2/14 on the Gridiron

 Today, a whole bunch of football additions to the 2/14 collection as I wrap up that portion of my COMC mailer, with just the miscellaneous stuff to go. With these, I went over the 4700 plateau.

This is the most normal card of  the one-and-done portion of the mailer is this Steve McNair card. With the white background and all the silver, it looks like a card from a higher end set. 

UD Superstars was an all-sport. Picture Goodwin Champions, just with licensing. 

Hologram content! Pure 90s!

And nothing more 2000s than another endless parallel. This here is a Purple Scope parallel. Mosaic provided the only opportunity for a card of Jadeveon Clowney as a member of the Panthers. 

The final one among the single entries is this autograph of Anthony Hill Jr. He went to the Titans in the second round of the draft, and has already received Photoshop Specials in the early Topps/Bowman releases. If his name were Any Hi, I'd also consider adding him to my penmanship collection. But it isn't so I won't.

Since that Press Proof parallel ended up being a dupe with the first version showing up unexpectedly in a trade envelope. That appearance of the AAF is new to the collection, but in terms of a new Hackenberg and my only appearance of the not even one season league.

Jeff Graham gets a scanner bed full of cards to take the win in terms of numbers. The celebratory Bowman's Best card is nice, but I'll give the nod here to the Action Packed entry. Practice and stretches might not count as Action Packed, but it is definitely the most unique photo here, using the horizontal form nicely. I also hope he caught the past he's settling under on the Impressions card.

Getting in just under the wire for this post (as in these were part of the sportlots envelope literally showed up earlier today) are two new Patrick Ramseys. Ramsey is the #5 QB among 2/14 babies. Considering he was a starter at more than one point in Washington, it shows how loaded the position is.

If Ramsey is 5th, Wright is 6th. 

Justin Miller brings the most solid hit parade of this post, with a relic and two numbered cards. While I would usually go for a two-color Pro Bowl relic as my choice for the best card in here, how can I hate a colour-match parallel?

I'll end in the most immature way possible, with 4 new Harry Colons for my collection. I am still the top collector of Harry Colons at TCDB with these 4 parallels giving me a 4 card cushion. Clockwise from the top left, there's a Members Only, a Special Effects, another Members Only, and a Panthers Inaugural season. That's a lot of Harry! I'm 4 cards away from complete Harry Colon's cardboard run.

That's enough silliness for this post. 

And there you have it!

2026 Adventures in Repacks - Part 22 - The finale of these?

 These were the final one of these I'd seen at Walmart. Will I go out with some interesting pulls?

Bills content? Yup, that at least counts as interesting. To me. I also appreciate them getting a little more of the Rookie Premiere than just getting the rookies to cycle through jerseys to end up as relic cards.

While he's a perfectly fine player, I'm not sure if I'd want to wear the name 'BURDEN' on the back of a jersey. At least he has the option to add III to accompany it. Garrett Wilson is on a purple parallel, the only parallel among the three packs.

 

The final card of these packs? 2/14 baby Jaxon Smith-Njigba! YES! And a insert for a future Ann Arbor-bound mailer. PC content and trade bait! WOO-HOO!

There you have it!

Spooky Season

 Some cards for the season.

There might be some out there that don't even need a mask to create creepy cardboard.

For most, a mask is required. So, there are always hockey masks able to provide the necessary scariness when required, and UD Canvas usually includes a few of these in the insert set every year.

But the law of diminishing returns means the second skull mask in the post makes everything less scary. So, I'll stop the scary with this one.

And so, since superheroes are a popular choice for costume, I'll end this with an appearance of Nikki A.S.H. (Almost a superhero) for this post. This comes from the pandemic times in the company, and back when I still watched this company.

There you have it!

Get Off My Lawn

 I'm old. One of the two newest gridiron members of the 2/14 collection reminded me of that.

Owen McCown. Does that last name seem familiar?

Josh McCown's kid. There's the back of the card to remind me that I'm old.

Uncle Luke McCown is a member of Mischief's 7/12 slider box.

On the positive, his playing for the University of Texas - San Antonio does allow me to knock that city off my list of cities that have teams, but no representation in the 2/14 collection. It might not be a pro team, but I really don't care when it comes to that list. Vegas is still the main city on the unofficial list for now, and it might be the only one left.

Looking at this one-team city list,  it does complete that, even with Orlando (the Sam Vincent Jordan #12 game card as an event) and Portland (Jeremy Ebobisse of the Timbers on a card with the wrong date on it) being technicalities. 

Will a plain early 90s card make me feel any better? Given that Brad Whigham is older than I am, yes.

Yes it does.

And I'm 32 years too late to have broken the law in acquiring this card.

There you have it!

The Joy of Lots

Sportlots, to be precise. And the joy of deciding to go silly an add a bunch of 20 cent cars of a specific player to add a bunch of their cards to their respective collections. Or a sticker, in the case of the opening Milan Hejduk.

While one sticker might not qualify as going silly, 9 more cards certainly does. Most of the cards here, specifically the bottom two rows, all count as ones that I was surprised that I didn't already have in my 2/14 binder.

Jeff Skinner was another one getting a major bump with 6 new cards, with the Certified and the Card Day ones being the ones I was surprised not to already have. There's some variety as well with the middle column, as the Ice card is from one of the years where the cards were acetate, and the lower one is a sticker insert, and a photo far more interesting than the one used for the base card.

