A Rangers Round Up

Namely a round up of the Kitchener Rangers portion of a recent envelope from Dennis @ Too Many Manninghams.

It really was only one thing, but it definitely deserves its own post. At first this appears to be some sort of mini-album. This could be nice for storing some of my favourite Rangers alum cards. You've got Evan McGrath on the cover and despite his not making the NHL, he's still a memorable player and...

Signature Album?

Oh yeah, it came with an autographed team set of 24 cards.

Nothing big.

24 spaces in the album, so 24 cards makes sense. We open with this octet of players. Only Lashoff played in the NHL, but Turple got to sit on the Thrashers bench and got a couple NHL-level cards out of that appearance. Azevedo and McGrath were mid/late draft picks, and although neither reached the bigs, they've had good careers in Europe.

Strong NHL content in grouping #2, with only Geynes and Thomson not reaching the NHL. Valabik is a 2/14 binder member as well, but this will stay in the Rangers binder for obvious completeness reasons. Kindl had been back and forth between the AHL and NHL for his career, and spent last year in the Panthers organization.

Here you have the final grouping. Only Oreskovich here played in the NHL, although Rizk was a late pick of Minnesota. You also get an appearance of an alternate jersey on Applebaum's card. The team was a black hole for penmanship this season, with mostly illegible scribbles. I can read Auffrey's first name - that might give him the nod.

And there you have one part of the recent trade. I still have 3 more parts to cover, probably in random postings over the next week or so.

One Card Only: What's In a Name?

In the case of Scooby Wright, his name translates to "I will be drug tested every day week of my life, and people will double check in disbelief that I passed.".

Archival Jays

And some more group break goodies, this time some Blue Jays from Archives.

Here's the base set. Pretty much who you'd expect from a base set limited to 300 cards with no retired content for the Jays.

And yes, the Osuna did have the inset of the stadium on the back of his card. I really wish they'd used the panoramic photo instead of just the infield. The Zosky shot is obviously the Dome, but unless you looked closely and were familiar with the facility, that other one could be anywhere.

Retro Original! The oxymoron portion of the set.

Here's a parallel, the only numbered card I landed. This peach card is 110/199.

Time to flashback to the 80s for the Fan Favorites portion of the break. I might have to wait a bit, but eventually I should get by first autograph of the 1987 AL MVP. I'd think this might look nice on the 1987 design given that, but it seems this will be on the 1984 look.

The Jays had two autographs in the set, and I landed both of them with this Dave Stieb. A nice looking autograph aesthetically, and it comes from design year of his no-hitter from 1990. A logical choice.

And there you go!

Authentic Bruins

Today, the goodies from a group break of SP Authentic. I went back and forth deciding between the Bruins and Sens, and opted for the Bruins since the Sens only hit was an auto of Thomas Chabot, and his penmanship is terrible.

Your base cards. Typical SPA, but maybe a little louder with the starburst-ish background.

The Bruins had two cards for the Update portion of their flagship set. Here's a highlight card for Tuukka Rask's hot start to the season.

And surprisingly, a card for Tim Schaller. He signed as a free agent after a few years between the Sabres and their AHL affiliate, and saw the most NHL action of his career this year, appearing in 59 games.

Shiny! With the alternate uniform as well. I really don't care about the code on the back for the bounties or whatever.

And an auto. It might just be the initials and the number, but I'd still rather have this in the binders than Chabot's mess.

There you go! Tomorrow, Archival Blue Jays!

Admitting my Bias

I'll be biased when a trade package from Brian @ Highly Subjective... is as good as this one.

#1 and the best was this, a card that's been on my wantlist for awhile. This completes the 3 card run of cards for the 2/14/90 game in which Michael Jordan wore #12 for the game, due to his #23 vanishing mysteriously from the Orlando locker room. I might be strange for trying to shoehorn Jordan into my 2/14 collection, but it is worth it for one of the greatest ever.

