2020 Adventures in Repacks: Part 24.1 - Football From The Source

I'm switching to a football repack today.

The first of these I tried earlier this year was pretty good. Let's go again!

Only cards this time in the repack. I'll go chronologically, and end with the Superstars.

The appearance of Mongo in this means this is the second repack in the shipment that I can use the wrestling tag on. Also, if you're not following "what will mongo do next?" on twitter, why aren't you?

The best card in the 90s pack was a new Jim Kelly for the 2/14 collection, but that success won't be repeated with this one. Here, the big winner was this great Curtis Conway card from 1998 Metal Universe. A bear in the background of a Bears card? Perfect!

Kicker mojo! Although a kicker was far more likely to make an appearance on cardboard in the junk wax era than in today's releases.

Even some CFL love!

Here's the rest of the 90s pack. The three Upper Deck cards at the top were in numerical order for the set as well.

I guess I had to wait until 2000 for there to be some 2/14 content in this one. This is my 114th card of Bledsoe. Joe Horn's card mentions his CFL time, so that's a bonus as well. And then there's firearms aficionado Plaxico Burress!

Bills content, an insert, and the always great Chargers unis on the always great Classics design.

Your Superstars! Newton and Jones are, but with only a few games under his belt, Alan Harper really does not.  But it is a rookie card, so there is that.

There you have it! I'm expecting my Score box to arrive tomorrow, so I'll take a break from football repacks for the time being, and return to this when I'm through recapping the box .

2020 Adventures in Repacks: Part 7.2 - Why I left Series 1 on the Shelves

After landing that Sid Abel autograph, I had to return to Walmart to get the rest of the hangers. Which meant, in this case, 3 more. The 4 packs inside were the same. I'll start with those, and group the similar packs together.

Even if it is a dupe, a 2/14 card is a nice start to the recap.

And one of the Score packs also contained the mystical, magical box hit of the Gold Rush Hot Rookies. And it is a relevant player as well!

Despite being locked together like a brick, there were a couple PC hits in the Parkhurst packs with a Sens card and a Rangers alum.

As for the pack hit, not much variety with each having a red parallel.

A decent Young Guns card highlight the S1 packs.

There was also a YG card in S2, but the highlight here is easily the Marquee Rookie of Elias Petterson.

Off to the hits!

This is probably the worst pairing of the bunch. But you do have a second generation player and a player still in the league, so it still isn't that bad. And if this is the worst of the hits, I wouldn't complain about these being the two I got.

It is a hot box for the Los Angeles Kings! The relic comes from a set that I'll always be a fan of - Masterpieces. Classic purple (or gold) Kings relics are a favourite colour to find on a swatch, and there's the bonus of it matching the uniform in the image. A Future Watch auto to go along with it, and like Neal, of a player still in the league.

Like with the Connolly, we return to the early days of relic cards with the Tommy Salo - and it coming from 2000 Black Diamond. It is also a pretty unique swatch, coming from a glove. And a dual autograph as well, which I seem to recall being tougher pulls from the Be A Player releases. Doug Weight might have sticker issues, but if that's my biggest complaint, I really shouldn't complain.

How did I not hit every nearby Walmart to get more of these?

2020 Adventures in Repacks: Part 7.1 - Why I left Series 1 on the Shelves

I left S1 stuff on the shelves because of these new repacks. I was really hesitant about these, expecting the hits to be of players I'd barely remember to go alongside some MVP blaster packs.

Then I watched some breaks, and decided it would be worth trying one.

These are better packs than I expected, even though the packs were typical for repacks.

Score was pretty good, as I got one of the box hits. The Gold Rush rookie parallels are one-per, and I even landed a still-relevant player, which is always hard from 12/13.

Parkhurst was nice as well, getting me a new Kadri for the Rangers alum binder.

As well as a couple more for a future Ann Arbor bound mailer.

Even an interesting insert!

Not too much of note from the UD packs, but Canvas cards are always photographic fun.

And your standard OPC Update.

But this was really about the hits. They're actually pretty good!

The relic actually goes back to the early days of those cards, coming from a 1999-2000 release. The relic really isn't a swatch, but a small chunk from a game used puck. While I've landed on-manu puck autos in the past, you can definitely tell the difference between those and these.

And your auto...

Even though another one of these was pulled in the video I linked above, I still was amazed that this came out of a repack as an inserted autograph. An on-card autograph of a HOFer, from a time when autographs in packs were still becoming a thing. The best I can tell, this Sid Abel was part of a group of autographs meant to be released in earlier products, but didn't get out until 2001. Sid had already passed away by that point, so they had to be meant for something else.

