Getting Down With O-Pee-Chee

 Time for some low-end hockey!

There wasn't any Topps S1 on the shelves at the Walmart when I stopped by, so I went for one of these.

Here's my first pack-pulled card of the 25-26 season. I like the design, except for the tiny font used for the player's name and tinier one used for the team. Still, the photo is incredibly clear, and even the white jersey doesn't look too bland with the grey borders. 

The backs. Recycling the front photo means reducing the stats to only 5 seasons worth.

You don't buy OPC for the photography, since they mostly use just the most basic skating photos. But here's a sample of them.

While I did get my first true Utah Mammoth card earlier in a repack, here are my first two pack-pulled ones.

Only one pack and hitting the big rookie this season in Schaefer shows up. Who needs to pack search? I'll assume that Suzuki and Robidas are super-nice people, but it is a given they're battling for runner-up.

And the retros. The decision to not do the coloured backgrounds based on numbering and instead using team colours is a really nice one, and I'm sure it will look really nice if this is the one used for the shiny cards in OPC Platinum. They did use generic blue for the rookies/4 Nations portion of the set, though. I also went 2/3 for mask binder close-up additions as well. The size of the team name makes up for how tiny it is on the regular base.

Normally, I'd end the post here. But I also got into a group break, picking up the Senators to chase a team set, and the Bruins to chase rookies of 2/14er John Farinacci. How'd those work out?

It was only a part case, so there were no guarantees at a complete set. I ended up an Ullmark short. They didn't make any appearances among the rookies, so they were a cheap date.

But I did get their solitary SP in the set, Brady Tkachuk in the 4 Nations Face-Off subset. The little dabs of white, blue, yellow and red at the side are a really nice touch, covering the main colours of the countries that were participating. 

Back in the day, you had to turn in a bunch of hobby wrappers at the LCS for some red-only packs. Now, you just have to find them in packs. Sweet colour-match parallel, here.

Retros! I'm not sure why the red in this design seems louder than with the Kleven parallel. 

But those black border parallels, /100, look absolutely spectacular to double up on the colour match for the team. It is so perfect, I could totally buy this as being the design used for a team-issue card.

As for the Bruins, how did that go for the Farinacci hunt?

A base card and its retro parallel. I'm guessing there's some sort of pre-season strangeness as to why he's wearing the 'A' on his jersey, since his only NHL game also saw the Bruins sporting black jerseys.

Yes, the black parallels also look great here.

There you have it!

2026 Adventures in Repacks - Part 6 - The New Dollarama Double?

With a new type of insert/parallels-only repack showing up on the Dollarama pegs, maybe my repack purchases will change. For the time, I at least added several of the newer types to my basket with my most recent trip to the store, and will probably do the combos for several AiR posts over the next month or so.

For now, here's the latest one.

We're starting shiny! The Breaking News, at least according to the card back, was Leo picking up a hat trick in his 9th career NHL game. 

Good for him!

A shiny rookie is up next. These, and many of the inserts that appear in the repacks, are fairly cheap on COMC because of e-packs, but I do appreciate the fun of the randomness of which ones show up in this. 

Another factory set MVP. 

Yes, a player that can duplicate themselves multiple times during a shirt would be an extremely effective defense mechanism. And since the best defense is a good offense, the write-up on the back described Spurgeon netting an overtime goal.

It ends like it starts, with a shiny, patterned card. Unlike Leo Carlsson, Emil has moved back across the Atlantic to play. But this one is numbered. That's my first numbered card out of these, although there will be more in future posts.

Not as interesting as the first one, but still a perfectly fine grouping.

As for the Value Pack I'm showing off, here's the contents. I've had these sitting in my Scans folder for a few months. Worth the wait?

Steve Dubinsky is a rookie card from the days before Young Guns were SPd parts of the UD set. That makes this slightly more interesting than the usual 90s portion of these repacks. The David Shaw was a Kitchener Rangers alum dupe. 

I opened this repack so long ago that these were already posted as part of a mailer I sent to Dennis @ Too Many Verlanders. 

All over the place for the 5-card pack. I like that random appearance of some guy named Exentus. Scheifele hits the sweet spot of my design preference with his. If they're going to completely wipe the background from the photo, it should be replaced with the team logo.

The Score package wasn't the most interesting I've ever busted. When my favourite thing is that Normand Rochefort randomly got a horizontal card, that's a dull pack.

Yeah, so there was probably a reason this stayed in my "Scans - To Be Posted" file.

I really didn't design this post as a repack battle, but even without that, the first repack was the easy winner.

There you have it!

Mets in the Mail

 Back to the mail bag today, and the Mets content in the most recent TMV mailer.

It might not be the most notable entry in the mailer, but this was probably the most interesting one. 

Even better - valuable coupons on the back. I almost want to try and present one of these at a BK just to see what reaction it gets. Since they'd probably confiscate the card, I won't.

