COMC and the 2/14 binder

Back to back posts with nothing but 2/14 content contained within!

As with the PWE barrage from yesterday, there was only one basketball card in the mix. But this does add another relic into the hits portion of the collection. I still want a mask relic.

Here's a first for my collection - my first Operation Desert Shield card! As for the other one...

The bi-lingual greatness of O-Pee-Chee!

The big winner here for baseball was Scott Scudder, who has jumped to 51 total cards with these 4. The 1990 Topps is also an OPC version, bringing twice the French-ness into this group. The UD card is the gold hologram parallel as well. 

My first autograph of Ryan McKenna, a Sky Blue parallel, and a Bowman Heritage Chrome card help push him into the double digits. He was placed on the 40 man roster in the previous off-season, but is still in the minors, such as they are this season.

I have three Garrett Fugate cards in my collection - all autographs. He does have base cards in this Sage release. 
 

Settle down, Beavis.

Start with a hit from a player with red, white and black uniforms. Let's end with the same. Chronology did have a really deep checklist of random retired players and I was pleased to see Sean Hill on the list. I grabbed the 'canes spot in a couple group breaks. While that did allow me to get some Whalers content to send to Shane @ Shoebox Legends, I didn't land a Sean Hill until getting it from COMC.

And there you have it!

2020 Adventures in Repacks: Part 26.4 - Hockey Cubism

1995 Pinnacle - Josef Beranek - Not the most exciting card to start with, but you gotta start somewhere. And you do get a nice look at the anniversary patch.
1991 Score - Adam Graves
1990 Bowman - Brad Shaw

1993 Leaf - Peter Zezel - More '93 Leaf backs.

1991 UD - Ron Francis - Stanley!
1995 Topps Super Skills - Andrew Cassels
1991 7IS - Zbynek Kukacka

2016 Showcase - Mark Stone - Sens content.
1990 Bowman - Bob Beers
1991 7IS - Drew Bannister
2016 UD - Radim Vrbata
2018 UD - Zemgus Girgensons
2018 SPA - Ryan Ellis
2019 MVP - Pierre Luc Dubois
2017 UD - Shea Weber
1999 MVP - Trevor Letowski

1991 7IS - Kayle Short - Who needs to zoom in on the player for the photo?
1992 Topps - John LeClair
1990 Score - Steve Yzerman
1990 Score - Gerard Gallant

2016 SPA Future Watch - Sergey Tolchinsky - My final hit of the repack. Sergey played 4 games over two seasons, and has been in the KHL the past two years. Still a hit!
1991 Score - Jeff Daniels

2017 Overtime Ice Cold - Frank Mahovlich - An insert from a bonus pack! An easy contender for favourite card here.
2007 MVP - Darcy Tucker
1990 Bowman - Shayne Corson
1991 OPC - Jamie Macoun

1990 UD - Scott Stevens - Rangers alum #1 from this portion
1991 UD - Pelle Eklund
1993 Score - Brendan Shanahan
2007 H&S - Alexei Cherapanov

2007 Hot Prospects - Ray Emery - Sens content!

2007 McDonald's - Doug Weight
2016 Platinum - Hudson Fasching - Shininess battle!
1990 Pro Set - Paul Cavallini
1992 Score - Ray Sheppard

2018 SPA  - Jeff Skinner - Rangers alum #2 from this portion
1991 Pro Set - Sylvain Cote
1990 UD - Rick Zombo
2001 OPC - Teppo Numminen
2002 McDonald's - Ryan Smyth/Eric Brewer

2004 Franchises - Jimmy Mann - The final Franchises card in this.
1991 OPC - Gerard Gallant
1993 Stad. Club - Darryl Sydor
1990 Pro Set - Randy Ladouceur

1991 Score - David Bruce - Rangers alum #3 from this portion
1992 Ultra - Craig Muni
2015 UD - Frans Nielsen
1991 UD - Dominik Hasek
1991 7IS - George Dourian
1990 Bowman - Murray Craven

1990 UD - Jason Herter - Learn some French!
1992 Parkhurst - Dave Babych
2007 MVP - Patrick Kaleta
2018 SPA - Mark Messier
1992 Topps - Glenn Murray
1991 Score - John Cullen
1990 Score - Rod Langway
2012 Score - Asam Burish
2011 Score - Evgeny Dadonov

2002 Be A Player - Daniel Alfredsson - Alfie! A dupe for my Alfie collection, but a need for my Sens collection,
1990 Score - Glen Wesley
2013 Black Diamond - Shea Weber
2015 Portraits - Jacob de la Rose
1991 7IS - Todd Walker
2016 Parkhurst - Braden Holtby
2018 Ice - Nico Hischier
2018 SPA - Pekka Rinne
2015 UD - Eric Gudbranson

2015 Tim Hortons - Kevin Fiala - Food issue card!

2011 UD - Michael Frolik - And this ends it. With an interesting photo and a scanner blotch.

And that's a 250 count cube worth of cards. My expected mailings finally showed up over the past few days, so I'll start on those next time.

In Which I (sorta) Build My Own Repack - Part 3

I'm not going to be showing off all 80 cards in the mailer, but will still show a few more highlights from the mailer. And I still have a whole bunch more 2/14 stuff to show off from my latest COMC mailer as well.

My favourite photo of the remaining cards was this one of Milan Hejduk, just casually waiting on the bench for the next line change. So simple, but it really isn't one that you see a lot of in releases nowadays.

Honourable mention to this very patriotic entry for Tom Pyatt.

