Can't have Too Many Trades w/ Too Many Manninghams - Pt. 1

I've been consistently finding Wolverines alumni in varied bins at shows, and with a recent acquiring of some small bubble envelopes, it has actually become cheaper to send a couple small envelopes as opposed to 1 big one. I'll never figure out postage.

I'm splitting this one into 2. Since most of the package in terms of volume was football, I'll lead with that, and hit the rest tomorrow.

His often asks what is in my COMC cart. This was one of the items lurking in there, which mostly contains 2/14 cards. This is now my second Tank Tyler card in my collection, and my first hit. I love the fact he signs his cards "Tank". He only lasted a couple years in the NFL, and is now in the Arena League. I don't care about his lack of success - if he's a 2/14 baby, he's welcome in my binder.

This is the other hit for the opening pages of my binder. My second hit of Garrard, and the first autograph. It might be a slight improvement on the current trend of "only sign the initials", but it's a unique one, and actually a really nice, large on-card signature.

And here are a couple more David Garrards, bringing my total cards of his to 13.

This was another answer to "what's in my COMC cart?". Lionel played on the first two Super Bowl winning teams with the Pack, but had a sad end to his life consisting of homelessness and paranoid schizophrenia. He did recover somewhat to work as public speaker on the subject prior to his death at only 56.

And, to wrap up the football portion, a nice selection of Bills. Mainly recent ones, but that Thurman Thomas was a nice addition.

Tomorrow: 3 autos! 2 relics! A new Rangers alum and 2 new members of the 2/14 binder. And a dog!

A major sportlots addition to the ol' 2/14 binder

Yes. I'd say 35 different cards being added can be considered a major addition. Since my football portion was a lot lower than I'd like, that was the majority of the purchase.

I've also added all my cards from the binder into the a collection at sportscardalbum.com. Check it out, if you so desire. Since most of it seems to be people showing off their hits, I'm guessing I'm the only person showing off cards of guys like Kelly Stinnett and Anthony Wright.

Strangely, it says I have 363 cards in it, while my excel spreadsheet places the total at 377, but I'm sure that's just incompetence on my part.

I'm not showing all 35 cards, just the highlights.

Jeff Dellenbach is the most frustrating member of the 2/14 club. He's the leader in terms of games played. He played in the junk wax football era. Yet, as best as I can tell, he doesn't even reach double digits in terms of cards available. I'll guess if any OL guys have rookie cards in this year's sets, I'll have to jump on them then, as there's no way they'll have any cards after this season.

As a Bills fan, it was kind of embarassing to have Jim Kelly  barely breaking double digits in terms of cards in the binder. He jumped up to 17 with the additions from this purchase. From the really gaudy to the really basic, I was happy with all these additions.

In terms of variety, my vote goes to Jeff Graham, as I added cards of his from 4 of the five teams he played for over his career. I just need an Eagles card to wrap things up. There's a couple of great pictures as well on the bottom, with the Ultra looking great with the lack of border.

And by far the most unfortunate named player in my binder, Harry Colon. I'm assuming (read: hoping) it is pronounced in a far less dirty fashion.

The basketball additions were far less numerable, but a 4 pack of additions made their way to the binder. Richard Hamilton might be best player among the 2/14 members, but I'd wager that Muresan would be the most famous.

And here are the other 2.

I added a couple of non-base parallels from 1996-97 Pinnacle. The Calle is a gold foil, the Lowry is a premium stock variatuon. I already had the base of the latter. Halfway to the rainbow with the rink collection and the gold foil.

Here's a couple more Lowry cards, both of which I'm glad to move off my zistle wantlist.

And finally, yet another parallel. I don't have the regular Kozlov from this year, but have an always welcome 79/80 Retro throwback.

After these purchases, the top 10 members of the binder in terms of different are these:

34 Marian Gaborik
29 Milan Hejduk
22 Viktor Kozlov
17 Jim Kelly
13 Brandon Sutter
12 Takashi Saito
11 Calle Johansson
11 Dave Dravecky
11 David Garrard
10 Dave Lowry

And tomorrow, when I start digging into the trade goodies from Too Many Manninghams, the 3-way tie for 7th place will be broken.

Trade w/ The Night Owl

I managed to get a rant out of The Night Owl over the insane shipping costs from the States to this side of the border. But, for all the cost, the package did arrive here. Time to dig in and check out the cardboard.

My fave part of the package were these. I always like making additions to my 2/14 binder, especially a mass addition of a specific player. Of this bunch of 7, my favourite might just be the documentary card for the sheer novelty of them. I didn't really consider adding any of those in the first place, but here is one. He's featured on 10 of them, or so it seems via COMC, and I figure, "Hey, add 8 more and you'll have an interesting page in the binder". Interestingly, all the Saito cards end in #50.

