The "Cards or Cube" thing is quite simple. I pick up a repack of cards from a Walmart or Target, and decide if the cube itself, or the cards contained within are more interesting.
This one was picked up at Walmart, and promised 55 loose cards, 10 sticker packs, and 5 card packs (although I got 6). The only thing visible was a pair of 1990 Bowman cards, along with a hobby pack of 2011 Zenith.
I'll start with the loose cards, and go chronologically through this. The cards were grouped together by whichever set they originated in.
1990 Bowman - Steve Yzerman, Tom Barrasso
Two Bowmans, but that's all. If I was getting a 50 cards random repack from Target, there would be easily double digits worth of these. And the Barrasso could move into the masks binder. So, this still isn't too bad.
2008 UD Power Play - Mikael Samielsson, Kris Draper, Andreas Lilja, Nicklas Lidstrom, Pavel Datsyuk, Chris Osgood
Interesting set representation as these were sequential in the set, numbering 104-109.
2009 Coll. Choice - Luke Schenn, Nikolai Khabibulin, Dan Boyle, Brad Boyes, Jay Bouwmeester, Kris Versteeg
Collector's Choice hockey releases didn't really have the interesting photography from the mid 90s baseball sets. Just generic skating shots for the most part, but this Schenn jostling along the boards is interesting on the sliding scale.
2010 O-Pee-Chee - Andrei Markov, John Carlson, Alexandre Burrows, Mark Stuart, Trent Hunter, Tom Wandell
Bland selection of a very border-intensive set.
2010 Heroes and Prospects - Adam Henrique, Mats Zuccarello, Kyle Palmieri, Brandon Kozun
Much like the Power Play, these were sequential, 160-163. I always love coming across cards with minor league jerseys.
2011 All Goalies - Steve Mason, Anders Lindback, Roberto Luongo, Mark Dekanich, Jeff Frazee, Johan Hedberg
Hey! 5 out of 6 for the mask binder! Poor Jeff Frazee and his 'I just got called up' mask.
2011 Rookies/Traded - Robin Lehner, Chris Mueller, Erik Johnson, Jordan Eberle, Ray Emery, Brayden Schenn
I've got about a dozen of that Lehner. What's one more?
2012 OPC - Ryan Getzlaf, Ryan Malone, Fedor Tyutin, Evgeni Nabokov, Daniel Girardi, Shawn Horcoff (Retro)
A retro parallel is always a nice surprise in one of these.
2012 Upper Deck - Bryce Salvador, Sean Couturier, Tyler Seguin, Marian Hossa, Ryan Malone, Mike Green
UD is always going to be a highlight for photos and the ASG Hossa and the signing Seguin are both nice ones to see.
2013 Score - Ben Bishop, Troy Brouwer, Maxime Talbot, Chris Neil, Brenden Morrow, Evgeni Malkin, Jordie Benn
I have no idea how much of this stuff I busted last year. It was a lot, though. They really rivaled UD for spectacular photographic choices, perhaps even moreso with the price point.
So far, I'm pretty happy with the loose cards. Better than the stuff in the Fairfields, at least.
And now, the packs.
For the stickers, there were 5 packs each of 08-09 and 09-10. I'll just show off the nice shiny ones that seem more obnoxiously loud when scanned.
With one exception.
This shot of the Wrigley Winter Classic would be a fun sticker puzzle to complete.
Pack 1 - 1992 Parkhurst Series 2 - This is the only pack where I can't highlight all the cards. All the other packs were of the 5 or 6 card variety. But an interesting photo in the Foligno, a drawn card of Bob Kelly make this an interesting pack from the junk wax era.
Pack 2 - 1997 Pinnacle Certified - I could have scanned these, but these were so badly warped it was a challenge to keep them on the scanner together. I eventually gave up, and said "here's the Ray Bourque".
Pack 3 - 1998 UD Choice - Interesting photographs could still be found in this year's release - as shown by the casual photo of Bure at the end of the bench.
Pack 4 - 2007 Victory - Can I call that Modano an Ebay 1/1 sandblasted parallel?
Pack 5 - 2008 Choice - I think those gold parallels were found at a rate of 1 per box, with everything else being a silver parallel. Either way, not the most exciting of packs.
Pack 6 - 2011 Zenith - Mario is always a nice pull, but this was really boring.
So, let's see. Cube or cards. The cards from the packs were pretty boring, and the most interesting for me came from the 1992 Parkhurst. That's never good. But, that 1/4 Wrigley card was nice, and there were a lot of mask binder cards for both my pre 2005 and post 2005 binders. And I don't think I ever busted a pack of Pinn. Certified or Zenith, so it gave me that. I think I preferred the loose cards overall, even though those didn't get a lot of scans.
All the mask stuff gives the nod to the content, but it was close.
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