2026 Adventures in Repacks - Part 19.1 - Repacks in the Mail

 I'll be doing two larger repacks-in-progress posts simultaneously, as this one starts my working through the repacks from the Too Many Verlanders mailer. There were 4 baseball and 4 football ones in there, all of the lower end variety. But it was still a lot of fun to bust them.  Since I'm working through a football one in the other series, I'll start with the baseball version.

This was the contents of the baseball repacks.

The packs were the same in each of the 4.

Repack #1:

First card out of the packs was a Jays card, but a really sketchy photoshop job. 

I won't show off all the card contents of the pack, but will hit some of my personal highlights. Such as another Jays card, a look at the reverse of the Colorado City Connect jersey, or the Phillies retro blues.

As for stuff from flagship, there's another alternate uniform, a happy pitcher, and the sibling of someone who has yet to get a Toronto Blue Jays card. Maybe his move to a closer role will help that. As for Brewer Hicklen, I just scanned that since the name seems on par with Bobson Dugnutt and Sleve McDichael.

But the 9 random cards are perfect for a scanner bed, no matter how bland everything about them ends up being this time.

And the purple card. Nothing too special, but this was the only one of the 4 purples that was a 2023 issue vs the 2024s in the other repacks.

Repack #2:

The Big League stuff is more interesting this time. Mets content. A horrible photoshop job,. A couple SPs, including a really nice colour match for Bobby Witt. A nice photo of a former Jay. An Ohtani. At least looking for notable cards here is a lot less forced.

Picking interesting cards among the flagship was a lot harder. So, here's a Mets card and a bunch of rookies.

A couple nice photos (Ozuna, Toglia) and a City Connect jersey rank these over the loose cards from the first repack.

To nicely complete the Ryan McMahon City Connect jersey from the first batch of Big League, the purple provides a look at the jersey front. Despite it not being the regular Rockies jersey, I still consider this a colour match parallel. Why? My collection means my rules. Simple.

Two more of these to come in a later post. 

There you have it!

Great Logo Alert!

 

That is one seriously demented looking penguin.

Sadly, the logo on their wikipedia page has a far more noble looking bird.

Blah.

Give me something that looks two degrees of separation away from the Looney Tunes weasel over 'noble'.

The Perils of Binge-Watching

 

Is the inability to resist the urge to pick up a film cel card of one of the show's regulars while browsing around COMC.

I wasn't binging Wandavision.  It was Crossing Jordan.

2026 Adventures in Repacks - Part 18.5 - Cubism

 Keep on going!

Usually the single card that ends up opening these posts, as opposed to going to a scanner tray worth, is just the one at the front of the cube at the time, and there's nothing too special about it. This time, I get an interesting one in that position. Not only a Bills card (probably a dupe) but one that features a defensive player with the ball.

Bearsh. Ditka. Bearsh. Ditka.  And another Curtis Martin appearance, plus Bills content. Plus, Quincy Enunwa is a member of my penmanship binder.

While I do like the angle on that  Chris Miller picture, and the team colours really make the Bradshaw, there is nothing I could type that could surpass this portion of Mark Malone's wiki entry.

A 46.7 QB rating in 1987 probably would have driven me mad as well. At least it is better than Peterman's Buffalo rating.

If you thought I was exaggerating when I said that there was going to be a lot of Curtis Martin content in this repack, here's two more of his cards. Also, that McDaniel is a pretty nice get from a repack. A rookie card from an update set of a HOFer. Yes!

That's probably the final Randy Moss appearance of the repack, and it does seem perfect that it wasn't a Vikings card to end his run. Ka'Deem Carey's NFL career was short, but he went on to a solid career in the CFL, and he's still up here, now on the coaching staff of the Toronto Argonauts. The 1983 Chargers leaders/Chuck Mucnie 

There you have it!

And the Rest (Almost)

Time to put the loose card portion of the TMV mailer away.

I usually work my way to the most frequent member of the particular portion of the mailer, but this time, I'll lead with it, and the Vladdy Sr content.

It is just a coincidence that the non-hit content ended up with the single Angels entry separate from the Expos one when I scanned everything. 

But they do re-unite, with these two relics. In something I find interesting, the picture on the Expos one shows a white jersey in the picture, but has a grey swatch, with the vice-versa being true for the other one.

Mike Piazza did make an impressive challenge for the lead with these 7 entries. 

I guess since I'm going in reverse order, these two Daniel Alfredssons are next. The Bee Hive card is the one in this post that I was certain would be a dupe, but I had just confused this year's Matted Materials relics with the previous year's.

And the only other Senator card in this is a at least a gold parallel. And red is the least possible relic colour for a relic. 

One final relic ends it, and it is my first Kitchener Rangers alumni hit since their Memorial Cup victory. 

I'd say "And there you have it", but there were a bunch of repacks included as well. So, I'll be recapping those as well over the next month or so. 4 baseball, 4 football. This bubbler recap isn't quite done, so I'll thank Dennis for all the stuff so far, and promise more to come!

Everything Else 2/14 Basketball

 The COMC shipment wasn't just Ian Jackson additions. I did have a few more on their way in.

