2016 Adventures in Repacks: Part 29 - Sunday means repacks

Time to catch up with the repacks with some Dollarama stuff. 2 hanger repacks, and a Surprise Bag to wrap things up. And I'm posting all the cards. I'm not sure why.

Here's the content of the first hanger pack. I grabbed this for the Vokoun card for my mask binder. I ended up with two more cards for that collection. The Moog is easily my favourite of these, mainly because I completely blanked on his time with the Habs. And a bonus Cam Neely card as well. Chris Kelleher is kinda interesting as well. He was drafted in 1993 by the Penguins, but didn't reach the NHL until 2001-02, playing one game for the Bruins.

I grabbed this one for the gaudy parallel of Koivu. Among the rest, there's more parallel action with the emerald Tormanen, giving me two keepers with two parallel cards. Among the rest, I like how the 3 of the 4 horizontal cards have the player somehow crouched over. And I'd also completely blanked on Turgeon on the Stars, despite the fact he played 3 seasons there. I assume that Steven Rice card is a dupe for my Kitchener Rangers collection, but it is the Canadian parallel, so it might be a need.

Off to the surprise bag, which had these contents. At least one of my recent McDavid pulls got a new home.

Two out of 4 keeper cards isn't that great for a goalie pack, but both of them are really nice. The unique photo on the Hedberg is my favourite card in this break.

Your HOFer - Langway. Joe Thornton should be a shoe-in as well.

And Couture is the Superstar.

And there you have some more repacks. I still have the flea market repack to get to.

The Stadium Club Experience - Part 2

Part 2 of my 2016 Stadium Club experience, this time with the retired player content.

The scoreboard is so distracting. I suppose I could spend an hour or two at baseball-reference finding out which game this card photo originated from (Let's see, a 9-7 Yankees win against what looks like the Twins, a Baltimore/KC postponement and Koufax pitching a road game).

Thursday, June 4, 1964 looks right. You've got that score on a Yankees/Twins game. You don't have a Baltimore/KC game, but that would have been the 4th game of that series, and there was a double header later in the season, and Koufax was on the hill in Philly, throwing the third no-hitter of his career.

A quick cross-reference with gettyimages...

Los Angeles Dodgers Sandy Koufax mound during game vs Philadelphia Phillies at Connie Mack Stadium. View of scoreboard. Koufax pitches third no-hitter of his career. Walter Iooss Jr. F32 )

That would have been a lot easier if they'd just used the entire photo.

And it took about 10 minutes to work out the source.

There were cards in my first post where the stadium and/or its surroundings were the real stars of the card. This time, while it is a nice photo of Ford that I can't recall seeing on a card before, Yankee Stadium steals the show.

And as a Mets fan, that's about as complimentary as I'll get to a Yankees card.

Amazingly, the two first cards shown were the only ones in this group that were from in game action. I have more batting practice from this shipment than game shots. Mind you, these are all pretty interesting, running the gamut from a sold out stadium to a sparse pre-season game.

Players in suits! Nice try Frank, but last year's card of the Eck was a far nicer card (or at least more interesting card) with somebody's likeness sharing the bill.

No suit, but a perfectly framed card nonetheless.

It really wouldn't be a Stadium Club post without some more B&W images.

And one more, this one another one that could have been cropped a little wider.

But that is such a minor complaint for a set that offers so many great chase cards among the base. There are about a half dozen more that I'd like to add, but those can come whenever, as they sit on the outside of my most wanted list.

When I pull the trigger on those, they'll probably get a post of their own as well.

Flea Market Randomness

I was going to do a second Stadium Club post today, but fortunately weather and time was with me this morning, and I was able to make a trip to the flea/Farmer's market this morning. While the trip was supposedly to get my hands on some corn on the cob, card acquisition was also part of the plan.

And starting with a CFL card? Why not? These inserts fell at a rate of approximately 1:350 packs, so adding the only Tiger-Cats one in the three card set for $1 was a nice pick-up.

And to follow up my only football card, my only wrestling card of the day.

Expos! And even better, this is a O-Pee-Chee card in all its bilingual glory! Of the three, neither really became stars, although Bernazard did have the longest career of the bunch. Still, his best cardboard preceded this one by several years. This was also Miller's only big league cardboard.

Joe Carter! Collector's Choice! Gold sig. parallel! YES!

This is one of the thicker relic cards I've seen in a bit. I don't care that it probably isn't from the Stadium Series, I still like cards that commemorate games in that series. So, why not?

2/14 acetate!

2/14 sticker graph!

The last card is this 1979 Topps of Phil Esposito. Despite the fact he spent 5+ seasons in New York, cards of him in Rangers blues still seem odd.

Cartoon on the back!

There's more, as my return to the flea market also meant I grabbed one of those $5 bricks of cards, which I've placed to the side for a future repack adventure. To be posted whenver.