Going by my TCDB account, I have 381 of Daniel Alfredsson's 406 base cards from major releases. These are 5 new ones, and I'd like to get to 20 away from the total by the end of next year. My most  wanted base card of his? Probably the Frozen in Time one.

And if you find yourself just a couple cards short of a shipping threshold, throw in a couple parallels for S&G. Such as yet another 2/14 addition and a completely random Sens card.

There you have it!

Doggy Cards!

 

Just a bunch of doggy cards today. 

And yes, the dog doesn't have to be real to count for the mini collection. Anything dog or dog-related that features a very good boy/girl counts. And even if that Snubbull does look to be a bit of trouble-maker.

I have an Airedale named Mischief. Of course I enjoy being around a trouble-maker of a dog.

Tip-Off Raptors

 Sure, there have been games already. But the season never really starts until your favourite team has played. For the Raptors, that's tonight. And here's their content both to complete the latest Cards on Cards mailer, and from my latest COMC shipment.

This might not be my most valuable card in my team collection. But it is definitely among the greatest. As best as I can tell (an ebay listing), this is from a 2022-23 card game set released in Europe. I shouldn't be too hard on whichever company released this. Siakam and Markkanen are practically identical twins. 

At least Vince Carter gets a nice photo on his, even if the logo doesn't match the era of the pic.

Let's switch to things far more licensed. While there's some players from the championship years here, and I love me some new VanVleet Lowry newness, that Ford Turkey Red gets the nod in this group.

That Brandon Ingram is an awesome opener, as they have chosen from a photo from the post game celebrations. The N in RAPTORS WIN is the big clue, combined with the flag are the major clues. While I do prefer the team logo as the background if they're going to wipe it from the photo, a basketball, or something basketball adjacent, also works.

Opening with Jamal Shead, he got extended this off-season. And deservedly so. Signature Class wins the best design in this group, mainly because they have two images on the front didn't reuse an image in the process. Have my standards fallen that much? The Barnes rookie on the bottom, out of my beloved Chronicles, is a green parallel. Nice!

Stickers! 

And the only hit of this post was provided by the final cards in the trade mailer. The photo choice nicely hides the lack of licensing. Martin was a pleasant surprise last season as a 2nd rounder with both the main club and the 905. I've already got one of his autos, so it is nice to have one of each.

I'd normally wrap this with a "Thanks for the trade" type remark, and while do appreciate the cards, there's still some more to show off from other orders. 

One final sticker, this one from my COMC order. While I do have one Patrick McCaw as a Raptor in my collection, that one was part of the 2019 Champions Box Set. That one is staying in there, so a sticker will be his representation in the team binder. As of last season, he was affiliated with the team, suiting up in the G-League for the 905.

This was a sportlots addition. One of those situations where I was one card away from the maximum number for shipping on a bunch of cards. Why not make the final one a Raptors card? 

CMB appears on a pair of inserts. The Instinct one gives the vibe of something I would have thought was so cool in my youth, especially the claws on a Raptors card. Whether it is as appropriate for a team without a creature motif is left up to you. The Limited Stock Legends gives the vibe of the In Action insert set out of 2024 Bowman. Unlike those, the hook portion of the design isn't die-cut like it was there. 

Finally, a nice look at the Vince Carter-inspired City Edition jersey. 

 

There you have it! Bring on the game!

I'll Allow It

 

While I'm not really a fan of signers abbreviating their name, at least Lorenzo Taliaferro gets away with it because trying to fit that onto a card would be problematic and the portion of it he has signed is large and legible. I enjoy pretty much any autograph that isn't unreadable hieroglyphics. 

There you have it!

2026 Adventures in Repacks - Part 21 - More Comfort Food

 Another three repacks from the Dollarama.

What's in these three?

I opted for this 4-pack because of the visible photo. I'm not used to seeing inserts in these, but that's a nice little bonus that will be part of my next TMV mailer.

Unopened wax in the Value Bundle.

2 appearances of the bland 21-22 design in this isn't good, but a Senators card can offset it. Somehow, it was one I didn't already have in that team collection.

Some more TMV mailbag additions in the team pack.

It is comforting to realize that the photography was bland in pretty much every 21-22 hockey release. 

And no silvering of a parallel will change that.

The 90s pack produced Hall of Famers at a 60 percent success rate!

Except for a Sens card and some trade add-ins, nothing too noteworthy here.

And the finale. Both the font choice and the foil-ness makes this hard to read, but this card is of Arshdeep Bains. With a chirp-worthy name, I sorta of expected him to have well into triple-figure penalty minutes with him silencing dumbasses throughout juniors. Nope. I don't know if I should be disappointed or relieved.

Pavel is merely stepping on the ice. Not jumping. Semantics aside, it being an alternate jersey is enough to make it noteworthy to me. 

I guess I can't escape Parkhurst in another repack. This is a bronze parallel.

Portraits. Yawn.

Everything ends with a Canvas insert. Sure, they're super cheap thanks to e-pack availability, but that is definitely a photo you don't see represented much on hockey cards - with Fowler looking like he's never held a hockey stick before and he's been forced to use one that is 10 feet long. 

The Fowler, the Mintyukov, the Verhaeghe and the Lamb were probably my favourites in all of this, alongside the future outgoing mail. 

And there you have it!