Chronicling

 

Just one pack (out of several) of Chronicles I've had for too long without showing off the contents of.

Here's the opener. I don't mind repeating images that much, but at use different ones on the same side of the card.

Here's the opening run of base cards. That's Moussa Diabate on the Pinnacle card. I'm not sure why they used a design in the base set that was basically the same design as the regular base design in the same release. As always, the Luminance really looks nice with the dark arena spotlighting the player. 

The foil cards. The Banchero is a nice card, I just wish it scanned better.

And the Teal Parallels. That's Christian Braun that was on this particular unreadable card.

Finally, the two Classics entries, which were exclusives.

And since the back included a Did-You-Know factoid, I'll include the backs too. I recall during the Raptors championship run hearing about francophone players speaking French on the court, so Mathurin's language skills might be helpful for his team. 

A fairly average Chronicles pack, with the release's usual rookie-focused checklist.

There you have it!

2/14 Hockey

My 2/14 to-be-posted box has grown greatly thanks to a couple COMC shipments, and a sportlots shipment arriving. It is time to start emptying it and to start it, here's the hockey content.

I'm starting off with the non-NHL portion, and the only AHL entry. We're back to 2003 for this Norm Milley, but I'm more amused with the reminder that Anaheim once had their top affiliate located in nearby Cincinnati.

Josh Pillar might be the only person in the collection where I think "At least there's no auto attached" when I acquire one of his cards. Still, I have three "autos" of his in the collection.

I should have doubled up on my Louis-Francois Belanger content when I did my recent "new faces" post, but I have an excuse. It wasn't because it is a shared card - I just was careless and forgot about this one.

This printing plate ends the CHL stuff. This Cyan appearance of Cameron from 21-22 marked his return to the product for the first time since his rookie season, and joins an Exclusives as my second numbered card of his. I remedied my lack of stuff outside of that rookie year by adding a second 21-22 plate to my COMC inventory.

The NHL portion starts with a card I thought I'd already added to the collection. I probably had one, then sent it off to Dennis @ TMV thinking it was a collection dupe.

Your standard shiny insert. You'll see this set again when I do my Kitchener Rangers update.

I really need to go on a Lane Hutson spree at some point. It is odd for my collection that I only have 6 cards of his so far.

As is usual for a hockey 2/14 post, here's a pile of Nikolaj Ehlers entries. But, in a rarity for one of these posts that include a lot of his cards, only the two vertical ones on the bottom are "cheap because of e-pack at COMC" entries. The horizontal one is an insert from Tim Hortons, and the top 6 are from sportlots. 

But as of now at TCDB, he still doesn't have any Carolina Hurricanes cards. Will I have to wait until Extended?

There you have it!

2026 Adventures in Repacks - Part 9 - My Best Repack Loose Card Pull

 While I may have pulled more interesting cards from a repack, and I've found great cards contained within packs that were in repacks (Mike Bossy autograph, Auston Matthews Young Gun), and sometimes they'd promise a hit that was really nice (Sid Abel, Howie Meeker). 

But all this promised was 20 cards.

And this repack set me back a whopping $6 at Walmart. They also had a few "Booster Packs" of Optic, and some that held Absolute packs, but I opted for this since it really would better give the repack experience.

Already a solid start with this as the opener. Two seasons in, he's already one of the reasons 2024 already looks to have a great rookie QB class.

Now this was more along the lines of what I expected from this.

The start of a run of unlicensed cards begins here. Only the Lenzy is base version in this. Robinson is a magenta, Hamilton is a pink and Spiller is a red.

Whoa. 

I was not expecting this from a $6 repack, even if this was unlicensed. I watched a few openings of this, and didn't even see an autograph or numbered card come out of these, let alone an autograph of one of the greatest of all time. Even in terms of a photo for usage, this isn't too bad of a choice to hide the lack of licensing.

And even if it had been a Chiefs or Fighting Irish auto, it still would have been a massive shocker to see. 

It was this point where I regretted not going back and buying every one left on the shelves. Maybe this repack case was meant to be sent to Beckett for reviews.

I actually checked the back of this for the certification, half expecting this to be like one of those Through the Years reprints that Topps used several years back.

But everything in this, and probably the next 6 months or so worth of repacks is gravy after this. 

Back-to-back autos? Sure! I had no idea who Braden Galloway was prior to getting this card. He didn't go to the NFL, and looks to be an influencer now. Which is probably better for the ol' grey matter.

A Sport Kings entry wraps up the unlicensed portion of the repacks. When one of the preceding cards is so magnificent that a mini of a Hall of Famer is super bland, that's you're busting a fun repack.