Still, what a keeper!

Here's the back of the card. I've seen others from this set come up in other videos (Chuck Rayner, Milt Schmidt), so I immediately regretted not buying every one of these on the hangers.

I went back the next day to get the last three. While I didn't get any more Pre-Parkies, there still was some nice stuff there, and I'll cover those next post.

The 12 R.A. Boxes of Christmas - On the 8th Day...

New year. Same case. I started off 2019 with the posting of a box of Ice where I landed an auto/patch of Martin Brodeur, which was a wonderful way to start the year. For 2020, it just happens the 8th box contained the best, at least in terms of value should I sell it, card of the case. What was it? Read on!

The first card for the first day from the 8th box is the base card auto/relic, featuring a player still in the league sporting a jersey style that mercifully isn't.

Your base Score content.

The parade of Preds rookie goaltenders continues into the new year, although Mezanec did have a slightly busier NHL career than Hellberg. Marek is spending this year in the Czech league.

That's a pretty nice way to start off the Prizm portion of the set - the MacKinnon rookie.

Shiny. Broll played 5 games for the Leafs in the 13-14 season, and hasn't seen the league since. He's now playing in England for the Coventry Blaze.

Jurco auto #3 of the case.

Select brings a card of Tim Thomas still sporting some Florida Panthers colours while in a Dallas uniform, as he'd play 8 games for them as his career drew to a close.

Devin Setoguchi in Jets gear made an appearance here in both the Prizm and Select portion.

A quad patch featuring a quartet of American players that the back of the card hypothesizes will be the future stars of Team USA on an international level. Of these, only Etem appears to be out of hockey at this point, with the others still in the NHL.

While he's mostly with Tampa Bay in this product, this holdover Dominion card does give another chance for people that really want an auto/patch of Kostka with Toronto one last crack at it. Given the shape of the blue at the right of the window, I'm thinking this piece might come from the logo.

And here's the case hit. The Titanium cards numbered to the player's number are considered true rookies, and sell for a stupid amount. They seem to fall one per case, and Kucherov is easily the big name in this group from Anthology. I got a silver Prizm of Kucherov last time, so I'll probably end up keeping that one and try to unload this.

There you have it!

Prospecting (with Heroes) - Part 2

The other half!

Pack 10:

Finally, the first hit of the box! Blum spent a few up-and-down years in the league with the Predators and Wild before heading overseas. Considering that there are guys in this product that never sniffed the league in the first place, that's a decent enough hit.

Pack 11:

A future Sen and a Kitchener Ranger player to start this pack off, and there's also one of the three cover boys from the box. The Voltigeurs is another favourite CHL logo of mine.

Pack 12:

Here's a pre-NHL card of the Nuge.

and this:

This was definitely worth the wait for the first relic of the product. The silver emblems aren't on-card numbered, but are supposedly limited to 3 each. And I will have no complaints if the guy that I end up with the relic of is PK Subban. Since the photo on the card is from the Canada/Russia challenge game, and that's what the swatch is from, you can actually spot the spot on the jersey where the CHL patch comes from - as it is visible right there on the shoulder. That's a beautiful relic card!

Pack 13:

Pretty much anything would be a step down from that last pack, so I'll just say this was a Quebec Remparts hot pack.

Pack 14:

Here's auto #2. I remember absolutely nothing about Martin Frk except the 'buy a vowel' quality of his last name. He's still playing on this stide of the Atlantic, and is in the Kings system.

Pack 15:

Another Rangers card. Also another alternate jersey, as several teams break ones out for the game closest to Remembrance Day, making this very similar to the Scott Glennie one from yesterday's post.

Pack 16:

You're promised 3 non-hit inserts in the box, and here's the final one. This is somewhat interesting, as Helmer was pretty much an AHL lifer at this point, playing in over 1000 games, but he did spend just under 150 games in the NHL. He's a member of the AHL Hall-of-Fame, and with there also being an insert set dedicated to the 75th anniversary of the AHL, it is kinda appropriate that this Calder Cup champions card is of him.

Pack 17:

Bonus auto! WOO-HOO! Not the most illustrious career, though, as his NHL experience was limited to one game.

Pack 18:

Well, two of the big cards in the set show up in the final pack with Subban and Kadri. There were no dupes as I went through this, meaning I was only about 10 cards short of the base set.

Here's the final hit. It might be a one-colour swatch, but it is supposedly a Senators swatch, so I like it as the final hit for the box.

And that's the box. But I still have the 50 card update set to post!