PWE Chronicles

 Thanks to Canada Post, this PWE recap post has been waiting for a long time to be posted. About a month ago, Joseph/CrazieJoe let me know that a trio of PWEs were on the way. Two arrived promptly, but with a third expected I opted to wait until they all showed up.

#3 showed up yesterday.

I'd been waiting so long, so this can jump the queue and make its appearance today. The best thing about this is that all 3 were filled with 2/14 content.

The best thing about Kelly Stinnett's cards is if they are dupes I can add them to my Mets collection. But, this is my first acquisition of this card for the 2/14 collection.

There was only a single basketball card among the 3 envelopes, but fortunately it was a need for the collection, and it does feature a great photo from the backboard. 

With all the mid-range football base cards from sets with 100 card base sets and a bunch of inserts that I've already added the inserts of into the collection, they all start to run together at some point. That made me think that I'd already added this David Garrard into my collection. My TCDB audit tells me otherwise. This is my 87th card of Garrard.

But I did know this shiny Justin Miller was new!

When Joseph was breaking a box of 04-05 Pacific, I noticed this card come up and immediately put my claim in for it. This is a somewhat rare-ish red foil parallel. I've already got the regular base card, and just need the blue /250 to complete the small rainbow.

And here's a sampling of the rest of the hockey in this. The Svoboda is a card that I was certain was already in the binders, but again, the TCDB check showed otherwise. There was also a 1991 Score of Dave Lowry that also fell into that category, but I decided I like the horizontal Score card better for scanning purposes. The Milan Hejduk content in this extends his leading numbers in the collection to 220 cards.

There you have it! If you didn't get enough 2/14 stuff in  this, I'll summarize the 2/14 stuff in my COMC shipment next time.

Mailbag: Baseball

Here's the baseball content from the bubblers!

This is the oddest of the bunch, a card from one of Kerry's Free Card Fridays. I just thought it would go nicely with the Northern Lights card out of 15-16 Champ's.

And I can place it in Principal Skinner's kitchen and he'd be none the wiser.

I've never seen Utz on this side of the border (or even heard of the company), so this food-issue DeGrom is a nice add to my Mets binders.

There were a lot more Mets stuff here (a theme for both envelopes, and both the Mets and Jays) but here's a scanner bed worth of them. I really should have replaced that McNeil with the Donruss "Polar Bear" variant. Thankfully for the Mets PC, that one was far more common than the Topps one.

For some reason, these Vlad Jr inserts were Target exclusives. I say "For some reason", since wouldn't these be a better exclusive for Walmart, which actually exists in Canada?

And here's your Jays sampler. The Ed-wing!

As with the Cards on Cards mailer, I'm starting the recap of the TMV envelope with the oddball. Does this Larry Walker go into my Expos PC? Or my Cancon PC? Or did I hose things up completely by not including it in my hockey recap?
Either way, we've got a pair of Hall of Famers meeting on this card.

It might not be a Diamond Kings card, but this Bonilla is close enough.

 

Here's a numbered salute to the '86 squad. Hernandez is great and all, but I might have used Series MVP Ray Knight instead. That's still a minor beef for a great card.

The TMV Mets Sampler.

And the Jays Sampler.

With a bonus of some swatches and slivers to go along with it.

That only leaves football! Next post!

Pack Sampler: 2020 Big League

With three mailings on the way, I thought I'd be reaching into the mailbag on this Canada Day Eve. Alas, Canada Post disappointed. As usual. So, here's a pack of Big League.

My first Big League card of 2020 is a pretty generic one. But the design gets the job done.

With the 'Fun Facts' being my favourite thing about the design in 2020 Score Football, it is no surprise that the Did You Know on the backs of these are my favourite things here.

No Blue Jays content among the 30 cards, but a former Blue Jay is the only Mets card in it, with it also likely being my first card of Stroman in Mets attire.

My favourite photos in this see Kiermaier's catch highlighted by a perfectly placed graphic on the outfield fence, with Javier's card giving the vibe to the multi-image cards of the past. Sorta. Kinda.

One nice thing about this over flagship is that instead of 'Moments' cards having a checklist on the back, they actually have a description of the event that just happened.

Here's my promised orange parallels. I also got the base versions of the Bogaerts and Leaders cards.

Finally, the inserts. With there only being one per team, the Caricatures give a nice vibe to the classic Diamond Kings. The odds aren't listed for the other three, but the Roll Call are one 1:4 packs. So, yay?

And there you have it. I'm still salty about the cancellation of Bark in the Park cards from a few years back, but these are a perfectly fine low-end release.

Another box of Chronicles - Part 2

Here's the end of this box:

Pack 4:

Getting the final non-hit pack out of the weigh early. But no complaints with a new Cavan Biggio card fro the the Jays collection. I really seemed to be an Eloy Jimenez magnet with this stuff, but never landed an auto of his from it (although I already had one from Heritage Minors).

