Better Days

The last time I did one of these 2/14 event posts, things got dark. With those events being the Death of James Cook and St. Valentine's Day Massacre it would be expected to do so. So, with these two events, things will get a little more upbeat.

I just decided to search COMC for "Feb 14", and had two cards and parallels that fit the bill. "February 14" also brought up some Crash the Game entries, but I don't know if I want to count those. But this celebratory trip to the White House does break a two-card streak of depressing events.

Unless you're Mr. Death Glare here.

What negative could I possibly have with this card commemorated Sidney Crosby becoming the all-time points leader from Nova Scotia?

He moved past Kitchener Rangers alum Al MacInnis for the lead.

I guess darkness is where you look for it.

There you have it!

2025 Adventures in Repacks - Part 19.4 - A Week's Worth

 All that's left is the baseball repack.

And it is this one. Going solely by photos on the visible card, this would be the baseball one I was most likely to pull off the hangers at the store.

A very Texas start to the pack, followed up by Expos content. The slight shading with Rowand's card makes it seem like it might be a parallel, but it isn't. UD just used team colours for the background in the set. That's always a nice choice. A drawn card is a good enough way to end the first batch of cards.

Any appearance of Nolan Ryan makes for a good repack. Honorable mention to a nice knuckleball card and a minor league entry.

There's the hit! I'll ignore his 1-9 record so far this season, and just say that his ERA and WHIP don't seem too far off from his usual performances, so things have to get better at some point when the Pirates send him out.

The differently-coloured Chili Davis card comes from the Opening Day box set. The Alou Gold Label is Class 2 parallel. That's definitely an unexpected parallel. The Whitson DK looks somewhat reserved for one of those entries, yet when you look closely at it, it still brings some nice garishness.

Yadi? That's a very solid finale!

Another perfectly fine repack to end the week's worth of them.

There you have it!

2025 Adventures in Repacks - Part 19.3 - A Week's Worth

 Back to my stack of unopened repacks, and the football version.

A defensive opening.

Ooo! A parallel to start. That's followed up with a player I had absolutely no memory of. Cantwell was undrafted, and never got into a game. That's the exact same level of NFL experience 2/14 collection member Christian Hackenberg, without anyone wasting a 2nd rounder on him. Fleer Tradition provides a nice colorful design.

Defensive player with the ball! With the bonus being the disappointed intended receiver. It does make it easy to trace the game to 11/29/92, where Fulcher got that pick. It was probably the game highlight for the Bengals, who saw their QB sacked 10 times. And I can find the actual play on youtube to learn that it was Pittsburgh's #33, Merrill Hoge, that was said disappointed recipient.

Here's the hit. It looks like he tried to turn the Double S in his first and last name into dollar signs, which might not count for the penmanship binder, but is still interesting to me. He was a 7th round pick, yet did stay in the league for 4 years, which was probably better than many drafted in that round.

Pro sports has, at least in North America, had a lot of Steve Smiths show up. He's the 5th I can think of in football, basketball or hockey. If only the Red Green guy got a card, then I'd really have a chase. 2014 Prestige's use of the team logo and colours makes it one of my favourite "wiped backgrounds" designs.

Carson Palmer spent 5 seasons with the Cardinals. Yet I find it impossible to think of him playing for any other team but the Bengals. 

If a photo on a card gets me looking to see if there's video of the actual play depicted on it, that's enough for me to give a thumbs up to this particular repack.

There you have it!

2025 Adventures in Repacks - Part 19.2 - A Week's Worth

 

Basketball today - and it starts with what might be my first Butler Bulldogs card.

And it is followed up with what is certainly my first card featuring the 6th Man trophy. And that won't be the only appearance of a trophy in this repack.

Nothing too interesting here in this grouping, other than a derpy face on Laimbeer. But one of these cards does have an interesting card back.

It shows off a map
of Williams' journey to the NBA. Sadly, for players with journeys that started outside this continent, their homelands aren't mapped out, just a plane that seems to come from the side of the card. And I do wonder where the hell they think Italy was in comparison to North America. 

