Trade w/ Kerry @ Cards on Cards Part 2

Now for the Blue Jays portion of the trade.

Let's open with 2013 stuff, and probably my favourite Jays card from flagship this season. Considering they've also got a great walk jump off of Rajai Davis and the Encarnacion flex shot, that's a compliment to how much I like the Canada Days jerseys.

Prospect cards and their ilk aren't really a need for my every Jay ever collection, but I'll still add them to the box for now. Bush is the only one of these that I remember, and that's only because there was a game against the Yankees when he found himself pitching against Wang. Bush vs. Wang. And yes, I am eternally twelve years old.

I didn't think there were any cards of Millar as a Blue Jay.  Oh well, that drops one off my list that I didn't even know I needed. Still one left, though, even though it again is someone who never played for Toronto.

Highlighting an '88 Donruss? Sure! Since I had no idea Greg had a major league card in the 80s.

More Delgados! WOO-HOO!

Joey Bats! An always welcome addition, especially since Opening Day is always a challenge to find north of the border.

Let's turn 2!

Neither of my LCS' had any packs of A&G, so any Jays/Mets inserts were very welcome.

Favourite picture of the bunch? How about Frank Thomas just taking it easy prior to a road game.

And to wrap it up, how about a bunch of stickers?

Sorry I wasn't very verbose today. Thanks for the goodies from the Jays portion of the trade, and I'll get to the Mets sometime next week.

Who needs to pack search?

Yesterday, I took a trip to Wally World on the hunt for Gingerbread Oreos combined with a desire for just one pack of something results in 4 bags of the former, and one UD Series 1 pack to quench the pack busting desire.

The packs were a bit of a mess, and gave the impression I just missed a searcher. I just picked up the first couple on the bottom, and then just picked one of the two on a whim.

Yup. This is a pretty nice pull from a retail purchase. I've only bought 3 packs: 1 rack, 1 hobby, 1 retail (is there a difference between the last two?). A YG card each from the latter two. Plus my only Artifacts pack, purchased randomly as well revealed a 1:48 relic.

I'll probably ebay the card later today or tomorrow. Again, if someone can woo me, I'm still open for offers. Edit: Saw an auction wrap up for $30, and put it up at BIN of that, and it was gone within an hour.

I guess I might have Midas touch for UD this year. Anyone want me to do a UD box break on their behalf?

Here's the rest of the pack:

If the Brassard wasn't a rerun from Score, I'd give it the photographic nod here. But, it will instead be a toss-up between the beautiful ice exiting card of Smid and the snow flying Sean Couturier. Oshie celebrating in front of Kings fans is also pretty nice. Let's go with Canadiana and the Smid.

At a baseball field in Hawaii, circa 1992

Some random 13 year old that owned a Blue Jays jersey and cap decided that he would totally screw around with the Topps photographer.

"Yeah mister!  I'm Legrazza. You want to take my picture or something?"

Trade w/ Shoebox Legends

Shane over at Shoebox Legends was one of several to receive a goodie envelope in the time after the Expo. The return envelope showed up last week, and here are some of the highlights of an envelope loaded with Senators, Blue Jays and...

a pair of new cards for the 2.14 binder. With this, Milan Hejduk is now the first person in the binder with 50 different cards to his credit. Boris Valabik, who'd also be a Kitchener Rangers alum now has 4 cards.

Among the Senators cards was a new Alfie for my collection.

But, the majority of the cards were of the Toronto Blue Jays variety.

Here's a nice fraction of them. Starting off in the upper left, we've got Kelly Gruber ducking out of the way from an inside pitch, Depending on how you view things, the view of his crotch is either the most interesting or the most disturbing part of this card. There's a shiny Troy Glaus right after that, followed by two of the more popular characters during their Toronto run. It will be really nice to see John get a WS ring in 2014. On the bottom, a trio of interesting photos from 1994 Score. The Darnell Coles is probably my favourite, since it appears that he is easily out at third.

But the best Jays card?

A nice commemoration of their first World Series ring - numbered to 75 no less.

Beautiful!

Thanks for the goodies! I'll keep taking looks at shows for cards from your wantlists!

Trade w/ Kerry @ Cards on Cards Part 1

I'd been sending random Trail Blazers off to Kerry as part of the guilt-free basketball club, along with random Cardinals. Last week, the return portion of the trade was sent my way. It definitely counts as a dumping, but a dumping loaded with Mets and Blue Jays is alright by me. Plus, I've been dropping some of my dupes and extra junk wax era cards off at a local shelter over the past little while, so they'll certainly like getting a pile of Blue Jays cards in the next 800ct box.