Then I get back to my senses. Still, this pushes Saito's binder numbers into double digits.

Considering I added 30 more via sportlots, and another 7 via a second trade, and have lots more to grab from this year's hockey releases, a goal of 500+ cards in that binder seems very reachable.

PWE me all your Brandon Sutter cards!
PWE me all your Richard Hamilton cards!
PWE me all your Tyler Clippard cards!
PWE me all you Steve McNair cards!

Yeah, that seems like a nonsensical attempt. It's always worth trying, though.

A trio of new cards for my CanCon collection as well. Aumont made his flagship debut with a card in Series 2 this season. I'm happy to add a non-2013 card to his portion.

A new Delgado as well! Or a new old vintage Delgado. Or whatever. The stain between the Blue and the Jays is on my scanner.

Three more drop out of my list of cards needed to complete the Archives set. I think, with cards incoming, that puts me 2 away from the non-SP base. But, considering my incompetence with collating the Series 2, that's probably wishful thinking.

I've got plenty of Pro Set hockey. I don't think this is one of them, and I love adding new cards of Beaupre's classic mask to my binders.

To wrap things up, here are a random trio of Mets.

And an equally random trio of North of the Border guys. I still enjoy seeing the Stade show up in cards.

Thanks for the goodies! Incredibly random, but great!

WOO-HOO! An ebay 1/1!

I had enough time to swing over to the LCS over the noon hour. Unfortunately, it will be Thursday-ish before I can dig fully into a Jumbo box of Score hockey. So, I consoled myself with a pack of Rookie Anthology.

What goodies awaited me in the pack? Howzabout this?

Yes! It's #100 out of 100. 100/100. If I remember my fractions correctly from my schooling, then 100/100 is exactly the same as 1/1! They are equivalent! Hello, ebay riches!

Seriously, this is a beautiful die-cut card. If there are any Flames or Baertschi fans out there that want to make a trade offer for it, I can certainly be had.

To wrap up the pack, here's the base:

Home blue uniforms abound!

I also took a quick look through the 2013-14 score dime box. I didn't have a lot of time, but was looking for an Alfredsson card for my personal collection, since I'm going to want a second one anyhow. No luck there, but I did grab one. I've seen about 100  or so of the base cards or their respective parallels, but I'm going to make a wager.

This will be my favourite photo in the set.

I don't think it will be close.

Good luck to the other 550 cards. You're going to need it.

Hey! That's my Neighbourhood!

If you're playing $25,000 Pyramid, that's an appropriate clue if "Things you don't want to say while watching The Weather Network" pops up in the Winner's Circle.

Unless I had an arm like Vlad Guerrero or Jesse Barfield, it wasn't a stone's throw from Chez Buckstorecards, but still close enough to be uncomfortable.

Trading across the Atlantic

Dutch Card Guy jumped on some of the inserts I had from Topps S2, among some other things, and I sent them away. On Friday, the return package arrived. Time to dig in.

I did complete S2's base, or so I thought. Turns out my despite my tremendous organizational skills, I am still Ben Revere-less. I should come across that one sooner or later. Here's my favourites from this one. A couple guys from my favourite teams, my first flagship base card of a Canuck, and a tremendous walk off shot for an esteemed member of the 2-14 binder.

I think this is the last CTTC I'm interested in adding - I believe I've got all the Jays & Mets available.

And the only Mets card among "The Elite" subset. These are really nice in person. As others said, they do have the feel of cards from this year's Museum.

And a couple of entries in my attempt to chase down all the Chase It Down cards.

There were a couple of cards for my player PCs. Surprisingly, while I have the gold version of this card, I didn't have the base. Remedied!

And some Vlads as well. I enjoy getting bilingual cards, even if the second language isn't French on an OPC card.

And finally, this! Since a certain Argyled sweater has enough of these to wallpaper a small room, this was included as a bonus for a hockey collector such as me. I just wish I had a second card of Ed Kea around to send your way, as he was the only person born in The Netherlands to appear in the NHL.

Thanks for the trade!

2013-14 Score Hockey - Jumbo Pack Break

I had time for the LCS today, only to find out they were shorted on their expected Score Jumbo boxes. So, I have to wait until next week in order to really get into a box. But, they did have a few loose packs. So, I grabbed one of those to tide me over. Depressingly, only two packs of cards, (jumbo and a rack), and I've already got dupes.

