2021 Adventures in Repacks Part 2.1 - Cubism

 

Another repack favourite of mine is up next, with this being one of the 250-card cubes that I get directly from the source. 5 days until next weekend means this gets nicely divided up into about 50 each for 5 posts.

2018 Contenders - Nikola Jokic - First card out.

2015 Excalibur - Jose Calderon

2018 Contenders - Nicolas Batum

1990 Fleer - Maurice Cheeks

1993 UD - Scott Burrell

1993 Fleer - Reggie Lewis - First Celtics card of the cube.

1994 Fleer - Ken Norman

1993 Topps - Otis Thorpe

1992 Stadium Club - Tim Hardaway

2016 Donruss - Trevor Ariza

2013 Hoops - Samuel Dalembert

1990 Skybox - Tim McCormack

1991 UD - Danny Young

1993 Finest - Ricky Pierce

1990 Fleer - John Stockton

2007 Stadium Club /1999 - Rodney Stuckey - And this is the first of the numbered cards in this. That's supposed to be Stuckey in the foil background. These scan horribly, but the background isn't exactly clear with the card in hand either.

1993 Hoops - Will Perdue

1992 Classic - Craig Upchurch

1992 Fleer - Blue Edwards

1991 Skybox - Blue Edwards - Back to back Blue! I will always scan the cards when I get the same player back-to-back.

1993 Topps - Stacey King

1992 Ultra - Greg Grant

1990 Skybox - Johnny Newman

1992 UD - Kevin Lynch

1992 Ultra - Vinny Del Negro

1992 UD - Harold Ellis

2005 SPX - Stephon Marbury

2002 UD Glass - Bonzi Wells

2003 Authentix - Carlos Boozer - Even if it isn't on a Contenders card, I like the ticket motif on cards.

2001 UD - Jim Jackson

1999 Hoops - Nick Van Exel - An appropriate design for the 10th anniversary of Hoops.

2000 UD True Talents - Paul Pierce - Celtics content on a foil insert.

1999 Topps - Bobby Jackson

2002 SPA - Steve Francis

1991 Hoops - Lance Blanks - Right up there with Frank Brickowski in terms of names that don't look good on the back of a basketball jersey.

1992 Ultra - Jeff Turner

1993 Classic - Ashraf Amaya - Amaya would go on to play for the Grizzlies. Does this count as a Grizzlies card? Of course!

1990 Fleer - Buck Johnson

1990 Skybox - Joe Dumars

1995 Metal - Walt Williams - The perpetually trippy Metal designs.

1990 Fleer - LaSalle Thompson

1993 Skybox - Ricky Pierce

1993 Topps - Clyde Drexler

1992 Stad. Club - Pooh Richardson

1991 UD - Alton Lister

1990 Fleer - Billy Thompson

1994 Hoops - Juwan Howard/Isaiah Rider

1992 Topps - Gary Grant - Back-to-back cards for a future mailer to Ann Arbor.

1995 Metal - Eric Montross

2002 Fleer Platinum /100 - Joe Johnson - Despite the low-numbering, this still wasn't the lowest numbered card in the repack.

1991 Hoops - Jeff Turner

1991 UD - Blue Edwards

1992 Ultra - Buck Johnson

1991 Skybox - Avery Johnson - If they had used silver for the background, this would be indistinguishable from a modern card.  

There's the first 1/5th! To be continued!

2021 Adventures in Repacks Part 1: Starting with the Classics

 A pair of Dollarama Surprise Bags is a perfect way to start repack recaps for any year.

Here's the contents of #1.

I'm not going to show everything from the packs, but it had what would have been a really nice pull for the time in the Doug Weight rookie, what became a really nice pull with the Hasek, and a Kitchener Rangers alum in all-star attire with Al MacInnis, so that's a pretty solid pack in both then and now standards.

Sens card in the 90s pack also makes this one pretty worthwhile as well. Merely being an OHLer with a paint job on their mask in the early 90s qualifies Lang for the mask binder.

It is a Doug Weight hot repack, as he's the 1000 point guy in that portion of the repack. Alas for him, he's dwarfed by the greatness of the Bannerman mask.

I've already got several copies of that Mike Smith card in the mask binder, so Toews is the best card in this group of 2010's UD base card.

Definitely a solid start with a respectable amount of keepers in this one. 

While I probably have come across it, I can't recall finding a pack of 06-07 Ultra in one of these before.

Opening with that pack, the contents were pretty much what I expected. A gold parallel, a rookie I'd never heard of (even though he played one more NHL game than I ever will) and a mask binder card to qualify as the best card for me in the pack.

