Kelly Overload

40 cards worth of newness to the Jim Kelly portion of my 2/14 collection. If I wasn't a Bills fan, that might count as overload. But this does move him well into the lead in the football portion of the collection with 194 different cards. He's also 4 behind Marian Gaborik for 2nd place overall.

I'll start with this oddball. I have no idea what King B is or was, but I'll start with it anyhow. All my google hunting can tell me is that there are several musicians that either go by that name or are nicknamed that.

An attempt to escape the grasp of an anonymous player is Action Packed enough for me.

While this isn't technically a Jim Kelly card, just one that pictures him, I'm still counting it as an addition. This 1988 Topps issue was the oldest in the shipment.

And 8 years later, you were getting these super detailed Laser issues.

Of course I'll throw in a random issue of a drawn card before going to the bulk portion of this post.

A five pack of parallels.

Here's a scanner bed worth of sampling the rest of the Jim Kelly portion of the mailer. And I didn't even show half of the mailer at this point, but that's it for this part. I'll wrap up the latest sportlots mailer with the next post, and even more 2/14 football. But there will be a little more variety as a trio of players will be represented.

Padding the Lead

I'll admit to being surprised when I entered all my Alfredssons into TCDB and learned I was in top spot. I'm not going to sit on this lead, so I instead added a bunch more to the binder via COMC, sportlots, and nhlhockeystickers.com. Let's see some of them!

I did mention stickers, so let's got all these out of the way early! Panini really liked that shade of blue for borders at the time.

He might only take up a quarter of this card, but that's a nice, solid group of players in the top of the rookie scoring race in 95-96.

I'm amused that the titles for the stats remain abbreviated in English on this Finnish card. I amuse easily.

The best thing about these cards being from the entirety of Alfie's career is the variety of uniforms on the cards.

Even this one.

And if you want a nice look at this logo, there's this Atomic card, which is also a reminder to clean my scanner bed.

After all, they are little harder to see on minis,

I did throw in a few numbered cards. None of these are parallels, they're the base cards from higher end sets.

And these are base cards too. Pacific never really did anything normally, did they?

But there's some Alfie. There were about 30 more where these came from. And now I'm just south of the 500 card mark.

Allota Alfie

I've got a few things to catch up with - namely a couple box breaks and some mailings. But I also have some COMC and Sportlots mailings to get to, and I'll do damage to both of these as I show the latest additions to my Daniel Alfredsson PC.

OK. This technically isn't an Alfredsson card. But it is a logical enough place to show off this manufactured team logo patch as an intro.

After going through the process of entering my collection over at TCDB (I've really only done it with my 2/14 collection, my Jamal Murray collection, and this), I did jump into the lead there with more than 400 different cards of his in the collection.

It was the 90s. You had to experiment with everything. The Rated Rookie logo? That probably should have stayed as is.

Your example of alliterative insert sets - Calling All Calders.

Stickers? There was one of those as well.

I got a couple inserts as well, with this being a card commemorating the debut of the Shootout, and Alfredsson scoring goal #1.

A couple parallels.

Whether parallels or base cards, these were the numbered cards in the mailers. The Priority card is /3000, the Certified is /250, and the really gold Gold Label is /199.

And a whole bunch more base cards in the Sportlots mailer.

And if relics are your thing, here's a bunch of 'em, featuring all 3 of the possible colours for a jersey swatch. Markus Naslund is on the other side of that Titanium card, a nice Swedish combination.

There you have it!

Building My Own Repack - Part 3 - Maturity is Overrated

Yes. I am aware the last name isn't pronounced that way. No. I will not be able to suppress my inner Beavis when I see that name.

It doesn't matter which team he's playing for on the card, both of the above statements are still in play.  With these, I'm just 1 shy of double digits for Harry Colons in the collection with these 3 cards.

Topps Total was also a football product, and you can contrast the photo choice from a player's rookie year to his sophomore season quite easily here. These are cards 4 and 5 of Miller.

Your final big winner in terms of a large bunch of new cards that more than double his portion of cards is Jeff Graham, as he jumps to 30 by including cards that go back to his college days.

That's a slightly less literate way of covering a player's new team in comparison to the classic "now with..." that O-Pee-Chee used. At least it isn't a ghastly airbrushing or photoshop job.

Sometimes cards don't really scan in such a manner to show how bright they really are. This one definitely does not follow that rule.

It is enough to make me welcome the colourful, but sedate MVP cards.

Here's the rest of the Jeff Graham content as I bring my second of these custom not-quite-repacks to an end.

Next up, I'll continue my build of the Heritage 2019 set with some high numbers!

Building My Own Repack - Part 2 - Quarterback Club

I know I went for QB content yesterday, but today I'm expanding beyond just one player, with 3 players showing up. Two are pretty familiar, one not so familiar.

Like any good Bills fan, I'll start with a Jim Kelly card. Look at the beautiful astroturf behind him, even though it was probably as hard as the concrete walkways in the stadium.

Remember when Action Packed was the most high-end football card out there? They're textured! And $3 for a pack of 6!  Or whatever. They were the most expensive based on cards-per-pack at the time.

And here's some more Jim Kelly to end his portion of the mailer. I guess we get a little weather with this one and the pile of snow in the upper right. The lower right card was duped up in a recent TMV mailer, but that was the only card that ended up being so in the repack.

Could you make David Garrard look a little less goofy in the drawing? Thanks!

This is the final appearance of Contenders in the package. This would be a really great design that would really allow the autograph to pop on the rookie tickets, except they switched to a silver background for those cards.

Here's a whole bunch more of Garrard, my favourites here are the Artifacts on top, basically for being one of what has to be very few designs that incorporate a player's initials into the design, and the Certified in the lower corner, for having a photo that almost perfectly places David alongside a giant logo that was hanging in the background.

The Garrard ends on a pair of horizontal photos.

But we're ending on a far more obscure member of the 2/14 club. I only had a pair of Anthony Wright cards prior to this, including a relic, so his appearances in the binders has now tripled. Interestingly, as a third-stringer, Wright would pick up a Super Bowl ring alongside a fellow 2/14 baby, the late Jared Lorenzen.

And yes, there were some non-QB cards in the purchase, and they're up next!

Building My Own Repack - Part 1 - A McNair Affair

I've done this before with sportlots. With many Dollarama repacks being 80 cards, and with many sportlots sellers having a shipping price 'level' end at 80 cards, combine the two, and put together my own 80 card lot. The first time I did this was with hockey and a bunch of 2/14 additions, and today, and the next few days, it will be football.

As the subject indicates, Steve McNair cards are the subject of this post. And we're opening with a weatherporn photo from a game in Cleveland.

Naturally, such a great photo will come from an Upper Deck release, and it is a perfect photo of a handoff.

Unfortunately, this isn't the currently-incarcerated former NFLer named Sharper that is getting faked out here. It is his older brother Jamie. The other would have made for a far nicer card today.

Gridiron Kings easily wins the battle of painted cards, since Gallery makes McNair look like a serial killer's courtroom sketch.

How about a license plate parallel? Techinically, they're called Interstate parallels, but since Bowman's design did use the actual license plate designs for the state at the time, I prefer the former.

Here's the front of the card. It is supposed to highlight the birthplace of the player, Mount Olive in this case, but they scan horribly.

The ticket motif Contenders uses is always one of my favourites, so you get a quartet of them. The Ravens colours work especially well here.

That's the perfect way to lead to the other Ravens cards in the mix.

The Tennessee content (all Titans cards except for the lower left Oilers one) moves the overall McNair content in the binder to 132.

The rest of the quarterbacks show up next post.