Although most of the packages consisted of baseball that have yet to be sorted, there were 5 basketball and 1 football card in the mix.

And what a nice football card it was.

I've always been thinking about picking up a Thurman rookie, but despite it's low price, I've just never pulled the trigger. I'm still very happy to welcome this beauty into my Bills collection. I've picked up an Andre Reed this past year as well, so I should probably look to add the first NFL cards of Bruce Smith and Jim Kelly just so I can have a foursome all prepared to lose a Super Bowl.

One of the packages did include a Blazers auto, and this was the hit returned. It's my third DeRozan hit, and my second relic numbered to /99. A nice sized Raptors red swatch as well for my collection. With Masai Ujiri working his wizardry with the dumping of a pair of large contracts, DeRozan is now the certain face of the franchise.

And to wrap this up, a random four pack of Raptors. While you'd think the rookie card of the reigning slam dunk champion would be my favourite here, you'd be wrong. My favourite is the Sonny Weems, as he drops off my list of cards as I try to get every Raptor ever to have one, and it now stands at eleven. Nine players and two coaches.

I'm sure I'll dig into the Jays and Mets portion of the trade, sort some cards and have something to post by 2014. In the meantime, I've already got a pink parallel of Jake Westbrook set aside, with a pair of Blazers hits on the way from ebay, and then on their way westward at some point. Thanks for the great additions to my Raptors and Bills collections!

Top 10 Cards from a Hockey Repack

Despite being up to my arse in Expo posts since early November, I haven't neglected my love for the repack. Several baseball and basketball ones made their way to my humble abode. Only one hockey one did. It was one of those 4 packs, 50 cards and a bonus item repacks.

The packs were 08 Victory, 10 OPC, 07 UD Series 2 and 09 UD Series 1. There's some potential in there for some Young Guns, so let's dig in.

10. 1990-91 WHL Byron Penstock. Cards on their way to the mask binder will be all over this list. Half of my top 10, in fact. Here's the first, a somewhat oddly-angled mask with a rather flat head. Maybe he was a huge fan of the Zork series.

9. 1994-95 Premier Sergei Nemchinov. Outside of the usual suspects, such as Ken Linseman, you really didn't see a lot of helmetless game shots any more by the 90s. Interesting card rarity.

8. 2009 UD Michael Frolik. I loved all the goal celebration photos in this year's Score. I love them here. There were several in the pack with the Talbot and the Plekanec, but this one with Michael Frolik making his way down the celebratory line.

7. 2006-07 Upper Deck Alex Auld. This would be higher if not for the poor view of his mask.

6. 2003-04 Pacific Invincible Joe Thornton. This was the 1 bonus item in the repack. It has a nice layout with the head portion near the bottom being clear. It isn't badly-centered - I just hosed up with the scan.

5. 1997-98 Upper Deck Grant Fuhr. A nice view of the mask. A great UD action shot. Why isn't this higher? 2 reasons. There were other, better cards for the mask binder among the Top 10. The second reason is that there were two of this card in the 50 card repack portion of the box. Dupes in a repack always suck.

4. 1997-98 Zenith Jocelyn Thibault. Another great mask shot. The clarity of it places this one above the HOFer.

3. 2008-09 Upper Deck Victory Erik Ersberg. While it isn't the best mask photo in the box, this one gets bumped up into 3rd place for the for the obscurity factor. It's only my second binder card of his. Erik spent his time bouncing between the Kings and the minors for several seasons. He's now in Germany playing for the Iserlohn Roosters. They do have a great logo, so there's that as well.

The decision over the top 2 was pretty tough. In the end, I used the photo choices as my deciding factor.

2. 2010-11 O-Pee-Chee Jordan Eberle. Yup. That's a pretty good rookie card to pull from the OPC pack. Interestingly, I also pulled the Subban rookie from the same set from a pack in a repack. So, if I want the Skinner or the Hall, my best option would be to pick up a repack as opposed to a blaster or box.

1. 2006-07 Upper Deck Joe Pavelski. And a Young Gun card wraps it up. While it isn't the big one in Series 2 (Malkin), it's still a pretty good one, considering it is loaded with a lot of "This guy was in the NHL?" types like Mike Card and Barry Brust. It gets the nod over the Eberle for the full bleed on the the top and sides. 10-11 OPC really overdid the border on the base and high number cards, and that was the deciding factor here.

Not a bad repack box at all, with two nice pieces of trade bait coming from it.

Trade w/ Coot Veal and the Vealtones

Back when I was busting my way through my Update Jumbo Box,  I pulled a manufactured ring card for Ty Cobb. CVatV expressed interest. I shipped off the card and some misc. Tigers, and this was what came my way in return.