8 - Sheldon Souray
53 - Luke Adam

163 - Pavel Datsyuk. I really love the ice-level, looking up photos. It is even nicer here when one can see the banners in the rafters.
76 - Chad LaRose
90 - Dan Ellis
14 - Devante Smith-Pelly

28 - Shawn Thornton. Such beautiful framing on this one with the subject of the card alongside the youngster rocking the Thornton jersey. And the interesting hair.
98 - Nick Leddy

209 - Scottie Upshall. There do seem to be a lot of celebration shots in this set. I'm not complaining.
139 - Artem Anisimov
154 - Scott Glennie
173 - Mikael Samuelsson
152 - Lane MacDermid
219 - Jonathan Quick

118 - Cody McLeod. Every hockey set should have at least one card that features the game in all its toothless glory.
238 - Ryan Suter - Dupe #1
281 - Jonathan Blum - Dupe #2
252 - Jason Pominville - Dupe #3
277 - Patric Hornqvist - Dupe #4
286 - Paul Gaustad - Dupe #5
300 - David Clarkson - Dupe #6 (At least this one fits into my Kitchener Rangers alumni set)
239 - Nicklas Backstrom - Dupe #7

Net Cam - NC19 - Mike Richter. It's really nice to see some retired players show up in this subset. There's also a Patrick Roy. It also gives a nice view of MSG.

Score Signatures - SS-CS - Chris Summers. Chris Summers doesn't even have any base cards in this year's set. The presence of #5 on the sticker indicates this might have been signed a while back. I smell a sticker dump! But, I think I know someone that might be interested in this. Here's a hint on the back.

It's already pulled aside for Dennis @ Too Many Manninghams. Plus "Summers in based out of Phoenix as an NHL player". Is this his card or his linkin profile?

Gold Parallel - 622 Rickard Rakell. I think I only pulled on gold parallel of a Hot Rookie last year. The gold really looks good with the Ducks colours.
Gold Parallel - 575 Blues Leaders
560 - Red Wings Leaders
568 - Islanders Leaders
589 - Season Highlights - Sidney Crosby
Hot Rookies 639 - Emerson Etem
Hot Rookies 596 - Eddie Pasquale
Hot Rookies 591 - Alex Killorn

Hot Rookies 629 - Jarred Tinordi. It's a little hard to see on the scan, but some of the silver is missing on the right side of the Hot Rookies. Both this and the Killorn had this feature. I guess these will do until the set is built.
Gold Parallel - 214 Jack Skille
Gold Parallel - 158 Ray Whitney
Gold Parallel - 143 Semyon Varlamov

Gold Parallel - 181 Jordan Eberle. There's a good player to grab a parallel of.

Gold Parallel - 172 Dan Cleary. A second great Red Wings photo. Again, visible banners and an interesting pose. Although it is a different angle from the skates upward.
Gold Parallel - 143 Jared Boll
433 - Jason Demers
332 - Ryan McDonagh
377 - Nicklas Grossman
348 - Craig Anderson - Dupe #8
391 - Jason LaBarbera - Dupe #9
362 - Jim O'Brien - Dupe #10 (At least these 3 will move into my mask binder and/or Senators Frankenset)
387 - Mikkel Boedker - Dupe #11
453 - Ryan Reaves

529 - Eric Fehr. Yet another great celebration photograph. The dejected goaltender in the background is another excellent usage of the horizontal design.
537 - Evander Kane
467 - Nate Thompson
525 - Joel Ward
464 - Teddy Purcell
480 - Clarke MacArthur

Ugh. 11 dupes, even though 4 of them do fit into non-set building PCs. But that's the risk you take with packs. Still, the insert portion of this was really strong with the auto and the net cam insert. There's also some memorable photos on the Datsyuk, the Thornton and the Cleary.

If I can't bust a 13-14 Score box...

then I'll head to Dollarama and bust a Surprise box. $2.00 worth of fun? Let's find out.

An 80s pack to start things off. A Hall of Famer is always a welcome pickup in the Sittler. Hedberg's also a HOFer, having been inducted in the Swedish HOF. Barry Pederson will forever be known as the guy the Canucks traded Cam Neely for.

A 5 card pack of cards from the 2000s. I've already got that Emery in my masks binder, so it will be a candidate for the Sens Frankenset.

A five card pack with a guaranteed Superstar. A card of Spezza where he's pictured in his Windsor Spitfires days? That's a definite awesome addition to my collection. A couple other nice ones here as well, with a mask binder card in McLean, and a really nice Modano.

I've certainly got my money's worth so far in terms of enjoyment. But, we still had one more item in  a pack of 2010-11 O-Pee-Chee.

A Subban rookie card? Yes! I don't know if that's the best item I've ever pulled from one of these, but it would be up there.