Mets summarize the rest of the package, and the highlight among the Mets stuff was some vintage! Sure, this 1970 booklet was already scratched off, but this is now the oldest Seaver item in my Mets collection. WOO-HOO!

The only hit was this Gsellman. I'd pulled the Missing Back Plate variation from my 2 boxes of the product, and now the regular one goes nicely alongside it in the binder. Time to chase the rainbow! Or not.

Another highlight was likely the compete team set from 2014 Pro Debut. Best of all, 7 of these 9 guys are still with the team. Only Gant and Fullmer are elsewhere. That's a pretty good average. The Gant is the exact same photo that appeared on his Bowman card from 2014, only one (or likely both) has/have been photoshopped.

And some misc. Mets and parallels to end this post, although there were still more in the pack. The Trachsel is probably my fave in this group, due to the somewhat odd photo and being from Topps Total.

And there you go. I've still got a couple mailings left, one trade package that will require at least 4 posts, and some group break goodies as well. Until then...

14 if by Sportlots

Not 4. 14. As in two orders, one of 4, one of 10.

Starting with somewhat of an oddball. This is from 1994 Classic Pro Line, and is just a reproduction of the newspaper announcing the arrival of the Jacksonville Jaguars, alongside their original logo. I pulled the Panthers one from a repack, and just needed their expansion cousins. Because I was bored, I actually looked up the other articles references at the bottom.

"Slaying of two hunters may be related" - Turns out they were, but the case went cold until 1998. 

"Amtrak train smashes into small truck" - No luck here. This had to be local, as my searches mainly brought up references to the 1993 Big Bayou accident.

"Key Tide player may be out of SEC game" - Looks like that player was Jay Barker. I don't think this would count as Barker card to JBF.

I didn't check out the Teen Wrap.

As a part of my never ending quest to add football cards of professional wrestlers into my collection, here's an appearance of the ill-fated Droz from his Broncos days.

And my list of needs for 2015 GQ drops to 1 with these additions. 2 years later, the end is in sight, interestingly with card #350 being my 350th.

I do believe these complete the binder. Almost 28 years later.

And since I was 2 away from the 10 card price level, let's add two more stickers to my 2/14 binder with my 23rd and 24th Dave Dravecky - these from the 1990 Panini release.

And there you have a Baker's Dozen +1 of sportlots mail.

2017 Adventures in Repacks - Part 15.3 - Football Goodies

Time to end this repack box.

My favourite item in the box wasn't a card at all, but this Bills pocket schedule from 1999. Even though it did remind me that 1999 was their last playoff year. And this is 2017.

Shit.

Despite the miserable years it reminded me of, I'll still rank the schedule over a new card for the 2/14 collection.

And it is a Promotional Back version too! Yay!

I also landed the Chris Warren version of that parallel.

Holograms! As usual, these look a lot nicer in hand than scanned. That's Marshall Faulk against a typical Hawaiian island backdrop.

Junior Seau rocking a throwback jersey on yet another promotional card. YES!

1 of 30000? Can I splurge and get 2?

A couple more random cards from random sets. The Favre and Davis cards bring us into the 2000s from 2000 Collector's Edge Graded. Since they were stuck together (see the bottom of the Davis), I won't be shipping them to Beckett any time soon.

Groucho might not have wanted to belong to any club that would accept him as a member, but if the Stadium Club accepted me and promised cards, I'd join.

A couple drawn cards end it.

I certainly got my $5 worth from it. And I still haven't busted those Pacific packs yet. I'll put those away from a rainy day. Where I'll forget about them. And probably find them 27 years from now like those Panini albums.

2017 Adventures in Repacks - Part 15.2 - Football Goodies

And now, the highlights from about 50 cards from 1995 Finest that were in this box.

The big winner here hits two of my PCs. My Bills collection and my 2-14 collection. This was the only Bills card among the Finest in there, but I think I'll make this the 68th Jim Kelly card in the binder.

It was a pretty good mix of cards. Even with a smaller base set, I'd be expecting many guys who didn't manage much of a career, but here's another HOFer in the bunch.

