Good Grief! Another Champ's Post!

I promise this is the last one for a bit. These are group break cards when I grabbed the Bruins and Senators.

With the two teams, I landed a grand total of one non-hit insert. This Traditions card of Ray Bourque was the one.

And here's the tradition.

Lots of gold parallels from the Bruins side. The top 3 were the gold front parallels, while the 4 on the bottom were gold backs. You'll have to take my word for it on the latter.

And your hits. My third auto so far, and the on-card autos continue to look beautiful in hand. The Rask means that I really only need the silver /25 parallel to complete his rainbow for this set. (Don't!) Two mask binder cards are nice bonuses. And now, onto the Sens.

Not as many gold parallels in this. The Neil is a gold back parallel, and is a dupe from my box break.

I've got to be close to having a complete jersey of one of these guys by now. Right? Off to the Sens binder with you! Or the Rangers alumni binder. Either way, there's another Champ's post. I'm about halfway to the 180 non SP base set by now. I'll probably make an effort to complete that at least.

I promise. No more Champ's tomorrow.

2 More Packs of Champ's

A couple more packs of Champ's from the LCS.

Pack 1:

Pack #1 yields my first dupe of this set. Fortunately for the set build, the dupe is the gold parallel of Zucker. The short print is Kurri.

Pack 2:

But pack #2 was much better. Firstly, an autograph. This is my second autograph of local product Mark Scheifele, and both are on-card autos. The autos in this product look really nice in hand. To go with it, there's a fish card, a card with my favourite rookie mask of 15-16 (Ullmark's Minion mask) and the big volume member of my 2/14 club in Gaborik. It is almost like I packed this pack myself.

Although I probably would have subbed the poutine food card for the fish. But there's two more packs of Champ's.

Living Proof of Evolution?

Or a promotional photo for some wacky caveman hockey player sitcom?

2016 Adventures in Repacks: Part 28 - More Sunday Surprise

Sunday has become my traditional repack day for the past few weeks. Time to continue it with Surprise Bags from the Dollarama.

Two packs. Two repacks. One Jumbo Pack of 1991 UD, 1 pack of 2010 Victory, 1 70s/80s pack, 1 Superstar pack.

With the Upper Deck pack, the best you could hope for is some keepers. And there were some interesting ones. That Don Gibson is (along with the French parallel) his only NHL level card. So, that's kinda cool. There are a pair of interesting goalie photos as well, even though some might consider the Beezer's photo an example of cross-checking. The Euro Stars inserts were one per jumbo pack.

At least Brian Pitton got a respectable rookie card in this set. Big improvement on his Score card.

I guess Max Pacioretty is the Superstar in that pack. At least Montreal hopes so after the Subban trade.

And once again the 70s/80s pack is limited to 80s card, but that is a nice looking card of the late Doug Wickenheiser. I really liked the double image cards that Topps was using in their hockey and baseball releases at this time.

And there's $2 of repack.

The Champ('s) is Here! - Box Break - Packs 16 through 20

The hits ended with yesterday's post. But, that doesn't mean I'm not going to wrap up the box. After all, I'm still due a couple fish cards.

Pack 16:

No fish cards in the first pack, but there's a nice gold parallel of Chris Neil for my Sens PC. Luongo was the SP in this one. I also love the look on the Williams card, as the horizontal photo isn't as tightly cropped as usual, and it allows more of the ice to be shown in the faded format behind him.

Pack 17:

Bergeron SP and Virtanen gold. That's about all of note here.

Pack 18:

There's my second fish card of the box! The Rinne is one of those high # SPs (which differ from the regular SPs as there are only 4 per box). But I got a fish card!

Pack 19:

So, that's my third Derek Forbort card in this box. So, I've got 50 percent of his Champ's rainbow in one box. And I got both rookie Connors in the same box.

Pack 20:

Why not wrap it up with a final fish card? No mention of the Steelhead's status as the team name for an OHL franchise on the card. Boo.

And that's it for my Champ's break. The standard base set is 180, and I'm about halfway to that. I'll try to do some more damage over the next couple weeks and try to post a wantlist.

Back to the dollar store tomorrow!

The Champ('s) is Here! - Box Break - Packs 11 to 15

More hits as I start the second half of packs.

Pack 11:

And the second half opens up with the autograph that the box promises. While the penmanship is awful, it still looks nice with an on-card autograph. And Forbort is my favourite name to say out loud of the 2015-16 rookie class. Try it! As for the rest, you can't go wrong with a Gretzky appearance. These Traditions inserts fall 1:33, and this one salutes his post warm-up drink ritual of diet pop, ice water, sport drink and another diet pop.