One of my least favourite designs along with one of my favourites can be seen among the Calle Johanssons in the mailer. If you didn't look at the foil on the 1994s just right, you couldn't tell which player was on the card. The back wouldn't have it listed either. Ah Vintage, with its simplicity. I guess the closest we'll come to that today is the retro parallels in OPC.

Shiny!

Also shiny!

Not as shiny, but still sorta shiny.

Bernie Geoffrion is probably the most under-represented member of my collection. He's a Hall of Famer, but I only have a dozen of his cards in my collection. The problem is that most of his cards are either expensive vintage, or from recent high-end sets. But, here's a couple I was able to add for under 50 cents each.

French Lesson #1.

French Lesson #2. Surprisingly, I don't have the more common English version of this Lowry in the collection.

And your last card, before I send everything to the binder, is this Viktor Kozlov. This is the closest I'd come to a 'hit' in this repack, getting this super limited edition (to 40K) of one of the perfect matches (year as well as date) in the 2/14 collection.

I should probably do this again, although getting to 80 in basketball would be a challenge unless I wanted a repack that was 90% Rip Hamilton cards. Football and baseball are probably do-able.

But there you have it!

In Which I (sorta) Build My Own Repack - Part 1

Since my most frequent repack busts through the dollar store as of late were of the 80 card variety. I decided to build my own 80 card repack through sportlots, consisting exclusively of additions to my 2/14 collection. Find a seller with a lot of hockey cards, then don't stop until I reach 80 cards. Simple!

Leading the way in this post is the most recent card in the mailer, out of 18/19 Overtime, and the only Ehlers appearance.

Compare and contrast 1 Ehlers with players like this, who would get more than one appearance with basically the same design. While these two look very similar...

turning them over shows one is the Canadian/bilingual version.

Or, I could go the more common route for recent releases, and just get the base card and a bunch of parallels. It was the strength of these purchases that pushed my Milan Hejduk collection into the 200s, the first player to reach that plateau.

Here's another logical group of cards to bunch together that aren't cards at all. A quartet of stickers from Panini's annual release. The Sutter is out of 10/11, which the others go back to 1988. Since pretty much all of Calle Johansson's releases have him as a member of the Washington Capitals, I'm happy to welcome this one most of all from the group. Despite hair poofiness.

But, you can still have modern stickers, such as this Gaborik insert from 13-14 OPC.

Or a card that is about as thin as a sticker, the unfortunate parallel series from 10-11 UD.

How to end part 1 of this? Why not step away from any more vertical entries with these horizontals? With all the 13-14 Score I've busted, I'm somewhat surprised I didn't pull that Pyatt already. Gaborik is another insert card, and then there are a couple base cards on the right. I'd probably like the Vintage more if both photos didn't feature the flaming-snot logo.

But there you go. More to come!

Je suis en vacances

Away time! I'm spending the next two weeks in France and Belgium as part of a tour for the 75th anniversary of D-Day. Prepare autoposts! So, if I speak glowingly of a player over the next two weeks, only for them to appear in an article with the phrase "multiple corpses", it is not my fault.

Also, if for some reason you send me a package that requires a signature, you should probably hold off.

What better to prepare for a trip to France than with an OPC card? I doubt I'll have to translate "He has a workshop at the house" in conversation, but I'm ready for it!

The anger on the front of the card needs no translation.

2017 Adventures in Repacks - Part 4: Something New

I'll try anything repack related that's reasonably priced. I've been seeing these for about the past month or two at Walmart, and finally decided to touch the stove.

The contents were as described. 3 hobby packs and the Gretzky/Matthews card. The reverse of the package shows 1 pack of 2010 UD French, 1 pack of 2010 Donruss and 1 pack of 2011 Elite. And those were the exact packs within.

Here's the front and back of the promised card. It is obviously some sort of Beckett promotional card. This is already in the box with the various numbered cards I'm sending to someone who has a $30 a week habit.

Time to start the packs.

I was hoping to land something I needed for the set coming off the cheap-o hobby box I picked up in December. That didn't happen, but at least I've got a new Steve Downie for my Rangers alumni binder.

And since that was only 7 cards, here's the 8th. That's a really nice 8th card, and like Steve, it will move into the alumni binder. These are somewhat scarce, based on my pulls. The box contained two of them. In comparison, the box contained 1 red parallel, which was /25. But, there are 550 cards in the original set, that would make even fewer cards each per 1990 card. That assumes the buybacks are consistent across the board. But I'm over-analyzing this. Donruss time!

More PC content among the base. I'm really surprised that Milan Hejduk wasn't already in my 2/14 collection, but it is there now. And any Daniel Alfredsson is a good one.

Here's the rest of the pack's base cards. I love the sea of white behind Zetterberg.

This pack was thick. Thick to the point it was actually a challenge to open the pack. I had guessed the packs had been searched before they were put in, but I guess not since this was the final card.

The seam on this card is causing this swatch to almost push through cardboard. This card is also /50, and definitely a nice addition to my misc cards. And, unlike a previously acquired Patric Hornqvist relic, there doesn't appear to be any DNA on this one.

Finally, the Elite.

4 base cards.

And a parallel that also hits my Rangers alum PC. This Gold Status Die-Cut parallel is 1/99, so I can also call this an ebay 1/1!

So, these were very good for my PCs, with the best card in two of the three being an addition to my Rangers alum PC, and the third containing a /50 hit. I have no complaints about the quality in this break, but will probably stop with just one and quit while I'm ahead.