Not even the licensed stuff resuming with a creep can depress me at this point. Also, Bills content!

And more Bills content! They're both dupes, but I'll shout out Bills appearances any chance I get. Also, Nico Collins content for a future TMV mailer.

Normallly, I'd consider a repack starting and ending with a card from the same release to be the most interesting thing about it.

But...

There you have it!

Settle Down, Beavis

 

Huh. Huh. 69.

Huh. Huh. Number 2. 

May I never, ever mature.

2026 Adventures in Repacks - Part 8 - Premium Repack Battle

If you have two of the same repacks with the same # of cards, why not compare the two?

These were the two at the front of the pegs at Dollarama, so these will be the ones.

To look at the opening cards, neither one is spectacular. Even if the team is from Jersey, having that written across the front of the actual jersey looks ridiculous. It makes it look the player is so dumb they need to have their stuff labeled for them. But it is against a border heavy insert set that makes the Portraits set look interesting. Boring all around, but I'll give it to the Bratt for not being Honor Roll.

I do love the photo variety from the Canvas insert sets, but it is up against a Senators entry. That will even this one up. And the photo is pretty generic on Josi's anyhow.

Shininess! Brayden Point's card comes from one of the Tim Hortons releases, while On Tour was a set that saluted the specified team's road games throughout the season in question. The bilingualism of the Timmies card is the deciding factor to defeat an interesting concept for a card - dedicated to those whose favourite team isn't the hometown entry.

Neither one really hits a sweet spot of my collection. I guess I'll pick the Keller, since that's less readily available through COMC and e-pack.

The battle is already over, but the rout ends with my picking the Bowen Byram here. It was mainly because the Suzuki was a dupe (there's still 3 I need for the base set of this), but I also find the back write-up interesting.

That's since I rarely see non NHL facts back there. As for Preziuso, after finishing in the CHL, he'd play University hockey with Alberta, and spent last season in Britain.

There you have it!

Great Googly Moogly

 

Nice manupatch card. But who are the Sfeihc?

Raptors Mega-Post

Coming off a historic performance that featured a 31-0 run on Sunday, it is the perfect time to show off a bunch of Raptors content, whether it was packed into a pair of PWEs from Kerry @  Cards on Cards, or part of my latest COMC incoming shipment.

John Wallace was the only card that I couldn't group with anything else from the PWEs, so it was the opener.

While it is probably true for anybody on the championship team, Fred VanVleet is among the upper tier of 18-19 Raptors that will be forever loved in Toronto.

Time to start into the portion of posts where the scans include current members of the team. I was surprised to still see Gary Trent Jr included in last year's team set, since he signed away just a couple weeks after the draft and Mogbo's joining the team.

Mosaic's entries were probably the least comment-worthy in the bunch. At least the design sort of goes with the uniform design/colors.

Panini's portion of the envelope closes with some cards from Haunted Hoops. Immanuel Quickley's entry provides one of the better views of last season's City Edition jerseys you'll find, and considering its salute to Vince Carter, it was the best of the Raptors' version of those.

Of course there were parallels! Why wouldn't there be! But we do get to see the purple jerseys as well. 

With these, and following my pack/blaster break of 25/26 Topps basketball, I've completed this year's team set. With the blurred background, Scottie's photo almost has a 3-D quality for his base card. It may not have the quality of  OG Anunoby's entry this year, but it is really good. 

With these Holiday editions, the 2025 rookie portion of my collection continues to expand. 

Finally, a few inserts. Like with Archives/Heritage, the 1980 throwbacks allow me to realize how the cards for the team would have looked had the team existed at the time. Red jerseys, as well as the purple ones are really garish on the Power Players backdrop. While Topps might have had few photo options for CMB, surely they could have found something a little more understated for Scottie.

So, thanks for all these Raptors additions to my collection, Kerry. I'm reloading for another envelope heading your way.

I'll throw in some COMC shipment Raptors as well. There's an encore performance of that Ingram jersey hold photo.

As well as another nice photo of that City Edition jersey.

Here's two new faces in the collection. Jamison Battle making a licensed appearance easily wins this grouping, although Mitchell did make a licensed appearance in the photo on this year's Topps checklist card, alongside a couple sticker-dump autos.

Speaking of an auto, here's one! Alijah Martin was a second round pick in the most recent draft, and has been used sparingly by the big club, but has done really well in his time with the Raptors 905 in the G-League. And that's precisely what you like to see out of a second rounder. 

There you have it!