Raptors Mega Post

 

Time to plow my way through yet another Raptors mega-post. There's four team-select group breaks worth of cards in this post - Donruss, Elite, Prizm Draft and Court Kings, and there's some pretty nice cards to come out of all of them. Donruss might have been the least of the lot, but I still got one of those comic cover Net Marvels cards. 

And yes, Scottie was born in August 2001 for a nice little easter egg on the card. I wonder what would happen if I tried to scan that code in the corner.

Here's the base set. Over the 1/2 case, everything seemed pretty evenly distributed for a base set. 

Panini took a look at Topps' overuse of 1987 in their baseball designs, and thought that they can kind of salute the 1987 Donruss baseball design in this set. Dino uniform! 

The Elite break was only 2 boxes, but that was still enough to get me 5 out of the 6 base cards, including one of SPd rookie Christian Koloko.

And I would have been happy with just the base cards, but I also got this green die-cut, numbered to his jersey number parallel. Technically, this is a Status parallel, but "green, die-cut" is more descriptive.

Prizm draft adds some NCAA cards to the mix. 

But the best thing about Siakam NCAA cards is a chance to show off that buff Village People logo that New Mexico State used. 

Here's the final Christian Koloko appearance in the post. Even though it is a collegiate card, I guess the pose is enough to make it look like a Raptors one. This is a rather descriptive parallel, being a Blue Cirrcles variety.

And this set has a very deep checklist. Abu Kigab's time with the Raptors was limited to their summer league team, but that was enough to count it as a Raptors card for the purposes of the break. Do I call it a Raptors card? Of course! Even if I didn't, I could also count it towards my CanCon collection, as he's Canadian (via Sudan). Bonus: This is a gold /10 parallel as well! 

Ending with a personal favourite of mine - Court Kings!

I always thought that the Kings sets were more along the lines of saluting painting as opposed to music, but art is art.

Here's the only swatch of the post. At least this is so far along in his career, the disclaimer about the swatch being from an actual game is pretty believable.

Unlike with Kigab, there's little doubt here that this was a Raptors card. Harper was undrafted, but signed with Toronto soon afterwards. He's spend more time with the G-League 905 than the parent club this season, but that doesn't matter much to me as a team collector. This will be his first appearance in my binders as well, and having a player debut with a hit is always fun. And in a way, I'm happier getting his card than a Koloko auto, since those will be more commonplace than Harper's.

There you have it!