Chronicling New Raptors

With Panini finally realizing that Terence Davis was a pretty good rookie, I opted to get in a break with the new Chronicles release. It is a rookie heavy product, and Davis made a lot of appearances in it.

But first, here's a base card of Kyle Lowry. I kinda hoped they'd use the more newspaperish design of 2020 NCAA Chronicles, but I guess they hadn't used this design yet in basketball.

Much like with Rookie Anthology, they've included some Update cards in this late season release. Some of that includes guys such as Kawhi pictured with their new teams, and some are of rookies like Kendrick Nunn and Davis that were unexpected early standouts.

Even though there are some numbered cards to come, this update Prizm is probably the biggest $$$MEGApUll$$4 card in the mailer. I'm happy to welcome it to my collection. For all intents and purposes, this is a base card, and it still a $50 CDN card.

Here's the first of the numbered card, featuring Davis rocking this year's City jerseys. I'm not going to look too closely to verify that, though.

One of my favourite designs to appear in the Chronicles release(s) is Elements, with its use of two different photos on the front, instead of the standard reusing of the same photo.

But this is the big card for me in this. I've got an autograph of Terence Davis already, even if that is an Ole Miss one. But Chris Boucher is just wrapping up his second full season with the Raptors, and his only card prior to this was appearances in the team set released after last year's championship win. It is somewhat strange that his first pack-pullable card was an auto, but I'm happy to add him to my collection of championship autos.

This card is from Flux, which doesn't appear to have ever been a set. I can imagine a collector of Ducks alum trying to hunt this version down, with the filter used giving the card a very yellow and green look.

There you have it!

Bills! Bills! Bills!

Back to the group break mailers, and a pair that showed up that added some new names to the team PC, even if some of them have yet to don Bills attire.

First up is a bunch of stuff from Chronicles Draft, which brings a bunch of designs into a collegiate product. Davis was a 4th rounder out of UCF, and while he only got one card here, he is a Rookie Premiere guy, so there should be more to come.

I'm doing the base cards, such as they are, in terms of increasing volume. Here's two from Zack Moss, a third rounder, and another rookie premiere guy who will be providing me with player-worn swatches as the year goes on.

We finally get a look at what the base cards really look like. This is definitely the most newspaper-ish for a Chronicles card so far.

Of course, a QB would lead the way in terms of base/insert/parallel/whatever cards. You'd expect nothing less from such an elite white person.

My first numbered card adds a purple parallel to my collection. And yes, all these collegiate cards go right into the Bills binders. Why wouldn't they?

The Silhouettes are always welcome additions to the ol' binder. They might work better with just a plain swatch, and no chance of any portion of a patch hiding behind the player.

And holy sweetness is that a nice patch to end the Chronicles portion of the mail. The research to discover its source wasn't too hard, as it traces to the 2018 Holiday Bowl. Alas, this has to be player worn as Moss didn't appear in the game due to injuries.

Here's some Luminance, which does have some of my favourite base card designs. And we finally see Bills unifoms, and the draft picks are now listed with their new team. That Tremaine Edmunds comes as close as one can to one of my favourite football themes, a defensive player with the ball. So, I have to vote Josh Allen's stretch, along with Jon Feliciano celebrating in the background.

Of course, there's a variety of numbered parallels as well.

The Legends make an appearance as part of the 'Vintage Performers' subset. I like how the filter gives this card a slightly older appearance than the regular base cards.

Yes. The Zack Moss portion of my PC got really good after this mailer. Iffy sig, but at least the 'Z' looks nice, which it should for any player with a capital 'Z' in their name.

There you have it!

Group Break Miscellany - Part 2

Today, it is the randomness from Columbus and New Jersey.

This one is bound for my Kitchener Rangers alumni collection. He may have only spent part of a season with the club, but he still counts. This card from Limited is /199.

The team has a decent number of rookies in the current season, with several players being all over the releases. Emil Bemstrom is one, found in the perpetually dull Portraits inserts.

But these are a little more interesting. And you can interpret two letters on the signature, so that's something.

And here's another one of their 2019-20 rookies, this time in relic form.

An interesting relic that's been making appearances in SP Game Used over the past few seasons. The Banner Year features a piece of a banner that appeared in the arena during a recent event, in this case the 2019 All-Star game in San Jose. In the past, there have been Stadium Series, Stanley Cup finals, and entry draft banners.

New Jersey is as far to the east as I'll go with this. Shininess to start!

Hey! Here's a nice patch!

Having the Devils in a release with some 2019-20 boxes means you're chasing cards of the #1 draft pick in Jack Hughes. Here's two of them! The glossy is a copper parallel from packs that appear in retail tins of flagship this year.

