To me. From me.

I decided to treat myself to a not-too-costle box of something for Boxing Day. I had it down to Champ's, Portfolio and Contours. I'd already busted Champ's, and didn't want to deal w/ more dupes. I'd already got the singles I want from Portfolio. So, I went with this.

I should have done Champ's.

Pack 1:

The base. An attempt to create a Crown Royale-ish set with some die-cut case cards.

Not a bad card for my 1-per-pack numbered card. Ehlers is one of the honoured members of the 2/14 collection. That's my 11th card of his, and the climb to 1600 cards overall begins with my 1501st overall card.

And the hit goes right into my masked collection. He appeared in 2 NHL games, but is now in the ECHL with something called the Greenville Swamp Rabbits.

Pack 2:

Your base cards.

Here's the numbered card. At least it was a good name, and the blue design works with the uniform.

At least with Columbus having a good season so far, he might get some attention this season.

Pack 3:

Your base. I always like when players you don't expect in a base set appear, and Owen Nolan definitely counts as unexpected.

And a card for a future Too Many Manninghams mailer shows up as the numbered card.

If you're going to call the subset Club Crest, shouldn't there be a portion of said crest as part of the swatch?

Pack 4:

The only pack with 3 base cards.

Much like with the Tarasenko, at least this blue parallel goes with the uniform.

New York Rangers pack! Lindberg seems to be the 2015-16 Rookie that's following me from the rookie class.

And there you go. Pretty dull box. I should have busted some more Champ's.

Vive Le Français!

This is not a post about my Grade 6 French textbook.

A post about this box I grabbed at Walmart. A $30 hobby box? Beats a blaster, and I should be able to put together most of the set. There wasn't a Series 2 of this, so it shouldn't be too hard to pick up the pieces.

The base cards aren't much different from their English parallels, except these are entirely in French.

Same for the backs. I learned more French from the backs of hockey and baseball cards than from actual classes. All in all, I ended up with 183 of the base cards with no dupes. The required base cards will probably show up on the set wantlist sooner or later.

These rather patriotic parallels fell at a rate of 1 per box. While I didn't really land a marquee player, I did land an interesting photo since neither of McDonald's feet are touching the ice.

And a pair of buybacks. One English (Bourque), one French (Miller). Bourque carved out a journeyman career on this side of the Atlantic, while Miller played 6 games total with the Devils, but had a lengthy run in Germany.

There were no inserts in the set other than those two buybacks and the parallel, which can make for a dull break. Fortunately, I can still be on the lookout for Jeunes Lanceurs. And this isn't too bad of a year to hunt them. Some of the names include PK Subban, Sergei Bobrovsky, Taylor Hall, Nazem Kadri, Jeff Skinner and Jordan Eberle.

And I landed two of those 6. Of this grouping, only the Minnesota Wild players are not active on this side of the Atlantic now. Kadri will be a nice addition to my collection of Kitchener Rangers alum. Bonino helped bring the Stanley Cup to Pittsburgh last season as the B in the HBK line. Kyle Clifford has a pair of rings himself while with the Kings, and that Subban should pay for the box.

Pretty successful box break, and far better on the whole than the box I decided to treat myself to as a Boxing Day gift for myself.

My Best Card of 2016

And this should surprise no person who has looked in on my blog over the past two months. But this deserves another post for P-Town Tom's contest.

I fell in love with this card before it even entered my collection, and named it as at least the best Sens card of the season.

When I got it in hand, my only complaint was that it didn't follow up on the goings on from the front of the card, although Upper Deck did so on their blog.

Fortunately, this card is acetate so there is no room for the good news on the back of this card.

A great example of a photo on a card telling a story.

2013-14 Rookie Anthology Case Break - Seventh Box

Back to the case after a short break.

The first appearance of one of the gold parallels in the case comes after the halfway point. And I got 4 of them among the dozen boxes.

Here are the Score Update inserts. Of these, only the Moulson was not a need. I love the bend of the stick on Seguin's card.

This is my second one of these in the case - I'd thought these were rare enough to be case hits. And there's still a third one of these to go in my posts.

Here are the Prizm inserts.

And the Selects. Klein is the only dupe among this group of inserts.

Starting off the actual hits with my second Teubert sticker dump. That's two dupe hits among the Score autographs so far.

Not really the Sharks rookie auto you want from this year's release, but it isn't that bad of an auto aesthetically, and he is still active on this side of the Atlantic as a member of the Flames (after a stop in Colorado).

Two Select hits, this one a shiny auto/relic. A good box so far for a Rangers fan with two cards so far numbered to 100 or less.

And here's a third. It is nice when you get all team colours among the swatches.

And to end this, a stick relic. For some reason, this portion of the stick has a pretty obvious curve on it, but I'll just guess that is supposed to be a feature, not a bug.

5 boxes left!

2016 Adventures in Repacks - Part 46: Cards with cards

It was off to the Dollarama about a week back to get cards of the greeting variety for Christmas. I couldn't make a trip there without getting cardboard photos of hockey players, so I hit that card portion as well. I was hoping for some $1 hangers, since they'd been pretty good to me as of late. Alas, there were none. So, a pair of Surprise Bags instead.