Pack 5:

3 Padres cards, including a hit, certainly make this a Padres hot pack! This also the second time in this box where the final two cards in the pack were of the same player.

Pack 6:

That's three straight Mookie Betts cards, and as you might suspect, the big head one is my favourite of the bunch. That Aaron Judge looks really nice with the green crusade background (/50), and there's the final auto as well on one of the more interesting designs in the product with Kramer. That's a gold /25 parallel as well.

And there you have it!

Another box of Chronicles - Part 1

With the football version of this product dropping this month, why not bust a box of the baseball version in anticipation of it? I'll probably end up doing at least a box of the football, since the basketball will continue to be priced insanely for this year's releases.

Pack 1:

Well, what a nice start for the ol' team collection. 2 Vlads, one being a hit, and an Alonso. That Mondesi is a pretty nice looking photo as well, barely noticing the lack of logo on it.

Pack 2:

There's one of the non-hit packs, but at least there is a shiny Spectra card in there. Austin Riley isn't a bad player to get a /99 parallel out of.

Pack 3:

Sure, there's an autograph in there (Meisinger appears not to have any Topps cards yet), but I gotta give that nice shiny Alonso /199 the nod as the best card in the box. While I have yet to land an autograph of his, I've landed some really nice numbered parallels from my breaks of this.

That's 3 packs. 3 more tomorrow!

Opening some Opening Day

2020's Opening Day might be unknown at this point, but there's always time for opening some new product.

The box promises an extra, exclusive Jays card per three packs. I guess this is my first opening Day card for the season then. These parallels are exclusives to Canadian Walmarts, and I guess this rookie is the one you want to pull.

Kershaw was the first pack-pulled card from the set. This does set a theme for the break through, as Jays and Dodgers were the most common teams in the packs.

But first, here's the only Mets card in the packs.

But I'll shift back to Toronto for the first Jays card of the packs.

And the Jays were also represented among the inserts, specifically this one that saluted the actual 2019 opening.

My favourite photo in the packs was this beautiful Matt Carpenter.

If photos that you'll likely see in Series 2 are more your thing, here's my favourite among those with this casual Robles catch.

Back to the inserts, here's a Traditions card. Interestingly, this pack also had the Aaron Judge base card. Yay, collation!

Sticker!

But this here was actually a pretty big hit for the packs. The Walk this Way insert, which commemorates walk-off homers, falls at a rate of 1:369 packs, so they're pretty rare pulls. As one can tell by the jersey, this would be the Dodgers walk-off homer on Jackie Robinson Day, making it one of the more perfectly timed walk-offs from last season as well.

And there you have it!

Just One Pack - 2020 Heritage

I guess I'm not really feeling this like I did last year. I can't really say why, I just don't. But I'll still try one pack. Maybe one or two more if I see retail on the shelves. But this might be it aside from singles.

While this is a card of a Met, he's still a National here.  But this is an acceptable start to a pack.

And the back.

And the rest. At least there was a legitimate Mets card in the bunch, with Justin Wilson making his debut in my collection. He did get a card in Topps Total last year, but it is nicer to pack pull one.

And there you have it.

When In Doubt: Chronicles

Sometimes, it is good to have a box worth of busted cards around when you don't just want to post a single card, but don't want to get to verbose. So, here's another box worth of my favourite 2019 product.

Pack 1:

While sometimes you might see two cards from the same design in a single pack, this might be the first time I've received three. But, they are all different parallels, with Vlad being the base design, Kieboom being a holo parallel, and Tucker being the hyper parallel /299. There's also the first of the two Spectra cards that appear in packs without hits.

Pack 2:

And, there's the first hit. Eventually. The gold parallels are /99 in that set. A big head Score card? Those are always welcome. The Chavis is another Hyper parallel, and like with Crusade is /299.

Pack 3:

The first actual auto is of Michael Perez, a catcher for Tampa. I hadn't heard of him aside from cardboard appearances. Apparently he was supposed to see more time than he got behind the plate last season, prior to Travis D'Arnaud signing and living up to his original potential.

Pack 4:

That's really what I like to see with a relic card with multiple windows. Three different designs for a relic. Two plain swatches, albeit different colours, and a pinstripe. Not a lot of variety in terms of teams, with 3 White Sox and 2 Angels cards in the pack.

Pack 5:

And there's the final hit. And another Chicago-intensive pack. But we've also got Vlad showing up again, and Ruby Wave /199 of Tatis, so not bad at all.

Pack 6:

That's a nice way to end it - a Pete Alonso hot pack with both a numbered and non-numbered card. That hot pink of Arraez is also numbered, being /75.

Not bad at all, even if I would have preferred not going back to back boxes with a redemption.