And here's something that will turn into a Jack Hughes autograph! That means that with the Cale Makar auto, I've got two autographs of the top rookies on their way at some point from Artifacts. That's going to be quite the mailday!

There you have it!

Group Break Miscellany - Part 1

This, and the next post, will highlight some cards I added to my collection through various group breaks, all random mixers, done at the LCS. I've got 5 teams worth of posts, and I'll do an east/west breakdown for them. First up will be the 3 western teams. I'm not scanning everything, just some of my favourites.

I was disappointed when this year's Ice didn't feature acetate cards for the regular base cards. But at least I got one of the acetate SPd Ice Premieres cards.

Shininess!

I did get a couple more notable Canucks cards, but those will have to wait until they've made their journey to Ann Arbor to get shown off.

Fear the beard!

A rather minimalist and illegible autograph. Maybe it is Cyrillic. Which would elevate it greatly beyond an auto of a player with 4 more games in the NHL than I.

This is certainly the biggest of the cards I'm showing off here with a couple things going for it. While it isn't the best looking signature, I can't complain with a nice 3-colour patch. My best guess is that it comes from the '3' on on one of the arm numbers.  And the photo features their throwback/alternate jersey as well. It is rare that the RPAs have a photographic bonus, but here's one!

And there you have it!

Revisiting SP Authentic

Not a box this time, but some group break goodies where I grabbed the Senators and Carolina.

I grabbed Carolina for one purpose - that is chasing the Young Guns card of emergency back-up goaltender David Ayres. It was cheaper to get the Carolina spot in breaks, than to buy the card directly (still is, even with it not going for pre-sale $75-$100 levels) so I went that route, and any extra content that came with it would be a bonus.

On-card autograph, and one that actually uses the large available space wisely? Bonus!

RPA, which are one-per-case in this? Extra bonus! Even if Gauthier hasn't exactly gone crazy in his rookie season (and he's already been traded to the Rangers).

I picked up the Senators spot as well in this, and got the YG of JC Beaudin, as well as Connor Brown's first Sens card. Brown was part of the Cody Ceci trade with the Leafs.

Hey! I got an auto from this spot as well! This is my second auto of their latest #1 goaltender-of-the-future, Joey Daccord.

There you have it! I'll probably open up the mailbag next post.

Senator Catch-Up - Part 3

The finale! Some almost pack-fresh Platinum!

I'm starting with a new design out of this year's release - the Sunset parallels. They aren't numbered, but drop at a rate of about two per box. But shouldn't they be Sunrise parallels for the Marquee rookies?

Pink Matte parallels also debut this release. They fall at the same rate as the Sunsets, and the collation was so good I got the exact same players on both of these.

Violet Pixel parallels return this year, but this year they're all /399.

Here's the regular rainbow parallels, as seen in both the regular base card and the retro versions.

A yelling Erik Brannstrom was apparently considered to be a Calder front-runner this year. I don't think that's happening.

Autographs! The Senators seem to be one of the teams that has a lot in these releases. I watched a few of these case breaks, and despite falling at a rate of one per box, there seemed to be 2 Sens autos per case. Here's my first auto of their latest goaltender-of-the-future.

And here's #2! Unfortunately, some of the players in this release must have been given streaky pens to sign their autos, and Abramov was one of them. But, this is still a pretty rare card, with the Seismic Gold version being /25.

And there you have 3 days worth of Senators cards!

Senator Catch-Up - Part 2

Let's keep going into this year.

As usual, I won't highlight everything - this covers 4 half-cases of these products. This year's Synergy had an insert set that would cover various all-star teams of various players. Which means I get to find a new Erik Karlsson Senators card in this! WOO-HOO!

If you want a more traditional Synergy card with the acetate portion, here's one of 'em.

Allure was the next release, with a set make-up very similar to Panini's Select releases. Foil throughout, with lots of parallels. This is a pink diamond parallel.

And this is the white rainbow parallel. While neither of these are numbered, there are some other ones in this set.

But if autographs are your thing, here's a couple of them. Both of these are /349, which seemed to be the numbering of the rookie portion of this set, although some of the more touted rookies are /249. This is my first auto from Veronneau, and the Balcers joins an Artifacts one.

Now that is an interesting die-cut.

Here's the lowest numbered card in the posts, with ths purple ice parallel limited to 10 copies.

Despite the set name, I'm guessing this patch is photo-shoot worn as opposed to coming from a game. Still, I'll always love it wehn some gold/bronze shows up on a Senators patch.

One last card - the always nice looking Shadow Box design out of SPX.

Just some Platinum left next post!