Repack #1:

The contents.

Here's the Franchise pack. I expected entirely early 90s cards, so the .500 average isn't bad. That anniversary card of Cammalleri will be in a future TMM mailer.

3 out of 4 for mask binder cards, with the bonus being the only cardboard reminds that Mike Lundin played a handful of games in Ottawa.

That was definitely a Leafs hot pack from Upper Deck. Plus you get the second appearance of Patrick Roy in the repack.

And the rookie pack. I'm not sure if the rookie was supposed to be Larsen or Jablonski, but I'm a lot happier about the former.

He was a Sens draft pick. He never played a game for them though, but did see plenty of action with the Avs and Thrashers. He's now an assistant coach in Columbus.

Not too bad.

Repack #2:

The contents.

Another Sens card (my binder, my rules) with Auld, and a great Net Cam insert.

A current HOFer and a certain future HOFer. Another pretty good portion of this repack.

A couple more mask binder cards, and a dupe within a repack with that Tim Thomas.

I was a little worried about the condition of the cards in the Premier pack, since my last repack that had a mid 90s pack had the cards come out as a solid brick. Nothing to worry about here, though. I really like the shot of Dave Babych mid-stretch, but the real winner here is 2/14 baby Dave Lowry. This becomes my 1500th card in my 2/14 binders. My 21st Dave Lowry helps me reach a nice milestone as the year draws to a close.

And the rest of the pack. Cropping a horizontal photo to include a defensive player makes for an interesting look on the Dan Plante card. Yet another mask binder card with Stauber, and it ends with an appearance of Stanley. Damn good pack as part of a repack.

And there you go. I finally return to my Rookie Anthology case with my next post.

New 2/14 Faces

Every so often, I do google searches for "Born: February 14" alongside minor and secondary to find people outside the *-reference bubble. The latest brought 3 new names into my collection, each making their one-card debut into the collection.

Brouillette debuted at safety (but the French translation of marauder is far cooler) for the Montreal Alouettes in 2010, and is still with the team. He was named an Eastern division All-Star this past season. This card is from 2015 Upper Deck, and is my fourth CFL card in the binder, alongside a Mike Raines from the early 80s, and a pair of mid 00's Bruno Heppels.

The autographed version of his Elite Extra Edition card was just a bit costlier than his base card from the same set, so I opted for this version. The Cuban prospect has just wrapped up his third season in the Reds system. And boy, has he ever had an interesting journey just to get this far. After reading that article, he seems to be the type of guy you'd want to see have a great career, regardless of which team he plays for.

Nick Pivetta would also fit into my CanCon collection, as he's from British Columbia. He's no longer in the Nationals organization, having being traded to the Phillies in the Papelbon trade. He moved up to AAA last season, and was placed on the 40-man roster last month.

3 new faces, and the binder total is now 1499 cards. #1500 to show up in tomorrow's post. appropriately enough, coming from a Dollarama repack!

Merry Christmas. I Don't Want to Fight^H^H^H Write

So instead, I decided to hold off until Christmas when it came to busting some recent bubble envelopes that showed up from The Lost Collector, Cardboard Clubhouse, Shoebox Legends, Too Many Manninghams and jaybarkerfan.

ObCard:

A closer look at that Court Kings box-topper that I had in the background.

2016 Adventures in Repacks - Part 45: Finally touching the stove

I have been seeing these repacks at Wally World since spring.

I pretty much knew from the start that nothing too amazing would come from this. But, it was a not-too-costly repack product, so I might as well try it. First up, the encased card:

It is the player pictured on the box, and a similar enough card. I'd call it a sell-sheet hit based on those factors, but I have the sneaking suspicion that every box contains an Erie Otters card of Connor.

The fat (rack) packs were a pair of 2009 Upper Deck Series 2 and 1 2013 Score, with the foil (wax) packs being a pair of 2013 Score, and these:

On the plus side, I've never busted either of these before.

Gold Reserve is basically your standalone parallel set.

And HoloGrafx is your loud late 90s set. The corners were dinged on all 3 of these, but at least I landed a new MacInnis for my Rangers alumni binder.

I've posted Score 2013 enough times that the base design might get burned to the screen if I scan any more, but I'll risk that when I get back to the RA case. But, for this, I'll just hit the highlights.

Favourite photo? This spotlighted Bobrovsky.

Favourite card? This Petr Mrazek that I'm sure I already have in my 2/14 binder, but will still check to be sure.

Sens content!

Gold parallels. Really like the photo on the Cleary.

I haven't busted much retail of this, so I haven't acquired too many red parallels. And one is a Sens card! Bonus!

And a couple inserts. I love any time a card shows the famous, distinctive MSG roof.

Off to the 2009 UD, where my favourite photo was this battle along the boards.

My only Sens card was this.

But the mask binder will get a trio of cards.

And these were the inserts in each. One Rookie Headliner. One Ambassadors of the Game. One Victory Update.

And now I can say I've busted one of those repacks. That should stop me from trying something new for at least a month or so (but likely won't).