

Nothing too notable in the first grouping of 8, although I'll always give UD a thumbs up for game dating most of their card photos, across a lot of their flagship releases.  Both rinksiders seem puzzled by whatever is happening on that Staal photo, and you really can't blame them.

There's the Bowman streak that you'd expect in a repack, but it isn't a bad grouping of players. 3 of the 4 are HOFers. Poor Patrick Flatley is the outsider. I'll tolerate some Bowman if it also means a nice collection of Heroes & Prospects with their minor league jerseys. And the Owen Sound Attack's entry is a fine one. That photo on Gagner makes it look like a hooking penalty is coming his way.

And the final group of cards. That Desjardins is the second insert card in this post, and is remarkably understated for a mid 90s Fleer entry. I was also stunned by what these were going for on COMC.

There you have it!

Art on Cards

 

Not just for Diamond Kings!

A Dime Box Mailer - Part 1 of 4

 In addition to the recent 10th anniversary giveaway cards, there were also some cards that came my way in the mailer. They were split into 4 separate team bags, so I'm gonna open them 1 at a time, just like a repack, and show them off over 4 posts spread over whatever time period. 

First up, a literal team bag - nothing but Blue Jays content.

To say these were all over the place would be an understatement. Let's start with the oddball portion of this, and this, which was at least pretty easy to identify the source of.

These however, were more of a puzzler, as they were stickers, and had no identifying features on the back. Fortunately, there were a couple short-term Jays in this, such as Bill Caudill, which put it in the mid 1980s and narrowed it down to an Ault Foods set from that year. Ault was primarily a dairy, and I guess these accompanied bagged milk. 

Also, Gordon? I had no memory at all of him, but this was Don Gordon. He made about 20 relief appearances for the Jays in the mid 80s, but spent most of his time in Syracuse. He'd get mainstream cards when he'd move on to Cleveland. I'd say this was his debut in my collection, but I might have one of his fire safety cards as well.

These look more official than the first scans, but the minor leagues also get some love in these cards. Barry Foote might not reach the absurdity levels of the Jim Moore travelling secretary card, but seeing non-batters with that pose remains delightfully goofy.

More food-issue fun with these cards commemorating the Jays' victory in 1992. Kelly Gruber knocking himself into next week with his slide might be better than the photo on the White.

But the best photo in this bunch has to go to this - with a very uncomfortable looking cameo from Ripken.

This is a nice looking concept, but it would have been perfection had they been sporting the alternate blue jerseys.

The volume battle, at least in this grouping, goes to John Olerud. There is no other point in time other than the 90s where Metal Universe's concept could be green lit for the first time. 

Not only is this card wonderfully shiny, it is one that could make its home in either my Jays collection, or my Canadians in MLB collection. While he hasn't feasted on pitching at the A level yet, he just turned 20 last season, so there's no need to panic yet. 

More shininess!

And a sampling of the remainder of this grouping,

3 more to go! I'm leaving them unopened until I start scanning the cards, so everything will be a surprise to me outside of the 10th anniversary cards.

There you have it!

Technically a 2/14

 

It is numbered 02/14, so that counts but it doesn't count. And I do have a new Hall of Famer auto for the hockey collection. 

But in order to preserve the 2/14ness of the card, so I can't free it from its case. 

First-world problems!

Mailbag - Cardboard History - Part 2 of 2

 Part 2 of the mailer - the Ottawa Senators content.

There was a lot of Sens content from 2020-21 releases. Considering I haven't had much (any) opportunity to hit the shows during lockdowns to look for cards from base sets, a surprising number of these cards from these sets were needs for my team collection.

There was an autographed card hiding in the stacks. The only Jason York card in my Sens collection was the un-autographed version of this Pinnacle card. Now there's a nice little combination in those binders.

Gotta scan the back of some 1993 Leaf.

Stickers!

The best photo in the package will go to this 2001 Shawn McEachern, unsuprisingly from a flagsip UD release. 

How is that these Timmies cards managed to get their way across the border to the US, before making their way back across the border for my collection before I managed to add any of them directly to my collection? I do recognize the oddness of having Karlsson and Hoffman beside each other.

Random mask binder card! Jani would get the rare triple team card as one of his last cards of his career where he'd be listed as with the Thrashers, sporting a Panthers jersey with a Senators paint job on his helmet (and the swatch would be a Sens one).

And here's a sampling of the remainder! 

Thanks for all these goodies, and I hope you liked the cards I sent your way!

It Was All Yellow

 Let's bust this!

Let's do this!

Wrigley Ivy is always a nice way to start a pack, and there's a second appearance of that stadium with the bricks visible on Van Slyke's card. That swing-and-miss photo is a very unflattering photo choice for Sabo's card. Swing and a miss! And Expos content, too!

