Mailbag

 

These particular mailers were a long time coming in terms of getting shown on the blog. Over the summer, a bunch of PWEs arrived from Night Owl. I was getting everything ready to post, but read that one of the many got returned to New York. So, I then waited for the next one to show up so I could just scan everything en masse. Finally, months later, the bubbler arrived to complete the sending, and I can now show everything off.

A team set will always be a highlight among a mailer, and here's part of the entire 1991 Ultra Mets team set in the bunch. Does Keith Miller being in the background of a checklist make it a Mets card even if it doesn't include the Mets portion of the list itself on it? Yup! My collection - my rules!

Surely that Lindor can't be my first card with a City Connect jersey on it, can it? It might be, but I'm too lazy to look. It might not be the original '65s, or even Heritage '14, but I'll love any appearance of one of my favorite designs, including Archives.

I'm not a fan of Fantasy-themed inserts in football, and the same is true in baseball. Still, we've got some parallels in here, and I really like the photo choice on Strawberry.

Let's complete the 2023 Archives set salute with a couple more entries to wrap up the Mets portion.

The Jays stuff wasn't as numerous, but there's still interesting stuff. At least they went for an actual Jays image for the Stadium Club entry, as opposed to the crap Photoshop job in his Update entry. The Sega Card-Gen hits that sweet spot of being an oddball and having an interesting photo on it.

Bills! Bills! Bills as the finale. Ah, Rob Johnson. I remember when he was the most wince-worthy QB of the post-Jim Kelly era.  Now, he's maybe hanging on to the top 5.

So, although it took a while for some of the cards, thanks for all these goodies Owl! I've got some stuff on the way in my post-Black Friday COMC shipment, and will be forwarding them on to you!

There you have it!

New Year Nightmare Fuel

Sleep tight!

It is safe to say that nobody is having anything related to a goodtime if Abner is near.

2026 Adventures in Repacks - Part 1 - A Great Way To Start the Year

 The same repack types as the year closer.

And here we are!

All flagship in this pack - but at least there's a reverse retro jersey in there. Even though it was the opening card, and therefore not a surprise. 

And the contents of the Value Pack. Looks like I'll have a hit coming my way!

And the appearance of a 1981 card puts this repack easily ahead of the previous one. It was completely unexpected. Getting the great name that is Steve Konowalchuk is a bonus.

Here's that hit. It might not be a huge name, but he's still playing in North America, and yellow is a fun swatch colour to see on a Penguins card. 

Guess the Superstar? Is it a historic one in Jagr, or a current one in Boeser? 

Timmy's card! CHL card! That's enough to offset the blandness of any 21-22 entry. 

A relic? A 1981 entry? Steve Konowalchuk? Yup, that's what I want from a repack experience!

There you have it!

2025 Adventures in Repacks - Part 36 - A Great Way To End the Year

 A repack 2 pack!

With these two, in particular from Dollarama.

Here's the 4 card pack. An alternate uniform is nice, but the easy win here goes to the Tim Horton's entry. I remember the days where even one player opting to sport #59 would be considered silly, and now there's two of them good enough to make it onto an insert set. Damn, I'm old....

Here were the contents of the Value Pack.

Starting with the 5-pack, there's a perfect card for this time of the year -  a World Juniors card! I'm not sure if Kurashev is an intense face-off card, or if he's just glazed over. Also, Whalers content! Airbrushed Whalers content, but Whalers content nonetheless!

That is quite the reliance on 1990 UD for a 1990s pack. That said, the face-off photo on Dave Gagner's is a nice selection.

Pronger is my Hall of Famer in the pack, making for 4 cards in the repack for relocated teams. You can even add the Coyotes appearance in the first portion to make for 5. 

Can you tell I'm really bored by the contents of these ones?  When some of the most interesting cards to me were two of the 1990 UD entries, the dullness is hard to disguise.

But there you have it!

And the Rest!

 Finally, I'm putting the most recent incoming mail from Dennis @ Too Many Verlanders to bed. Just in time for another one to be incoming. It's still on the way as I write this, but may have actually shown up  by the time it goes live.

One and done for my Canadian NBAers collection, and a suitably patriotic card to open. It being a red parallel ups the patriotism even more. Now if only he'd get healthy and back in the lineup.

The Senators content. Silver (facsimile) signatures and shiny Alfie!

