You got Hobby in my Retail! - Part 1

That's just a fancy way of saying that I picked up a hobby box of 2012-13 Rookie Anthology at Target. Combining a coupon I had, it was cheaper than it would be at the LCS, so why not?

I busted a lot of the most recent R.A., but not much of the previous season's. So, let's fix that my digging into this. As I often do, the first post will be relic and autograph-free. All the hits tomorrow.

47 base cards. There were more than a scanner's worth of cards for the mask binder, so I'll just highlight another two on their way to my PCs. A new Gaborik for my 2/14 collection (I was really surprised I didn't already have this one), and Derek Roy for my Rangers alum collection. I haven't counted my Dereks, but this is the 76th appearance of Gaborik in my collection.

I got a nice collection of the /999 cards. This Chet Pickard is actually a dupe from a previous trade and a reminder that I should clean my scanner. I'll do it tomorrow. Really.

But this Semyon isn't a dupe. A nice addition to my mask collection.

And here's another Avalanche insert.

But my favourite of the /999 crowd was this Cujo. A nice framed design in black and white, with a nice mask photo and a beautiful view of the Maple Leaf Gardens patch. The mask also features the Carlton Street Cashbox as opposed to his usual Cujo motif. A really nice addition to that collection, especially since I love when hockey history is featured on the masks. Throwback jersey too!

Strange where my favourite card so far among the group so far is a Leafs card. Wow.

But this one comes pretty close. I already had the Daniel Alfredsson from this subset, and adding another one for my general collection makes it a good pull. All the non-uniform white space is clear acetate. I'm
not sure what it has to do with intensity, but it makes for a nice card.

And since I didn't land an auto in the Prizm pack, I'll post these as well.

The two base cards. I'm more interested in the back of the Dillon.

Gordie Howe hat trick! And the Dallas love continued with the shiny Prizm card:

Even though Glennie only has 1 NHL game to his credit, it is a really beautiful card. The Blue Prizms are numbered to /25, with this one being #21 of the bunch. And the lowest numbered card of this box break.

A decent start, with lots of Stars and Avalanche making appearances. Tomorrow, the 5 hits. My 2 favourite cards in this post were of teams considered Original 6 (the Cujo and the Yzerman). More from those teams as I dig into the hits tomorrow.