The real highlight here was the appearance of guys on teams I'd seriously had little or no memory they'd played with. Roby with Tampa Bay? Dave Kreig as a Cardinal? Ricky Proehl on the Seahawks. Heck, he played 3 seasons there (5 if you count the move to Baltimore) and seeing Testaverde as a Brown was still vague to me.

And the best of the rest is going to go to an interesting photograph. Not so much that it is a kicker card, but that they are usually framed to show the full extension on the kick, but this one allows for something different since his body is front-and-center.

And that's the Finest stuff. A whole bunch of miscellany tomorrow to end this box.

2017 Adventures in Repacks - Part 15.1 - Football Goodies

Flashing back to the Spring Expo, the final item I showed off was this:

It was a $5 box that contained some well loved CFL cards, a bunch of Topps Finest base, some 1991 Pacific sealed packs and some misc. stuff. Time to finally show these off, and I'm leading with the CFL.

Most of the cards were from 1970 OPC, but there were a couple outsiders, such as the 1965 card of Elsby. I love looking at comparing the old logos and uniforms to the current ones on these cards. The Als might have had one of the more basic ones, but it would translate nicely to a helmet for a throwback theme.

A kicker with a card in a 100-ish card set. Wow. That's the second vintage Dave Raimey that I'll be sending to Too Many Manninghams at some point.

If a Blue Bomber OL guy got a card in 1970, I probably got one of them.

The only other non-1970 card was this one in the Tiger-Cats grouping. It is from 1971.

There's something you won't see on current cards - positions for players that played both offensive and defensive positions.

Another thing you won't see again - the position of Flanker listed as opposed to Wide Receiver. Dave Tobey is an Oregon alum that will be sent to Cards on Cards in a future bubbler.

The Lehmann was probably the best example of a card that was well-loved.

And it ends with these 3 Stampeders cards. I love the name Granville Liggins. That just seems like a football name. He was named Lineman of the Year while at Oklahoma, but was likely too short for a career in the NFL. So, he came north to Canada and never left, now living in Ontario.

No content for the green Riders in this box, so that's it for this. The Finest will be up next, followed by the misc stuff with the Pacific packs set aside for when I'm in the mood to bust something. Cheers!

Familiar 2/14 Faces

Following up the new with the old.

This one could also go in my Kitchener Rangers alum collection, but I'm going to wait for Ryan to get a card from a pro team for now. Not only do I add a nice on-card autograph to my collection, but he's also rocking one of their alternate uniforms for Remembrance Day. Those are auctioned off after their 11/11 game for charity.

I guess after promising not to go for the nameplate, I lied. I just need the Z to complete this. Hook me up!

A pair of Milan Hejduks are next to showoff, There's a nice shiny issue from Fleer Showcase and another one of those oddball issues from the Czeck Stadion set.

Random junk wax!

I don't have the base version of this card in my collection yet, but I do have the Players Club parallel. Collecting can be strange.

Over to baseball, and the closest thing to a hit the rest of the way home. This X-Fractor is /250, and features one of the longer names in my collection. Fortunately, the Alexandre portion was dropped to make my spreadsheet columns more manageable.

My first SPBA cards!

A card that I'd been looking for, and had on my Top 10 list for quite the while finally showed up at a reasonable price on COMC.

Basketball, as is typical since it has the fewest players, had the fewest cards on their way to the binder. My 11th Byron Mullens.

My 40th and 41st Gheorge Muresans. That's a very 90's looking design on the Topps card.

Despite a pretty good career with the Packers, John didn't have a lot of cards from his NFL tenure. A couple in the early 80s, and some junk wax stuff in 1989. This completes his run of mainstream cardboard with 4 cards, and with a sticker from my '89 Panini box break, is my 5th card if his.

A couple cards of #1 draft pick that didn't pan out, due to injuries.

And one who finally seems to be panning out. This 'Forged by Fire' die-cut marks my 30th card of Jadeveon Clowney, and probably one of my favourites of his.

And there you go!