More Expos content! And a Met as well! The multiple bats makes for a rather unique BP photo for Sam Horn, and just so both Chicago ballparks get mentioned - that's certainly old Comiskey in the background of Fisk, with a photo worthy of modern Panini releases.

In contrast with the Sabo in the first group, that Thomas is a beautifully framed photo of an at-bat. And there's the first Jays appearance in the pack. Dion James works perfectly with the border and the tight cropping.

A Jays appearance and a HOFer. That's a perfectly fine grouping.

Mets content highlights the last batch of cards. A nice bunch of cards for my team PCs, and a couple interesting photos makes for a great group of cards, even if they're obnoxiously early 90s bright.

But there were stickers too! Logo stickers! A grand total of zero that are still in use in that format today. 

There you have it!

2022 Adventures in Repacks Part 6.1 - Surprising Baseball

 Another baseball repack!

Normally, I'd go clockwise from the upper left and start with that Fleer pack. However, I'm enough of a freak to showcase the whole thing, and I'm saving that for an entire post on its own next time. So, that goes off to the side for today, and I start off with the 12-card pack.

Error in my favour! There's 13 cards within. Don Baylor is a solid start to this one, especially on a  team you don't really associate with him. It is always a good repack on this side of the border when an O-Pee-Chee card appears. The Upton photo is a great representation of an early season road trip to northern climes. And a Boardwalk & Baseball card! Great ending!

More O-Pee-Chee! That Future Stars card is memorable, since not only did they not become stars, I don't think any of them ever received another major card. That's amazing, especially with the card market on the verge of expansion. Throw in some Wrigley ivy, and that's a nice pack o'Pirates.

Not only O-Pee-Chee, but Greats of the Game as well? Another nice thing about the randomness of this repack. That's also one of the final appearances for Oil Can as an active player, and some minor league fun. 

What better way to wrap up the repacked portion of the repack with a Hank Aaron appearance? The Niekro comes from a Traded set, so there's that as well. When you have a three pack of cards, and the least noteworthy of the bunch is a nicely-framed Marichal, that's a great group!

And there you have most of it, with 30 very yellow cards to come next time!

Os and Xs

Not much of a signature aesthetically, and it doesn't really hit any of my PCs, but he is the first player in NFL history who has a last name that starts with 'X'. That's enough to make me shell out a little more than a dollar to add the card to my collection.

E-Packed Sens

 Another post with cards that either originated from cards from the e-pack site directly, or ones I grabbed cheaply through e-packs.

Ridly has yet to play for the Senators, but he is a first round draft pick of the team. So this qualifies a Sens card for this post, but it probably won't make its way into the team collection binders. Unless he ends up never playing a game for Ottawa, in which it will count as a Sens card in a zero year sense. As always, my binder, my rules.

I'm not sure if sunset parallels are a good name for parallels far away from the sunsets of their respective careers, but they do have nice refractory shine to them, and that's all I ask for.

But there's really no comparing the shininess of those Allure cards to the brightness of this Dazzlers entry from 20-21 flagship. This will be returning in 21-22 with another chance to blind your enemies through cardboard.

Some foil cards.

While I have no evidence that this card really did originate through e-packs, I'll call it as such just to give me a chance I took a chance to show it off. I threw a lowball offer on this rookie of Brady Tkachuk over on COMC, and ended up getting this keeper for my Sens collection for about 60 percent of the current price of these over there. It might not be the most flattering photo, with the visor creating a googly-eyed feel to the card, but is still his Young Guns card.

There you have it!

A Likely Rerun

While the odds are likely that I've shown off this card of Marie-Philip Poulin before, probably during a box break of 2016 Team Canada.  Now, coming off picking up her third gold medal at the Olympics, being in on all three goals (2G, 1A) in the gold medal game, having scored a goal in 4 straight gold medal games and being the flagbearer at the Opening Ceremonies, I figured 'Why not a repeat?".
 

Mailbag - Cardboard History - Part 1 of 2

 A small box worth of cards showed up several weeks back from Billy @ Cardboard History, and it was the perfect box to break down into two posts. Basketball and hockey, with a nice number of  the former, and a lot of the latter. 

And a Pascal Siakam rookie card is a perfect way to start recapping the former!

And here's another rookie of one of only a handful of guys still around, just a few years later, from their Championship run. All the red on this card pops so nicely with the black and white background for a nice design.

The Junkyard Dog is always worthy of a highlight in a post. He might have been the most popular Raptor not named Vince Carter from the early 00s.

Here's a sampling of the remainder of that portion.

But, he also remembered I'm starting my way to a Dikembe PC. It is kinda fledgling so far, but this immediately became my favourite photo in the collection.

But that upper-left card is pretty nice as well.

And there you have Part 1. The Senators content will likely be shown off next week.