While usually the Sens card would qualify as the best card in a repack portion, I have to give the nod to the former Senator with the Peter Sidorkiewicz Pinnacle entry. He's play 4 games in 93-94 and 97-98 for the team, with most of the time spent in the AHL, and this would be the only card he'd get where he'd be pictured as a member of the team. And the locker room shot is a unique setting as well. That makes it my personal favourite card in this post, even with none of the qualifications being met for one of my PCs.

Pretty blah content in the Original 6 pack, with no content from this century among the cards.

Not one, but two HOFers in that pack. I've already got that Larry Robinson in my Rangers alum collection, so that game-dated Chris Chelios is easily the better of that pairing. Whalers content too! 

Definitely a fun start to the repack year!

Bills! Bills! Bills!

 Buffalo wrapped up their best season in ages, and their playoffs start today. Of course, as a Bills fan, I'm awaiting the inevitable disappointment, but at least I've got a perfect day to show off the newest acquisitions.

With the exception of this card, everything in here is from a couple of team select group breaks. Wade is a British rugby player who has been on the Bills practice squad the past couple of seasons. I figured he'd probably warrant an appearance in sets after a 65-yd touchdown in his first pre-season game in 2019, and he did, appearing in Obsidian and the Black Friday set, which this is from. Even if he never makes a regular season appearance, this is a nice little addition to the team collection.

He's not the only player making his debut in the binder, here's a Stefon Diggs photoshop special out of Rookies and Stars. I admit I thought he'd be asking for a trade around Week 3 after being overthrown by Josh Allen for the umpteenth time already.

Josh Norman didn't warrant the photoshop experience. But it still has enough Buffalo content to count as a card for the collection.

Of course these sets include inserts. I really like the Lockdown one giving a spotlight to defensive players, especially since 'defensive player with the ball' is one of my favourite photos for football cards.

Numbered parallels are always nice - but even nicer when the colour of the parallel matches the team colours. 

I can't imagine Jake Fromm being more than a back-up during his time in Buffalo, but I'll still add another autograph of this elite white person to the collection.

If I'm going to get only one shiny card out of Prizm, it might as well have a signature attached to it. Unlike Fromm, at least Moss has seen action this season. Although I would probably give Gabriel Davis the nod as their top rookie this year. 

There you have it!

Taking a Chance(r)

 

The local breakers/card shop have been doing chancers as of late, with several big cards, or boxes, as the prize. I've been in a few of them over the past months, and this seems like a perfect time to show off some of the spoils. If you don't get the big prize, there's secondary items, such as packs, or cards such as the die-cut Hall shown above.

Here's some of the consolation cards from these. Very SPA intensive, but that Ice of Patrick Roy is actually a pretty tough pull.

The packs tend to trend to the lower end of the spectrum, but one can still find interesting cards in them.

Such as PC content in the form of this retro OPC parallel.

However, because these are hobby packs, you've got a chance at a rarer pull. While the caramel inserts were kinda common in 19-20, the wood parallels were about one or two per case. This was from the same pack as the Faksa.

I don't know if there really are chase cards in MVP, but the SuperScripts are probably the closest to them. The foil is nice and shiny, and although it is hard to see - these are /25.

You might even get a hit in the pack. 

But I have won some of the featured cards in these. Can't go wrong with a McDavid rookie, even if it isn't the YG.

This makes it back-to-back post with cards featuring a three-colour Columbus Blue Jackets patch with an autograph. While yesterday's is bound for the 2/14 collection, this is a pretty solid addition to my mask collection.

Ditto for this. An on-card dual autograph of some Stanley Cup winning teammates, along with some nice multi-colour patches make these cards some nice keepers. Much like with the Senators and Kings, getting some part of the foil portion of the jersey on a Golden Knights patch is also pretty nice. And in advance of his debut with Sens this season, it is nice to add my first Matt Murray auto. 

There you have it! 

2/14 Autos and Patches

 Just a couple new cards for the big binder today.

Ryan MacInnis is sort of a new face in the collection, but only in NHL form. I have several of his cards already from his CHL days with the Rangers, but he finally made his NHL card debut with Columbus during the 19-20 season. This is an Ultimate Rookie Patch Autograph, and that three colour patch is pretty ultimate. And the best thing is that his cards, should I acquire dupes of any, they can move into the Rangers alum collection. He also joins the Acunas and the Guerreros as people I have autos of both the father and the son. Father Al already has auto appearances in my Rangers alum collection.

