Birthday Girl

 

Last year at this time, I posted a picture of Mischief for her second birthday, along with a couple of folks that shared the day with her. I then expressed no interest in a birthday binder for her.

It is more of a birthday slider box now. Hopefully, I'll have the fortitude to keep it that way. 

But here's the contents of that box. Since Mischief is a little girl, I'll start with the distaff content!

Quite the diverse group. While I do also have a hockey gold medalist in mine (Milan Hejduk), and a Bond Secretary (Lois Maxwell) in mine, I don't have any Nobel Peace Prize winners. I'm not going to read everything, but I don't think I have any cards that include the word 'Plucky' such as on Cheryl Ladd's. The only one missing from this is another Olympic medalist - Hilary Knight, who I'll probably find in a dime box at some point to make a scanner bed friendly 9.

Last year, when I posted this, I implored that you not send me any cards that fall into this category - I don't want to make a PC of this. That doesn't apply to folks that would already land in one of my PCs, but those would more likely end up in those. This is my first Jerry Ostroski card either in this, or my Bills collection. Also: O PEE CHEE baseball!

The offspring of a Jays legend don't really count. "2014 Will Be First Season as Pitcher" is certainly a more unique phrase on a card than even 'Plucky'.

Shininess! 

Vintage!  I Love that '69 Topps football design.

Faux vintage!

Unique photos might be the other exception to the 'Don't send me" rule. I love weather cards, and seeing snow on a card is even more interesting when they feature a southern team like Tampa. 

Naturally, some hits and low-numbered cards are in the collection. It is Samuel Morin on that dual relic card that is the 7/12 baby. This is the second autograph of Gordon Pinsent, who passed away earlier this year, that I've shown off here. He was a legend in Canadian TV - he deserves more than one appearance. Nathan Lukes is now with the Jays, and this specific card from 2017 is a Future Threads Silhouettes Autographs Red version of the card. That specific card of Dan Boyle has also appeared here before, but I've since added a second one to keep that collection intact. 

I really didn't have anywhere else to show off a Brock Lesnar card, so it stands alone here.

Unlike with the Lesnar, where else would a card of Sy Berger go but among the baseball portion. The New Jersey Jackals, who more specifically play out of Paterson, are probably the most obscure team in this collection with that Peter L'Italien. 

As with my 2/14 collection, basketball is the smallest portion of the collection, but they still manage to lead soccer's zero. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is easily the biggest current name from the sporting world in this collection. He's also part of my Canadians in the NBA mini collection, so he's the third exception to the "Don't flood me with their cards" rule.

Football gives me another chance to show that it wasn't just baseball that was hit with garish designs in 1995 by Fleer. 

Like with my collection, ease of acquiring content probably makes hockey the most prevalent in the collection. Even if there really isn't too much NHL stardom among the ranks. 

Who's the biggest name in the collection? Meloche? Semenko? Maybe it will turn out to be Tristan Bertucci, a 2nd round draft pick of the Dallas Stars, and the youngest member of this binder. At least it makes it cheap to acquire their cards. 

Which I absolutely do not want to do.

Here's another picture of Mischief, post-haircut, to wrap things up. 

Don't send me cards for this. DON'T! 

2023 Heroes and Prospects

 

OK, it is actually Donruss 2023, but given that the set consists of retired greats and minor leaguers, it perfectly gives the vibe of the old ITG hockey release. And I'm perfectly fine with that.

First card out is the former for that category. Nice colour on the design, although there is way too much border for my tastes. Oakland's colours are so unique, they actually adapt quite nicely to a logoless photo.

Card #2 is a player I'd never seen before in any release. That's probably because he hasn't had a base card since Conlon Collection release back in 1993. 

That's worthy of showing a card back off!

I'll scan everything else in a group the rest of the way home. Alvarez has probably been one of a few things enjoyable about this Mets season. Alex Ramirez provides the second Mets card of the pack, and Druw Jones is probably the biggest name among the prospect pool in the pack. I do wish they'd gone all-red for the 1990 salute, or team colours like 2016 football.

We've reached the legends portion of the pack. Nice to see Shawn Green with Toronto, as he provided the only Jays content in the pack. He's been a Dodger in a lot of releases recently, although a 30/30 Club Jays card of his showed up in Series 1 this season. Still, the Stargell is probably my favourite in this bunch - I give full credit to the yellow batting helmet.

Bring on the inserts and parallels! It seems off to get an insert and then just have a base card right afterwards, but I don't put the packs together. Also, note the pair of Dodgers cards of Duke Snider. What did I do right before heading into Walmart where I added this pack to my cart? Mail off a package to Night Owl. Because of course I did.  While I got the three advertised Holo Orange parallels, I also got a Carolina Blue and a numbered Stat Line parallel of Rickey Henderson. /401 goes to his career OBP. 

3rd Oakland card, and I'd just be repeating myself by saying how nicely Oakland's classic colours work with the lack of logos. The parallels continue here - the Walker is a reversed image error card. Elly de la Cruz is the most solid name among guys who've reached the majors at this point, giving me another really solid prospect name in this.

Despite a dearth of active, non-rookie major leaguers, I actually really liked this. Enough that I'd probably pull another pack of these off the shelves without hesitation.

There you have it!

2023 Adventures in Repacks - Part 20: Hockey Hat Trick

 

That means 3 hockey hangers in a single post! 

Even if I limit my choices to the cards visible on the pegs, I'll gravitate towards one with a new mask binder card. I haven't bought too much of 22-23 cards outside of 2/14/Sens/Rangers alum PCs, so this really might be the first one I've pulled from any pack of any sort this year.