Pack 12:

Well, there's a surprise. A third relic hit from a box that promised two. This also had a SP with the Holtby. I think Lindberg is the rookie I seem to be a magnet for cards from this year.

Pack 13:

The only all-base pack of this group of packs lands me a Sens card. The SP in this was the Voracek.

Pack 14:

Hey, there's my Famous Foods card. I was so hoping for the poutine card. Or Montreal Smoked Meat. For some reason, the poutine card is associated with Ottawa as opposed to Montreal, but I guess they couldn't give two foods to the same city, and it was a lot easier to transfer the one without the actual city name in it than one with. As for the hockey portion, the Jagr is a gold back parallel. The rest were all standard base cards.

Pack 15:

It is back-to-back packs with gold back parallels, as the Neil also falls into that parallel set. And it is a Sens card! Bonus! The Petan SP is the other card of note here.

So, that should be it for the hits, but I still have some fish cards to show off from the final 5.

The Champ('s) is Here! - Box Break - Packs 6 through 10

And the hits start coming as I bust my next packs.

Pack 6:

But not quite yet, but the pack did yield another gold parallel and the short-print of Girgensons. It can be nice when a team's retro-ish third jersey makes an appearance on these cards, like on Torey Krug's. The Kyle Okposo, not so much.

Pack 7:

Nice stuff here in an all-vertical card pack. Anything with Lanny McDonald in full mustache is a great card, and Kitchener Rangers alum Radek Faksa also shows up.  Lanny is the short-print in this one.

Pack 8:

And here start the hits. Upper Deck has thankfully not used dummy cards in this release, but it is quite obvious which packs have the relics in them when you're going through the packs, even with the reduced base. Even with reduce base, I did land a SP with the Bennett.

Pack 9:

My only numbered card in the box came from this pack, with the Forsberg being a silver parallel /25. It is also 1/25, so an ebay 1/1 as well. Eberle was the SP in this pack.

Pack 10:

And here's relic #2! It is kinda neat to land a green Canucks swatch, since it isn't one of their primary uniform colours. No SPs, though, to go alongside the rookie relic.

Halfway there!

The Champ('s) is Here! - Box Break - Packs 1 through 5

I don't think I've been excited for a hockey release in a long time as Champ's makes it return for the first time since 09-10. And this was actually a pretty good box, as I got above the promised odds on several inserts.

Pack 1:

The set is broken up into 4 groups. 1-180 are the standard base. 181-270 are standard SPs (at a rate of 1 in every 1.5 packs), 271-315 are High # SPs (1 in 5) and Rare SPs are the last 5, (1:600 packs). Parise is a High SP in this pack, and Pavel is the standard SP. The first card theory is tested here as a Leafs card was my first one. It is strange to see Dion as a Leaf, when he already had Senators cards in SP Authentic. But at least I landed a real Senators card.

The back of the cards are pretty standard for the return of the set.

Pack 2:

And now we reach the interesting insert portion in the second pack, as I land a card featuring a  Park Reserve on Vancouver Island. The Evander Kane is a gold front parallel, and these supposedly fall at a rate of 1:10 packs, although my box turned out not to be representative of that.

Pack 3:

All vertical cards in this pack. The Connor McDavid is one of the high SP cards. I guess that's the one I should want most from that group. But, as can be expected from someone who was awaiting this set, it is the oddball SP that is my favourite. Skookum Jim Mason is of the people co-credited with making the Discovery Claim, which lead to the Klondike Gold Rush.

Pack 4:

Just hockey in this one. Staal is a short print, and there's my second standard gold parallel. But two Senators in a pack is nice for me.

Pack 5:

And my first of the fish cards to wrap up this portion of the break. The Esposito is one of the High # SPs.

5 more packs tomorrow!

The Final Envelope

Or at least the final envelope that arrived before the postal situation became sketchier than usual with the strike/lockout looming. I'm not sure about my Stadium Club stock-up from justcommons, but I can wait for that to arrive.

At least I'm not annoying the carrier like Bart Simspon waiting for his spy camera.

This envelope contained a sportlots 10 pack. 10 cards before the shipping cost to Canada became crazy.

Starting off with some relatively new cards from 2016 Panini Classics. This set is broken into 3 parts 1-100 with current players, 101-200 with retired legends, and 201-300 with rookies. While the expected mix of cards from the first and last portion includes fairly even mixes from the teams, the Bills got a nice grouping among the Legends, and I was really happy to see James Lofton pictured as a Bill in this set, since he's usually a Packer in recent releases.

