Familiar 2/14 Faces

After a bunch of newcomers yesterday, here's some names that have made at least one previous appearance.

This is practically pack fresh as an addition to the collection, and is the only card in the bunch that wasn't a COMC acquisition, instead being a pick-up from the LCS when I picked up some Trilogy. At least Alshon still qualifies as an addition to the more limited base sets out there.

Staying with Contenders, here's Tanner Lee from last year's release. He was released by the Jags this past off-season, and didn't catch on anywhere else.

Given Luminance's tendency to use darker photos on their cards to contrast the silver foil text, getting one with all the white on it tends to throw you. Like Tanner, he was a late round draft pick, but unlike Tanner, he saw a little action this season.

A one-card switch to hockey. UD's epacks have allowed for inexpensive additions to the collection, and this is significantly the cheapest option to add a new Mrazek relic to the binders.

It wouldn't be a Topps release if there weren't a few dozen parallels of each card. Here's the Walgreens yellow parallel.

I will not pretend to know the first thing about soccer, but I do know these are the first two soccer hits in my collection. Dillon wins the signature quality battle, since I can recognize more of the letters on his.

And there you have it!

COMC and the 2/14 Misc. Portion

I really have to get caught up on my COMC to-be-posted collection before the next mailer from them arrives. So today and tomorrow will cover the 2/14 content that has been stewing in the box.

Easily the oldest card in this group goes back to 1979 and the James Bond: Moonraker set. Lois Maxwell made one appearance in this set, and while I'm disappointed she wasn't featured in the sticker subset, at least there was this.

Another entry into the binder from the "cheap on COMC because of epacks" methodology.

The 'inventor' portion of the collection is pretty threadbare. I've added cards featuring a Ferris Wheel, since George Ferris was a 2/14 baby. Now, I can add Christopher Sholes to the collection. You are very likely working at his invention right now - the QWERTY keyboard.

Who would have thought that Mayors insert set in 2016 Ginter would pay dividends? But LA Mayor Eric Garcetti is now in the collection. I wonder if he does TTM.

I won't pretend to know the first thing about soccer, or any of the players featured here. But these cards all mark the first appearances of these 4 players in the collection.

And there you have it! Tomorrow, the rest of the new cards with some baseball, hockey and football.

Expo-sing new 2/14 cards

Much of what I got at the Expo were set-builders. I knocked two O-Pee-Chee sets completely off, along with a bunch of Heritage. How many cards did I get for my birthday PC? A grand total of 4.

This one wasn't a single card purchase. I landed this one in a box break of 2019 Upper Deck CFL. I couldn't see myself doing two CFL themed posts within a week of each other, so this shows up here. There's one or two of these /15 purple parallels per box, so I really beat the odds with landing the only 2/14 baby among the 200 card base set.

And 4/15? 4+15=19. That's numbered to his number. Sorta. still an e-bay 1/1!

Even better! This puts my total 2/14 collection at the 2500 mark!

I actually purchased a soccer card at the Expo. This one is a little more common than the CFL card, it comes in at /250. This is my first Premier League numbered card.

Signature Series card #1.

Signature Series card #2. While neither has the most spectacular penmanship, Hejduk does retain his 18 card lead at the top of the collection leader board.

But there you have it!

Group Breaking my Way to the National - Part 1

A trip to the Expo is enough for me to get my major card show vibe on, and I can do so twice a year. My only complaint about it is that 90ish percent of the content is hockey.

The big National show can solve the lack of variety problem, but jetting to the show isn't really my thing. Why waste money on transportation or accommodation that can be spent on cards?

So, I bought into a few group breaks that were taking place there. And here were some of the goodies I picked up in those, starting with the football.

I landed the Browns in a case of Certified. While I would think that would be a nice way to add some Mack Wilson to the collection, alas, no cards of the 2/14 baby came from the case. At least this Nick Chubb is a pretty nice looking card.

And I landed an autograph of his as well. And unless you want me to bore you with base cards, that's it for football.

But there were Silver promo packs as well, so I can least show off a couple highlights from the football portion of that as well.

Here's a relic card, but it scanned so terribly, you can't tell what it is from that. For some reason, that bright orange pylon piece looks yellow. I'm not sure why they opted to place Smith's photo on the card, since the Eagles crushed the Cowboys 37-9 that day. Maybe the pylon was the more effective defender?

Shiny rookies! The Haskins is considered the base rookie, while the Campbell is an Explosion parallel /40.

I didn't specify which type of football you'd see in this post, did I? While the Haskins is a rookie base card, this is a Legends base card.

As for this? I had no idea where it should go. I didn't want to have a post all by itself, so I figure it can fatten this post. The item feels rubbery, so I'm guessing this a piece of a tire. Not exactly a big surprise as to why that car ends up on a card in a Panini promo set. And for those playing the "guess the parallel" home game, your answer is 'Rainow Spoikes'.

The best football card for me wasn't close, as these special Select parallels were in the packs as well. I really lucked out landing one of these /10 cards in my packs. The Bills defense looks really promising for this season and beyond, and Edmunds looks to be one of its anchors.

And there you have it! Tomorrow, I'll be California dreamin' with baseball!

New 2/14 Faces, courtesy of COMC

I've still got about 100-ish cards in my COMC box, so today I'm going to knock that down into the double digits with a 2/14 posting, and a bunch of new faces to go along with it. I've got a bunch of minor league baseball stuff as well, but this is all the other stuff.

My first UFC card! She's not a fighter, but was a round card girl at one point. She's now Natasha Kingsbury, and has a child and an instagram filled with yoga photos.

Staying in the combat sports realm, here's my first boxing card. Perez ended his career with an impressive 61-6-3 record. That's the WBC Bantamweight title across his waist.