Here's the unnumbered inserts/parallels. I was very surprised that the Wright '71 mini wasn't a dupe. Despite all the shininess here, I'm picking the plainer Turkey Red of Carter as my favourite in this grouping. 

There was only a single numbered card that doesn't bring anything else with it. The colour match with this blue parallel (if not the exact hue) is nicer than the numbering. 

Dig the almost perfect placement of the pinstripe in the window on that Dominic Smith! That's the easiest way to elevate a swatch!

Finally, the autos. The more I think about how catchers in full gear are perfect for Panini releases, I wonder if they could have gone for a "Behind the Plate" standalone release in the vein of ITG's "Between the Pipes".

Mind you, said set would only appeal to sickos like me. 

So, maybe not.

But there you have it!

First Pitch

 Canada's first game at the World Baseball Classic is today, so here's a couple of guys on the team.

Even if neither player was from anywhere near the location shown in the middle of the card. Ah, the great snow-capped mountains of Southern Ontario.

Vowel Salesman

 

Mind you, you only had about 6 months to shell out your hard-won $250 to buy a vowel from Rolf, but he is the only Wheel of Fortune host with a licensed football card available. 

Misc 2/14s from Various Sources

 As the title says, 2/14 stuff from sportlots, tcdb, PWEs and ones I've had sitting around in my collection for way too long without posting them.

This is definitely one of those "How did I not have this card already?" moment. A base flagship card, missing? I guess with all the teams Clippard was on, I missed one. 

Another mainstream base card I don't have. I actually seem to have way too many card of Dravecky on my wantlist, mostly glossy/O-Pee-Chee/Tiffany variants. But I did add an important one to my COMC inventory very recently.

Speaking of Tiffany entries - here's two of those.

The baseball portion ends with this entry from a PWE onslaught (OK, 2 envelopes) that has showed up this week from Kerry @ Cards on Cards. There might even be more to come that has been stuck in postal hell.

The hockey stuff was entirely in the "waited too long to post" category. To the point I couldn't tell whe I'd acquired the cards. But at least this Hejduk was new.

As were 2/3rds of these Gaboriks. The Crown Royale was the only dupe. It puts him only a couple cards behind Hejduk to lead the hockey portion of the collection, even if Marian has a one-card lead at TCDB thanks to a couple Leaf issues that aren't listed at the site for Hejduk.

It isn't the most exciting start to the football portion of this post with the practice photo, but the football coloured border is nice.

Jeff Graham looks absolutely terrified to have been the one with the football in this photo.

Still, it does have one of my favourite things that could happen in early Stadium Club releases - the self-referential rookie card on the back.

Finally, here's a nice little entry for David Garrard. I'm so used to Upper Deck neglecting colour in favour of white and foil for their recent releases that I'm happy to see some of the team colour as part of the design. Also, the photo background isn't completely wiped.

Also, appreciate the magnificence of that East Carolina Pirates logo! It's almost enough to make me add this card to the binder backwards!

Almost.

There you have it!

Bring a Friend!

 

It is photo day. Why do it alone?

Of Course it Counts

 

Why wouldn't I add a baseball mask to my mask collection, especially when I have a non-NHL binder as part of the collection?

2026 Adventures in Repacks - Part 5 - Something New

 

Something new in repack land. It looks to be a collection of inserts and parallels. I'll try any repack at least once. What are the 5 cards in here aside from the visible opener?

But first, here's a better view of the opener. It is certainly shiny, and better yet, it is a rookie that is still in the league as I type this up. That's a nice bonus. This is from 21-22, and it is the oldest

#2 is an insert from 24-25 flagship Series 2. Although the inserts are far less desired if you're a COMC user that can pick them up for little more than a quarter than they were before e-packs. Still, at least they did use the skyline appropriate for the city as opposed to a generic one.

Here's the big winner of the pack. It's a certain addition to the mask binder, with classic Kings colours sported by a Hall of Famer. This becomes the third release year to appear in this post, with 23-24 SP Authentic being the source.

And here's year #4, with 22-23 SP Authentic providing the source for this Limited/Red parallel of Brandt Clarke. Another rookie still in the league! Nice!

And finally a repeat year, as 22-23 goes back to back. This is the least-interesting entry in the pack, but it is still a parallel, coming from that year's factory set.

The Vachon was enough to make me willing to try at least another one of these.

I'm throwing in a value pack as a show-off bonus.

All 2021-22 flagship? That is a dull pack. At least DeBrusk is wearing an alternate jersey. 

The 5-card pack was far more interesting. Firstly, there's Richter's famous SoL mask. There's Kyle Turris doing stick/puck tricks.

And my first true Utah Mammoth card! That's a good thing about 25-26 flagship already showing up in repacks. Releases like MVP and Artifacts still had Utah Hockey Club logos on their cards. 

The Captains pack provided a card from an unexpected source - SP Signature Edition Legends, which was a set made up of retired players, and was really fun to look through for "Wow. This guy got a card in a 2020 set!" vibes. 

There you have it!