Petr Mrazek, on the other hand, is a far more familiar face. He's seen here on a Holo Silver parallel out of 13/14 Panini Prime. Suitably, there's a couple prime two-colour swatches accompanying his autograph.

And there you have it!

All About the Penmanship

Or: 4 Sports, 4 Autos.

Time again to show off some cards I grabbed solely for the purpose that I liked their handwriting, or at least that was the primary purpose.

While Randy Arozarena's signature will be the most jumbled of the lot I showed off today, it wasn't the handwriting, but the artwork that made me pick this up. Randy joins Jimmy Mann in terms of taking advantage of a space in his signature to add a little face to it. Fortunately for this very limited art-to-sig PC, I grabbed this long before his playoff heroics, as well as his legal issues in Mexico.

This one was purchased so long ago, Eddie Shack was still alive at the time. It is a nice, instantly readable signature, and since ITG couldn't use logos, they do the next best thing and show Maple Leaf Gardens in the background.

Good penmanship is a bonus when you pick up an auto of someone named Moochie. His real first name is Martyn, in which case I'd go with 'Moochie' too. But the same would be true for pretty much any name if Moochie was option 2. As another bonus, since he made his debut with the Vancouver Grizzlies in 1996, I can, and will consider this a Grizzlies card. Why? My binders. My rules.

In terms of penmanship, the Rams were the big winners of the 2020 NFL draft, landing both Jefferson and Cam Akers. I'll give the nod to Jefferson though, as he stays consistently legible throughout a longer name. I'm going to assume it will eventually implode to something abbreviated as the signing season drags on, but for now, I'll show my appreciation.

And there you have it!

A Rangers Roundup

I'll stay with my most-recent COMC to-be-posted for yet another post, with the Kitchener Rangers alumni getting the spotlight this time.

And vintage is always a nice way to start a post. As great as the 1971 design is, (and remains) the greatness of the front will not even come close to the greatness of the back.

Not only do you have a cartoon (and an off-season job that probably makes teams glad players don't have off-season jobs any more) but you have a pronunciation guide in the write-up. A pronunciation guide that uses a different wording for French and English. Amazing!

If a more recent card is your preference, here's one from 08-09 Artifacts. It isn't wood grain, but the colouring makes me think of the Bobby Orr auto I posted on the 1st.

Do stickers count towards the collection? Of course! The peel portion comes off in the shape of the NHL shield, and part of the a future stars from the Campbell Conference page. Bellows is easily the cream of that crop that included names like Ed Beers, Frank Nigro and Jaroslav Pouzar. The Wales had Guy Carbonneau and Scott Stevens on their list.

This is about as recent as this post will get, with this Calder Contenders card of Scott Timmins. He played 24 games for the Panthers, and has been in Europe since 2016.

And one card deserves another, accompanied by an autograph. Pretty basic, but at least it is on-card and includes the number. As a bonus, it's my first Timmins hit.

And there you have it!

Patchy

Looks like it will take until the third post of the year for me to show off multiple cards. But this is another one worthy of a post on its own. I got extremely lucky, adding this sweet patch to my inventory not long before Murray broke out during the playoffs, leading the Nuggets to a comeback from being down 3-1 in the series against the Clippers. I would not have been able to pick up a /10 patch for the price I did after that. 

I can't exactly place the patch against the jersey, but it looks like it came from the upper left corner of one of letters on the front of the jersey that the team debuted during the 2018 season. And that isn't  merely a red patch piece, but flatirons red.

No matter the specific colour or the location, this is the lowest numbered Murray card in my collection, and will probably stay that way until basketball prices return to a sane level.

A Big Start to The New Year

You might remember when I posted the Tom Seaver autograph and the Brandon Sutter manu-nameplate as the cards I picked up at COMC when I sold an inscribed SPA auto of Nick Suzuki there.

I didn't quite show everything off that date.

There was still one more big card I grabbed. It wasn't really a PC item, but it was a card that I'd wanted to add for quite a while. Not so much this specific card, but one of these:

Out of 18-19 Engrained, this is my first (probably only) Bobby Orr autograph in my collection. The set had a wood grain feel to it, but it is flat on the autograph portion to make for a nice clean signature. I love the extreme leftward slant of his southpaw signature. Somewhat surprisingly when I looked at the checklist, Orr, along with Mike Modano and Rod Brind'amour, were Group C autos, the most common in the legends portion of this subset, falling 1:22 packs/boxes, with the legends overall being 1:12. Despite being a higher-end set, that's far more common I'd expect for an Orr auto.

But there being more available than you'd expect is a good problem to have when it comes to adding a wanted auto to the collection.

Quite the start to the year!