The Stadium Club Experience

The experience remains the same as it has for me over the past releases. Buy a couple packs, then scour ebay for images of the cards, pick my favourites, and order them from justcommons. It is a very effective methodology.

Like with last year, I'm breaking my posts into 2 posts. One for current players, and one for retired players.

My second straight post featuring a Derek Norris card. Not only do I have another contender for my favourite Norris card from 2016 releases, this one actually continues the photo series from the flagship release. While the first made it look that Reed would be out at the plate, this photo seems to confirm that.

Whether minor league,

or major league, it is appropriate that at least a couple of cards make the stadium itself the star of the cards.

Failing that, you can also make the landmarks visible from the stadium the star as well.

Mets content!

More Mets content.

And a few more random cards to wrap it up. All great, though.

While Watching the Padres/Jays game...

It took me one pitch to realize the Padres had an all 2/14 battery.

Paul is one year older than Derek, give or take an hour or three. (1988 vs. 1989)

Retail Series 2

Ginter has dropped. Stadium Club has dropped (and I've got many of those cards in my to be posted folder). Yet, I'm still lagging behind and posting some S2 retail as I really start getting into the set build. And by that, I mean this is only my second S2 purchase so far.

And here's my first retail S2 card. While I'd only bought a single jumbo hobby pack so far, there were no dupes in the hanger box.

Blue Jays content! 1/72. At least the photo is a departure from a lot of the typical batting/pitching photos in this.

The only Mets card among the base. I swear I typed the team as Metz three times before getting it right.

My faves of the vertical photos were these, all defensive photographs. Check out the intense eyes on Taylor, and the evidence of chilly weather for Baez.

Even the horizontal photos were pretty generic, but there were a couple gorgeous ones in the bunch. If Ortiz doesn't get a flagship card in 2017, that is one heck of finale.

Best card back? The three missing years acknowledged along with the respective teams that he didn't play for during those years on the Ryan Madson.

And the inserts. Ryan is the Berger's Best, while Harvey is the reprint. Other than that, two more interesting photo choices on the McCann and Gwynn end this post.

Maybe I'll finally post the Stadium Club stuff tomorrow.

Outgoing Mail Alert!

Canada Post and the union are in a cooling off period right now, meaning any labour disruption might be on hold for a bit. So, if these zip codes seem familiar, a package/PWE is on its way to you.

26505
33325
48105
60586
90230

Still, for the meantime, hold off on returning fire, as I don't trust the post office to get it across the border and into my hands before cooling off period ends. I'll post something when it is officially settled.

ObCard: If I felt nastier, I could say lots worse about J.P. Arencibia.

Just one pack...of 2015-16 SP Authentic

I'd say this was probably the most anticipated mid-range release of the season among hockey collectors, so maybe I should at least grab one pack.

The base are really nice this year, mainly because it is nice to see some colour to go along with the usual silver background. Two straight years of this.

The packs contain 4 base cards and an insert. I didn't land a hit.

But I did land an Authentic Moments SP card featuring Connor McDavid and Taylor Hall. Now, a slightly awkward acquisition after the trade with the Devils.

But there's the pack!

Sportscards From the Drug Store?

My closest post office is a small branch situated inside a Shoppers Drug Mart. While there to drop off a couple small packages on Wednesday, I noticed a small area with cards/stickers. This was the cheapest option:

The last time I busted one of these packs turned out quite nicely. This time around?

While no Bossy autograph was in this pack, it was still pretty nice to land a numbered card in the pack. An interesting trio of regular base cards as well. When Jean Beliveau is the dullest of the bunch (since Stevens is a PC guy), that's a fun little pack, and easily worth the cost.

There was also a pack of stickers in there.

7 stickers, and 3 of them have Blackhawks content. Interesting.

And there you have cards from my latest oddball source for them.

COMC Pick 6: Cards with Dogs

As a dog person, I'm required to pick up cards with any sort of canine reference on them. Here are 6 from my COMC To Be Posted Box.

I don't know if this as far off the mission statement of this post as I can get, but it still fits. An insert from 15-16 Panini Complete from the NBA Cares subset. Most of them feature the players building houses/playgrounds, but here's a nice casual one of Kyle Korver from the Hawks reading to children. And a doggy on the book is enough to count it towards this collection.

Logos also count, as this is my second card featuring the Peoria Chiefs changed logo. James does appear to be out of baseball now.

Danny is still around in baseball, and still in the Mariners system. He's been battling injuries, though, and missed all of '14 due to injuries. Great logo, though.

Moving on to real dogs, with one of those "How did I not already have this card?" cards, as Brian Bogusevic protects the dogs in the stands with a great catch.

And a couple dogs making appearances on hockey cards from the sometimes oddball photos in the Be A Player releases. This is actually the second appearance of dogs on an Uwe Krupp card, as his sled dog training also appeared on a 1992-93 Pinnacle release. This is the first canine card for Curtis, though.

And there you go.