My favourite card in the bunch was one that was completely unexpected. Way, way off-center? Sure. But it is my first Mets team card from the 60s, so it is a welcome addition to my collection.

Another vintage card featuring a Met was also in there, but this is more likely to end up in my Canadians in MLB collection, due to the presence of Fergie in the #1 slot.

Hits? OF course, there were some of those. A nice on-card autograph of future Blue Jay Esmil Rogers is the highlight here. At least I can parse some letters in the autograph. And Esmil's number! There's that too.

For me, there's no such thing as a bad hit of Mike Piazza. It's my 3rd relic of his, and my 39th total card of his. For former and current Mets, he only trails Wright and Reyes.

Although not one of those three comes close to the top 2 in my collection, Carlos Delgado and Vladimir Guerrero. Vlad jumped over the 100 mark after this bat relic...

and these base cards.

Joe Carter also leads the three aforementioned Mets, although the # of cards I have of his from outside the Blue Jays era is minimal. So, even junk wax era cards are very welcome in his binder.

Outside of the vintage Mets cards, this was my favourite. Any sort of painted/drawn card usually is my default favourite.

And since one good 1993 UD card deserves another. A great close up of a HOFer is my favourite Jays card in the envelope.

Thanks for the goodies and the great trade!

Trading my Way to the Clubhouse

Mark over at TWTTC is working on getting at least one card of every Met ever. I've dropped a couple envelopes his way. A second envelope made its way here this past week, joining at least 3 others that have been piling up. This one consisted primarily of Buffalo Bills.

Mark actually showed this card this weekend in the Bills preview and I was immediately enthralled by this piece of cardboard. So much so, it went right onto my zistle wantlist. It spent a little over 24 hours there before disappearing with the arrival of this card Monday. If any card showcases the weather aspect of football, this one does. This is a gorgeous addition to my Bills collection, and since Bruce was probably my favourite Bill, easily my favourite of the bunch.

Second place goes to this Andre Reed card. With so many cards showing the player making a great catch, here's a nice simple one of Andre awaiting the catch.

I don't care if it is a Pro Set card, I still can't get enough of Talley rocking the Spiderman colours.

Here's the most recent card for my binders - a Platinum of CJ Spiller.

There were three cards of Doug Flutie in the package. My favourite is easily this one with the infield dirt still in place

Norwood celebrating a field goal? Ouch. This card hurt.

It's 1995 Fleer. Everything that can be said has been said.

And to wrap it up, two cards of a future Bill, but more importantly, two more cards away from my goal of 600 different cards in my 2-14 binder by 2-14. Sure, I could pick up a lot of Steve McNair or Richard Hamilton cards on ebay, but what's the fun of that?

Anyhoo, thanks for the Bills, and keep your eye on your mailbox for a small envelope heading your way!

Expo Goodies Post 29 - Fin

Since I really don't have much of a theme, and there's only a handful of cards left in the box, here's said handful, and I can finally get caught up on my trade posts.

Let's start with a football version of a card I picked up at the Spring Expo. There, I picked up a Jani Hurme card with a Senators helmet and swatch, a Panthers jersey, and him being listed with the Thrashers. This is another three team card. The CFL alum is pictured with Detroit, listed as an eagle, and the swatch is likely a 49ers one (it definitely isn't Motown or Philly). Heck, maybe it is a Stampeders swatch.

I liked how the back of the card states that the swatch isn't from any particular game, when it is fairly obvious to anybody where it is from. If I was so desired, I could probably find the specific stars that are visible on the swatch on the jersey.

And this is what you get when you reach and 'X' cards for 'Y' dollars, and you have X-1 in your hands. You grab something - in this case, rookie photo shoot relics of two guys no longer in the NBA.

Hey! Some Collect-A-Books! I hadn't seen any of those is ages at shows! Spud and the Chief. Quite the contrast in subject manner as well.

And to wrap up the individual cards, this Action Packed of Virgil Trucks. But, still one more set to go.

50 cents for a group of NFL playing cards. Less than a penny per card. I can't even pick up a set of cards at the surplus store for 50 cents.

Since it was a 1992 set, the Bills were given decent representation in this. There were also lots of guys who I was surprised to see. I mean, you've only got 54 cards to work with. Couldn't you pick somebody other than Dan McGwire to be the lone Seahawks representative?

Yup. 54 cards. Not sure why these two are the jokers in this set.

Whew. 29 posts worth of cards from the same show. At least now I can finally get caught up with several envelopes worth of trade posts.