I guess I could have added these to the end of the previous post, but then such a wonderful trophy would be hidden away at the back of a post. I couldn't do that. It is certainly the only appearance of any sort of trophy in the basketball portion of the collection. As for the rest, I do have a manu-patch of Bernie Geoffrion among the hockey cards in there.

If a card /99 isn't low-numbered enough for you, here's on /10. This particular parallel is quite the mouthful. It is an Autographs Holo-Lux Purple Kaleidoscope version. Whew.

Unlike with the Ian Jackson Platinum cards posted yesterday, there's no possibility of a nine-pocket rainbow out of this Hoops card. There are only 7 cards in it, one of which is a 1/1. But 6 is a possibility, with none of the others being numbered. At least it would be of an interesting photo. And it makes it a lot harder to determine that it is a Charlotte Bobcats jersey in the photo as opposed to a Clippers one.

There you have it!

Hey Yo Captain Jack!

 My latest COMC shipment arrived last week, and it was packed with 2/14 content. Approximately 100 new cards worth of it. Thanks to being prevalent on e-packs, NCAA basketballer Ian Jackson lead the way with all these entries. 

They weren't all of the e-pack variety. I did add my second auto of his out of Prizm. Even if his signature isn't really worthy of the Penmanship insert set, it still counts.

A couple parallels as well, with these being a green and a red ice one.

But yeah, much of these are UD stuff. Given how UD can tend to recycle photos in these type of releases, I'm happy that only one of them is repeated in this bunch. There are a couple numbered cards in this group, with the Black Diamond one in the top corner being /349, with the same numbering scheme on the Allure entry in the other top corner.

While these do contain the same photo as the one in the lower corner, and even the same basic design, but these are all the Platinum version of the card. Clockwise from the top left, there's a Rainbow Terrazzo /249, Orange Prizm /349, Red, Rainbow, Base and Cosmic /199. I do have another 3 sitting in my COMC inventory, so that will equal a one page rainbow.

But it does indicate how sparse the basketball portion of the collection is, as this is enough to put someone who hasn't played beyond the NCAA at 4th overall in the collection with 25 cards. He's one behind Tyus Edney for 3rd. 

But he is still significantly behind Gheorge Muresan and Rip Hamilton for the Top 2.

There you have it!

2026 Adventures in Repacks - Part 18.4 - Cubism

I'm going to have to pick things up if I'm going to finish this before the start of the 2026 season. 

That might be the worst possible contrast between the opening and closing card possible. 

They even changed present to past tense on the write-up on the back of the card. Seems like a way darker option than just leaving things as they were.

This feels so typical of this repack's contents so far. A 1988 Topps. Randy Moss. A WLAF helmet. And not just one, but two Curtis Martin appearances. And yes, John is the father of the two more recent NFL Bosas. 

Punter card! Kicker card! And on the same card! Josh Oliver is still active in the league as of last season, so that's always a plus when it comes to coming across a hit in these. And some of the letters in the autograph are legible. Another plus!  That's Antowain Smith on the hard-to-read Bills card, and Jay Novacek on the name-on-the-back only Platinum card.

Infield dirt and a drawn card in the last batch is enough for me to make it noteworthy. And for those wondering what type of facts you're asking about in regards to your Errict Rhett awareness:

Here you are!

And tehre you have it!

Bills and Raptors

 I could have done 2 posts, but the size of the Bills stack seemed a lot larger because of all the relics contained within. So, let's combine these two!

This was actually lurking on my sparsely-populated, rarely-updated TCDB want list for a bit. While I would have preferred to see his celebration after his pass/reception TD against the 49ers in 2024. Although that game does still appear in this insert set with James Cook.

Not too much before I get to the hits, but there is shininess. I love seeing Don Beebe joining the usuals in showing up in products that allow for having members of the early 90s team. 

Nathan Peterman is probably in the top two for the most inept Bills QB of the post Jim Kelly era. But at least they didn't waste a first-round draft pick on him.

Speaking of that...

I almost miss the days when hope died not long after the opening kickoff. It is far less painful to be disappointed in September vs January.

The relic parade resumes with this quartet. The White card at the top isn't just a four colour swatch card, but it is actually listed as game-worn. I've got a second card of his from around that time, and it has noticeable game use on it. So, I'll trust it. 

And an on-ball auto. I'll always remember Mike Williams for this line in one of Deadspin's "Your Team Sucks" previews.

That's poetry!

Someone's got to take the role of segueing away from the Bills, and Vince Carter is always perfect for that.

Lots of shininess! OK, the one Optic of Norman Powell is just a base card, and the Kyle Lowry in the upper corner isn't a Raptors card in any form. But he's among my favourite players so I feel comfortable including it in this group. A few even feature guys still with the team, at least for the time being with Gradey Dick's status in limbo with the Kawhi investigation.

This is the type of card, with the photo seemingly embedded as part of the design, that Topps would call a manurelic at this point in releases.

And one final relic! Purple swatches always feel more special on older Raptors cards. Antonio Davis' derp face is a contender for least flattering facial expression in the team collection. 

One more team bag left!

There you have it!