And to round things out at 10, let's move Alshon Jeffrey up to 42 total cards in my 2/14 collection. He now is in 2nd place, with Jim Kelly still leading with 58.

And to round things out, my 3rd card of Christian Hackenberg. As of now, he's the only rookie I'm chasing in this year's releases, but there might be some more when the season starts and pro football reference adds some new names to their birthday list.

There you have it! Hopefully, I'll be able to get my grubby hands on some Champ's tomorrow on release day!

2016 Adventures in Repacks: Part 27 - Getting caught up

I take a short break from posting, and the repack posts pile up. So, you get not one, not two, not even three but four different repacks in the same post. A flea market repack, a 15 card hanger, a Surprise Bag, and a 3 pack+a Connor repack. I'll do these in that order.

Usually, these are $5 for a brick that also contains a hit. This time, a little something different. $2 for a team bag with a bunch of SPs from last year's Masterpieces.

#139 - Bobby Clarke - This was one of the visible cards, making it an easy decision as to which one to grab.

#93 - Peter Forsberg - Philly seems like an odd choice for the team to feature Forsberg on.
#96 - Jarome Iginla
#101 - Guy Carbonneau

#103 - Bill Barber - Kitchener Rangers alum!

#106 - Bill Ranford - And that's a mullet worthy of the late 80s/early 90s.
#108 - Sean Monahan
#110 - Jaromir Jagr
#112 - Henrik Zetterberg

#114 - Grant Fuhr - The only dupe for me in the repack. Still, such a great image deserves to be shared a second time.
#117 - Mike Richter

#121 - Marcel Dionne - Classic uniform.

#123 - Adam Oates - A simple, but intense image.
#125 - Nathan MacKinnon
#127 - Jeff Carter * 2
#132 - Ray Bourque
#134 - Larry Robinson
#136 - Pierre Turgeon

#129 - Steve Yzerman - This was the other visible card. Another nice looking card for the format. The background looks very 1989 Diamond Kings-y.

Now, the Dollarama hanger.

2010-11 Biography of a Season - Steven Stamkos - I opted for this repack since I thought I'd throw this into my next package for "Wish...Bubblegum"
1991 Score - Dale Kushner

1991 7th Inning Sketch - Jeff Walker - I love the classic Petes uniforms. They've become a little more stylized over the years, but retain their basic look.
1991 UD - John Ogrodnick

1999 Wayne Gretzky Hockey - Wayne Gretzky - You can never go wrong pulling a Gretzky from any source. And, even better, he's #99 in the set named after him.
2015 UD - Karl Alzner
1990 Pro Set - Mike Krushelnyski

1995 Topps - Brett Lindros - Trust the Gorton's Fisherman! At least you can compare and contrast the jerseys for ugliness on the same card.

1990 Score - Wendell Young - One of the cards for my Kitchener Rangers binder that I'm amazed wasn't in there already.
2009 MVP - Rick DiPietro
1991 OPC - Doug Brown

1994 Score - Josef Beranek - One of my least favourite hockey designs. Great photo, though.
1995 UD - Sergei Makarov
1990 Bowman - Steve Chiasson - Don't drive drunk, kids.
2010 UD - Matt Cullen

Off to the Surprise Bag, which had these contents:


Starting with the Victory pack:

If you're going to knock one card of my set wantlist for it, it might as well be one of the SP rookies. After 9 games with the Bruins in 06-07, he saw two more games in 2009 with the Wild, and has been back in Europe since 2011.

Even though they're junk wax, the HOF pack contained 3 HOFers. And one being the Eagle mask is a plus. The only odd man out is the one that isn't eligible yet. And hey, you never know. Maybe he'll pick up 200 unassisted goals next season.

The 2010s pack wasn't as nice as last time, with parallels and inserts, but an appearance of the Lady Byng trophy and another Rangers alum saves it.

And the 90s pack. Junk wax era again, but the OHL card is of someone who had a decent NHL career, so this wasn't too bad either.

And the final one. A visible hobby pack? Why not?

Well, the hobby pack didn't have a hit in it. But it did have a Mozaics insert.

The other two packs were both 13-14 Score. There were a lot of celebratory cards in that set.

That even extended into the rookies portion of the set.

Two gold parallels. Without buying singles of this parallel set, I've accumulated over 130 of these cards, both through set-building the regular set and repacks.

But this might have been the best card from the packs. If I remember correctly, these were pretty tough pulls.

Like the last one, this also included a pack with a coin in it. And here it is:

I'm not sure if $30 a Week Habit collects these type of Sakic items, but I'll put it aside for now.

And to wrap this one up, here's Connor!