This aren't my first cards from the auto-racing world, but these are my first of a guy nicknamed 'Banjo'.

OHL love!

This is one of the odder die-cut cards not only in my 2/14 collection, but in my binders as a whole. There's definitely a jigsaw puzzle piece vibe to it. Also, while I was updating my spreadsheets, this became the 1800th card in the collection. WOO-HOO!

Soccer additions, both from recent and older sets.

It's going to end with some cards from the other type of football. I'll assume someone with Too Many Manninghams has at least one of Walt Teninga, so this one is all mine.

My first Arena League card. Even better, Terrance Joseph is my first non-baseball perfect match in the collection, hitting both date and year with his birth date.

I'll end with a non-debut card for the 2/14, but still a first as this is my first auto of Alshon Jeffrey. There was a slight spike in his prices for autos after he picked up a Super Bowl win this year, so I'm glad to have got this before hand. Also, it represents one of my favourite releases in Field Access. Bonus!

And there you go! Repack time up next!

2/14 binder newness - Part 1

As mail starts rolling into Chez Buckstorecards, maybe it is time that I get caught up on them. Trade packages, group break packages and a COMC package. I probably should put the case break to the side for a bit, and start doing some work on recapping those. I'll start with the COMC stuff, which was mainly filled with set builders that I won't bore you with, some 2/14 stuff and a whole bunch of miscellany really doesn't group together in any manner more than 3 or 4 cards each. Fortunately, the 2/14 additions was well into the 30s, so I can bump off a lot of the box with a pair of alphabetical posts.

There's a shift at the top of my 'miscellany' category with the addition of these two parallels. Cavani, shown here on both his parallel Paris Saint-Germain card and his parallel of a parallel Uruguay card, takes over the top spot from Ayako Hamada with 6 cards to her 5.

A pair of 1984 Update cards bumps my Cocanowers up to 13.

Numbers-wise, Jeff Dellenbach is the oddest member of the collection. He played in the most NFL games of any member of the collection, and was active during the junk wax era. But, since he was an offensive lineman, he only gets a handful of cards. This Super Bowl issue highlights his victory as a Green Bay Packer over his former team in New England. It is his 5th entry in the binder. Considering this was the Super Bowl that inspired all those riffs in Giant Spider invasion, I probably should link to that. I should, but it would be way too easy.

MVP being available in e-pack form gives plenty of inexpensive options for adding cards from that UD release to the binder. Here's a pair of Ehlers cards, 1 from this year, one from last year.

Here's two more parallels, alongside another parallel - the gold rush parallel from 2012 Score. Gaborik remains the king of the binder in terms of numbers with 166 cards.

The other miscellaneous card for today is my second card of Walking Dead's Danai Gurira. I still haven't watched an episode of that show.

The late Brad Halsey also gets a pair of cards, and also moves to 13 cards in the baseball portion.

A cheap base card from a higher-end set becomes my 53rd Alshon Jeffrey card.

As a Bills fan, Jim Kelly should be the king of the football portion of my 2/14 collection. These 4 cards strengthen his lead to 9 cards over Steve McNair. My fave here is the Fleer card, which not only features 2/14 prominently on the front of the card but is from a somewhat oddball 1995 Shell FACT release.

That's only half of my 2/14 cards from COMC. M through Z are up tomorrow!

A Whole Bunch of 2/14 Additions!

As I push myself past the 1300 card plateau for the collection.

Since I do have events as a part of my collection (Statehood for Arizona and Oregon, the Michael Jordan wearing #12 card), this card fits in perfectly. In fact, since youtube came into being on 2/14/2005, it could be considered the youngest member of the collection. With apologies to Ryan McKenna.

And since you really can't mention youtube without linking to a video, here's a fan learning the hard way that trying to remove a luchador's mask is a major league no-no.

Muy mal indeed.

And that is the perfect segue into the next card.

Nice as this card of Hamada is, the back of it is even better.

A wrestling family. How I wish this was the card front instead. This is my 5th card of her, as she leads the misc. portion of my collection.

But, it is still only by 1 card, as it Edinson Cavani stayed one back with this addition.

When it came to the main team sports, hockey was surprisingly last among the 4 of them. A nice blue relic on a card of Marian Gaborik joins the hits portion of the collection, followed by my second card of Marc Beaucage. All I need now his German League card to finish his cardboard chronology. At least according to zistle.

Basketball is second on the additions list. The Elevation card will go alongside a 1/1 plate I received in trade from Dennis @ Too Many Manninghams. There is definitely an interesting contrast in the two P&P cards. It doesn't show as well in the scan, but the Byron Mullens has the cracked ice feel to it. He becomes the third member of the basketball portion with double digit cards, joining Hamilton and Muresan.

That's supposed to be Jim Kelly in the upper left. As Shotgun Kelly. Because a binder filled with people you share a birthday with isn't strange enough as is. My first hit of Roy Barker is next. That's also his only hit, as best I can tell. Tim Toone isn't irrelevant to my football collection, as I my second card of 2010's Mr. Irrelevant. There's a pair of Alshons on the bottom (how did I not have that base Score card?), followed by some Heritage football. Alshon and Steve are tied for second place in football with 38 cards each, trailing Kelly by 18.

And baseball to end it. Daniel Garibay's 4th and final base card enters the collection. I've also got some real and faux vintage with the completion of Tom Borland's two-card Topps run, although there still is a 1960 Leaf card to chase. Bruce Crabbe joins youtube among the newcomers in this post to my collection. What are the odds I'd have two players named Crabbe (Callix) in my baseball collection?

And there you have my move to 1,301 2/14 cards. I want to keep a reasonable goal of 1,500 by the end of the year.