The hit! Not just a promised jersey or promised auto, but both! It's also numbered /583, which is definitely odd, but odd enough to make a card a little more interesting that your usual rookie auto/relic.

WNBA content! I love that randomness. Also, I told you'd be seeing more trophy content in this post. There's a historic one!

And the more familiar trophy to modern audiences is on the back. Skybox really did a wonderful job of filling out a large set of comparatively smaller rosters with interesting content.

And your finale. With some of the earlier base cards, it isn't the most interesting way to wrap things up.

The trophy cards, the WNBA card and Williams' journey were more interesting to me than the hit. This isn't the first time that happened with these in any sport, though.

There you have it!

2025 Adventures in Repacks - Part 19.1 - A Week's Worth

 4 "20 cards + A Hit" repacks - 4 sports - 2 from the 7/11, and 2 from my unopened collection.

Since I've been doing exclusively baseball and football versions for the past many months, I'll lead with some hockey from the 7/11, follow that with the basketball from the same location, before returning to the football/baseball pattern.

Here's the hockey I'm starting with. That's a blue parallel as the opening card. 

It may seem odd, but I was pleased to see some 1990 Bowman show up in a hockey repack. It's old school comfort food of sort.

Helmetless photo! Problematic goaltenders. And a horizontal photo which seems odd without the design rotated to match. I also wonder which of his teammates it was matching the wipe-out behind him in the photo. 

And here's the hit! Although I was happy to see it come out of the extremely fun ITG Enforcers set, I had absolutely no memory of the player. He only appeared in 31 NHL games with 39 PIM over that time, but got more than 1000 worth in between regular season and playoff games in the AHL. 3 Calder Cups too! This is supposedly a Flyers jersey, but given his AHL success, I'd almost rather have a Phantoms one. 

The most interesting card in this bunch is the junk wax entry. That's Pat Lafontaine sporting the helmet attachment that he wore so he could play after having his jaw broken. It can be seen on a few of his 1992 entries across various sets. Tanguay in his All-Star getup comes closest.

And there you have it!

Kickoff!

There may have been games already, but the season never really truly starts until your favourite team plays their first game. Hamilton is in Calgary tonight, so that's a perfect sign to show off the CFL content in my to-be-posted box.

This would entirely be a Tiger-Cats post, but there is this odd man out. Because there's always room in a post for a Long Snapper card.

I know I don't have a lot of nice things to say about the 2021 flagship hockey design, but the use of color upgrades things somewhat for the CFL usage.

There was a game-dated card of Vernon Adams Jr in a recap of cards posted yesterday by Cards on Cards. But I had also taken advantage of that UD program to add some Hamilton cards into my collection. Bo Levi Mitchell ended up the East's nominee for Most Outstanding Player last year, but didn't get a card in the flagship release. The same was true for the other players in the set. Tagovailoa was a rookie, and Liegghio is a kicker, so that does kinda make sense for a 100 card base set.

Inserts weren't exactly prevalent in the product, with most of the hits just being parallels of the base version. Greatness was an insert set for one season, before getting added into the main set for 2024. Which meant fewer players with base cards. But 2023 still had them as prevalent inserts in the release, and therefore not that costly on COMC via e-pack. The best thing about the CFL sets is that the relics are game-used, instead of them maybe touching the player's body for a split second during a photo shoot.

And there you have it!

Mailbag: Cards on Cards

 As postal uncertainty puts the incoming mail on hold, I can go into my To Be Posted pile and show off these goodies from Kerry @ Cards on Cards.

It was an almost entirely Raptors envelope, but a new Jamal Murray was the exception. This here is an Asia Trophy version, although I'm not sure what that pattern has to do with Asia.

But I can use this Fred VanVleet appearance to segue in the Raptors part of the mailer.

Special Winter themed sets - It's not just Hoops that does that. Unfortunately, after watching a few breaks of this, they lack the wonderfully cheesy sweater relic cards that had a chance of showing up in the Hoops one.

Speaking of Hoops, here's one of their cards - a Teal Explosion parallel..

Or if you want your brightness level a little more subdued, a couple silver parallels out of inserts. 