Switching over to baseball, here's a pair of Vladdies. But those two cards are nothing compared to the....

Mike Piazza content! 

I guess the Mets ones could  have been used when I did the Mets post a few days back, but his content would still dwarf anybody else's. Based on the photo used, I initially thought that Piazza in the bottom middle was a modern Panini release. My fave in this group wasn't a Mets entry though, but that Piazza/Salmon dual card.

Why? Open it up! Find a hologram! So 90's!

Mike also provides the final hit of the mailer, with this /50 entry from 2004.

But there's one more thing, and the reason this mailer was so bulky:

2001 All-Star Game Program!

YES!

While I did like the memories from it, my favourite thing might have been the ads in it. The best may have been an ad for the RealPlayer radio broadcasts of MLB games. That's peak 2001, although it would have been wasted on me, since I already subscribed at the time.

RealPlayer. Oh the memories. Of which few are good ones.

So, maybe now I can get to others and their trade envelopes. Thanks for all these, Dennis, and I hope to have something heading your way tomorrow - weather permitting.

Christmas Mischief!

Year #4 of showing off Mischief's Christmas picture, as she wishes everybody the best while plotting revenge on her human for the hat.

Her hat/headband was picked up, naturally, at Dollarama. Not just repacks!

Bonus card! Adam Johnson might be the most unfortunate named member of the 7/12 Mischief slider box. While he has a few unflattering parts of his wikipedia entry, such as "In 2002, Johnson failed to make the Twins out of spring training. When he was given his assignment papers, he tore or crumpled them and stormed out of manager Ron Gardenhire's office." and " On September 28, he pitched in what would be his final Major League game and gave up six earned runs in a third of an inning pitched", but at least he's better off than the hockey player who was killed after an on-ice skate blade neck slashing, and the soccer player convicted of sexual activity with a child. 

That career ERA of 10.25 doesn't seem so bad now, does it?

There you have it!

The Mets Content

I'm determined to get through the TMV mailer before the calendar flips over to 2026, and I'll have nothing less but the 'Everything Else" to show off. 

At least I can be assured that Mr. Met will still be doing his thing for the home team come spring. 

Seeing Pete Alonso cards with the Mets is going to be a little depressing for the next while. I'm trying to look at the good side of it, that being "They didn't win it all with him, might as well look elsewhere", but it still sucks.

Bring on the shininess! Although there is a cloth sticker of DeGrom from 2019 to calm the ol' eyes down a bit. And at least Baty is probably going to be with the team this year. Or at least when spring training starts. Right? 

Unlike with the Tracy McGrady card earlier in this recap, I can find images of the Mound Marvels card without its crucial protective film. So I guess I can leave it as intended, with a giant label hiding Bret Saberhagen.

Let's start the hit parade with this three way relic from back in 2013. And now, a dozen seasons later, Shelby Miller is the only one of these three still in the league as of last season. 

With the slightest hint of a pinstripe, we get a perfect color combination of swatches. And that's always nice when there's variety to go alongside two windows.

And the king of this portion of the mailer is Dominic Smith, who gets the triple play of hits. An auto, a relic, and a manu-relic. 

Edit: I just realized I had one more Dominic Smith card lurking in my COMC to-be-posted box. 

Why not add an auto/relic to this mix too?

One more post to go, and one final time to say 'Thank You' for this particular bubbler.

There you have it!

2/14 B-Ball

 I'm wrapping up the 2/14 content in my latest COMC mailer by combining all the baseball and basketball content in one post. 

A big start, or at least an oversized one. Who doesn't like postcards?  Other than people that don't have appropriately sized pages/boxes for the card. How would Sanchez work out with the Twins? 8 games and 16 AB. He'd spend most of the '86 and '87 seasons in the minors, other than those 8 games in 1986 and 3 appearances with Oakland in '87. But this still counts as +1!

Keeping with the minor league reference in the last write-up, here's a true minor league entry, and my second card of Deron Dowhower. It's a nice enough photo, but I'm way too distracted by the logo. Replacing the crystal ball with a large baseball is a little piece of brilliance.

There aren't as many Nolan Schanuel entries in 2025 as during his Rookie Card season in 2024. Still, he was able to appear in and get Chromed up in Heritage. 