Not too much variety so far - at least the Brashear comes from a set that isn't too common in repack land. 2020 UD could take the 1990 Bowman role this time - there's a lot of them in the first two of these.

As uncommon as 2005 Parkhurst is, it isn't close to as uncommon as 2003 Original Six Parkhurst - which is what that Lach comes from. A nice, fairly random card of a Hall of Famer! What more could I want from a repack?

Avalanche hot repack, at least among the two visible cards.

22-23 S1 starts off the second one with a less-intriguing, at least to me, photo.

The first 5 hidden cards has the exact same make-up as the first repack. 2 1991 Score. 2 2021 UD. And a random cards from the 2000s. Cool photo, though! Despite being a repeat card, that is also an interesting photo on Zibanejad's card.

Another Parkhurst O6 card! I'm probably going to end up enjoying these cheaper repacks a lot more than the ones with the actual guaranteed hit in it. Probably becomes even more likely with that ice-level angle on the Bjork photo.

Mike Smith's "Coyote catching Road Runner" mask remains one of my favourite masks in recent memory. A great finale to the second repack!

OK, Patrick. What are you hiding?

Fortunately, scanning was easy because the hit was perfectly in the middle. There's a trade tree element to this. Laine was traded for Pierre-Luc Dubois who was just traded for a group that included Gabe Vilardi. His photo, with teammates behind him during warm-up, is one of only a handful of interesting base photos in the dreary 21-22 release. Just plain BLAH. 

The hit! Winchester did have a respectable career in the NHL of almost 400 games, and he's now an assistant coach at the University of Wisconsin. At least it isn't one of those umpteen e-pack relics I can get for $1 at COMC. 

Jarrod Skalde, seen in the first group of 9, was a part of that Memorial Cup winning team. That's kinda like doubling up. Kevin Brown, seen here with Detroit Jr. Red Wings, would play for Los Angeles, getting there several seasons before the baseball player of the same name. Grillo would not play in the NHL, but he's an agent now, and got on the ice when the Knights raised the Cup. Unless you want to be really depressed, don't search for what Joe Murphy's been up to.

And that's that. More 21-22 boredom.

There were far more notable cards in the 12-card repacks vs the big one. I probably should have just picked up a few more of those off the pegs at the Dollarama.

There you have it!

Packs from the Dollar Store

 The Dollar Tree doesn't have repacks, but actual packs. Let's sample a couple!

These will do fine. Wasn't I just complaining about a couple posts back about not being able to find Big League? I was just looking in the wrong store!

I really wasn't expecting too much from the photo choices, but I really like seeing the grass coming up on the Mooney card. Sometimes, the simple can be the best. These are all base cards. For some reason the rookies are foil-y while the veterans aren't.

These promise one yellow parallel per pack. While these tend to have bright yellow borders in other releases, here you just get a little big of foil. At least this card of a Michigan alum will find a nice home after I send out my next mailer to Ann Arbor.

Big League provided some base cards to fill out a couple future mailers, but that Buxton was definitely unexpected. since that is a Rare Blue Foil base SP. They're one-per-box in the regular release, but in dollar store packs, they're 1:40 packs.  That's definitely a pack that punched above its weight. 

Trade filler, an interesting photo and a tough pull. I'll take it!

There you have it!

Bills! Bills! Bills!

 Now for the Buffalo content that has been sitting in my to-be-posted box.

I'm going to start with the content that might not technically be Buffalo Bills cards, but are collegiate cards of future Bills that I'm still adding to the binder and counting as such. Like this one. One season on the OL isn't going to be enough to get Saffold a real card, but I can certainly drop into the collegiate realm to add one.

With Dawson Knox, and top draft pick Dalton Kincaid, the Bills are pretty loaded at Tight End going into this season. That probably doesn't bode well for Morris getting a lot of action this season with the Bills. But he still did pick up 1 more TD in the NFL than I ever will. Unfortunately for him, that game will be better remembered for Nyheim Hines' pair of kickoff returns for touchdowns. 

A random "Hey! I was at this game!" card. While this photo could conceivably come from any game, they're kind enough to date this. Football at least gives you a fighting shot at placing a photo with a specific game without having to go too deep into *-reference land. And the moment here was the only time in his career that Barry Sanders was stopped for a safety. 

Random Action Packed card!

A 4-way card from 2014 is the only card at COMC that commemorates Ross Cockrell's one season with the Bills. For some reason, this little oddity was a retail-only card. 

Another cool moment commemorated on a card, although this one needed a few seconds of research. This one capped the Bills coming back from a 21-3 deficit (Fitzmagic!) and Nelson putting the final touches on a 38-35 win a TD with 18 seconds left on the clock. 

A shiny card of a legend, and this is now something super rare for a post nowadays - three separate appearances, all out of modern releases featuring OL guys, with the HOFer in DeLamielleure joining the opening Saffold and Kouandjio's portion of the quad rookies. It a colour match as well here, or at least as close as something named Reactive Blue Prizm can get.

One more autograph at the end. Bernard was a 3rd round pick in 2022, and made appearances in 16 games last season. Even as a fairly high pick, his appearances in sets were still pretty sparse for his rookie year. Fortunately, Contenders goes deep with their auto'ed rookie checklist and autos from the non-Rookie Premiere guys become readily available within a couple months of the set dropping. 

Speaking of that, I still have no Khalil Shakir auto yet. Help!

There you have it!