More Raptors content. 2 of the 9 still with the team. Given the turnover the past couple years, that's pretty impressive. 

Back to Asia with another entry, but this one's golden. And numbered /25. Banton was the first Canadian player to be drafted by the Raptors, so despite his short-term stop with the team, he'll always be a part of team history.

Thanks for all these, and I'll be sure to return fire as soon as the postal issues are sorted out.

2025 Adventures in Repacks - Part 18 - Dollarama Double Play

The  repacks today are a pair of baseball repacks, starting with this one.

Top loaders are always welcome for future mailers. Whenever I can send mail again.

I had no idea that Lance Parrish was a 300 HR guy. If I still did baseball grids, that would probably be something to remember. Eddie Taubensee's card will probably end up in one of my mask binders. It's always fun to add baseball content in those.

Amazingly, that Buehrle won't be the sketchiest Photoshop special in this post. 

But I will be surprised if that Wilhelm doesn't end up as the best card in the post. I also thought Brady Anderson had fizzled out of the league before the 2000s. That's the second thing I learned through this repack.

All cardboard content in #2.

Royal Rookies? 2006 Sweet Spot? That's got to be the first time for either one showing up in one of these repacks. 

See, I told you that a sketchier Photoshop card would show up later in the post. Poor Denton Keys would only get one other image put on a card during his career - a minor league entry a couple years later. I must also point out that Daulton Varsho was born 9 months and one day after Gary played his last major league game.

I know that the photography in Bowman releases have been bland and pretty generic for a long time, but that Gallardo is a beauty. It even inspired me to add a colour-match parallel into my COMC inventory. It is still second to the Wilhelm for my favourite card in the repacks, though.

At least picking the 300 HR guy is easy here.

There you have it!

Many Mets

 Time to wrap up the TMV mailer with the Mets content in the bubbler, as well as a handful in my COMC to be posted box.

Since it was only 4 cards worth, I'm leading with the COMC stuff. With a name like Broadway, he was just destined to play for a New York team. He ended up with a 6.75 ERA over 11 games, but still. What a New York name.

Sure, there are other Jesse Winker cards available starting with some late 2024 releases, but this, and none will be as joyful as this.

Ali Sanchez was long gone from the Mets by the time this 2021 Stadium Club entry dropped. But in an odd coincidence, Andres Gimenez, his partner in this photo is now a teammate of his in Toronto. 

I'd been trying to add some autos of the recent Mets rookie arrivals with the team, Baty, Acuna, Alvarez and Vientos. After selling a few cards over on COMC, I decided to turn it into knocking one off the list. The card here is the one I selected to drop off the list. The penmanship isn't the best, but at least the blue ink goes nicely with the uniform.

Why was the envelope so bulky? There was this included as well. Even if this shirt is as logoless as a Panini card, it still counts to me as Mets attire. Especially with tariffs being a thing now, I would expect to pay more than I want to for anything I'd buy to cross the border.

I'd have taken a picture, but I'm really bad at having a camera in the same spot as the mail.

Back to cardboard, and the non-hit portion of the Mets package. Sportflics!

Generally with the hits, I post the relics and then the autos. I'm reversing that here, and there is method to my madness. Urena never reached the majors, and although Puello did, he did so for other teams and didn't even get a single card with those teams. So his only cards are with a team he never really played for.

Prospect swatch!

Current player swatches! That Nimmo might be the tiniest sliver of a pinstripe I've ever seen. 

And a couple Hall of Famer swatches.

Those two Piazza swatches are a perfect lead-in to the third white whale in the past two posts. With this Piazza, I've now got both players wearing a Mets hat in the Hall of Fame. Even since I added the Seaver several years back I figured it needed company. But, I always balked at picking one up, even after the nice little windfall mentioned with the Vientos. Given the timing, it was a good thing I didn't, since this one was on the way.

Thanks so much for this wonderful addition to my collection, not just the Piazza but everything else that was sent. I'm sure the whole Post Office thing will be worked out sometime this summer and I'll be able to return fire.

There you have it!