Brooks Lee was more common in 2025 releases, seeing as he had the RC logo on most of his cards. Not on the New Money or Boys of Summer releases, those are 2023 and 2024 respectively. Sure, I might complain about the generic name on the Stars retail insert, but I won't complain about more content for the 2/14 collection. 

Switching to basketball, there's nothing but numbered entries here.

The first G-League cards in my 2/14 collection, although I do have a few Raptors 905 cards in that team collection. The simplicity of the 23-24 entries easily wins over the 24-25, which seem way too much for a base set outside of mid 90s Fleer.

And finally, an autograph. The best thing about Eugene Omoruyi is that if I end up with dupes of his cards, I can send them off in a mailer to Cards on Cards. He spent last year with the Raptors 905, but didn't get any cards of his time there. That's still the closest I've gotten to adding a Raptors item to this collection.

My total now in the collection is 4,444 cards. While I doubt I'll reach 4500 by year's end, perhaps by 2/14/26!

There you have it!

The Joy of COMC Randomness

I'm not sure what I was looking for when an uncertified Francisco Cabrera 1990 Donruss card showed up at a low price.

But I'm glad I found this instead of what I was looking for at the time, because this one is all mine!

And one can compare the player's cursive directly against was used for the card font. Which, if you're strange, is probably fun.

Bills! Bills! Bills!

 "The Bills have a tendency to play Lawful Good football in even years and Chaotic Neutral football in odd years so far this decade." - Victoria Zeller, in the Defector "Why Your Team Sucks" preseason preview

That's been true this season, as I've been "Yes! They're winning everything! Josh Allen is a football GOD!" to "Can they just lose out, get everyone on the offense not named Allen or Cook fired, and get it over with?". Usually during the same game.

And that's my set-up for a small stack of Bills cards to show off, both in terms of COMC acquisitions, and following that up with the Bills content from the recent TMV mailer.

Even if it is a Reactive Yellow parallel and not just a Yellow one, there is some perfection on applying that colour to a football Hall of Fame induction card. 

Did you think I was kidding when I said I had an Uno card to show off? How else am I supposed to commemorate Daquan Jones' being with the team?

Here's the rest of the COMC Bills content. Clockwise from the top-left, an unlicensed Topps entry is another "no other choice" Bills entry. I did post an Olandis Gary card before, but that was just a card where the team logo didn't match the uniform he was wearing. This is the closest I'll get to Olandis in Bills gear. He'd play zero games for the team and was traded at the end of the pre-season. I got that Amari Cooper since I didn't expect him to show up in 2025 releases. 

As for Tim Tindale, how many times do you see a Canadian university mentioned as the alma mater on a card from the NFL?

Switching over to the TMV mailer, here's a 1989 Diamond Kings-ish design to open this part.

Here's the bulk of the Bills content in the mailer, providing a very solid mix of recent stuff with a smidge of 00's stuff in there. My favourite is probably the McGahee at the bottom, with its "He's a rookie, the photo looks like a rookie, but it isn't a rookie card" quality to it. He was a first rounder in 2003, but due to injury (DON'T LOOK FOR IT IF YOU'VE NEVER SEEN IT) he didn't debut for the team until 2004. 

Using the End Zone paint job for a manufactured patch card just seems like a natural thing. Even if they aren't always the most exciting thing, or even in the proper orientation. For 75 cents, I couldn't resist that Baldwin. Sorry if you wanted it.

The only relic in the batch, and it is a perfect time for it, following two straight weeks of Josh Allen carrying the team to victory. Do I care if the jersey swatch and football piece haven't ever been in his vicinity? Maybe.

Joe DeLamiellure leads the autograph parade here. It's a Hall of Famer Bills autograph! Despite being (mostly) from before my time on the planet, I'll still recognize and love the team's history. Field Access provides an auto to go with the nice photo choices that were prevalent in the product. For a sticker dump, it was far better than they needed to do. Dwayne Wright is the odd man out as I have little memory of him. Lasting one season and being a running back drafted the same year as Marshawn Lynch can do that. Cornelius Bennett's entry might be a non-licensed Topps card, but it gives happy flashbacks to the glory years, and those times are always welcome.

One final autograph. No I don't know why a JP "Better than Peterman, worse than Manuel" Losman auto was encased. All I know is that the case is now holding a far better card, with Losman in the team hit binder.

That's not to say I don't want cards of any of the three QBs mentioned. I most certainly do. Part of Bills fandom is embracing misery.

There you have it!