Mailbag: Baseball Card Breakdown

Back to the mailbag. I've still got a pile of Mets from Cards on Cards, but I'll get to that later. I'll stick to a mailer with far less scanning involved.

This was the item that started off the trade. Gavin picked this plate up thinking it was a Tim Duncan, but it turned out that it was Richard Hamilton pictured on the card. One Mackenzie Gore auto added to my COMC inventory later, a trade was made.

But there's so much more.

It might be numbered a little higher than the Hamilton, but this is, as best as my accounting can tell, the first numbered cards of Jim Kelly on the Hurricanes.

A mail from Gavin means customs will probably be in it. Such as this Conforto.

Or a couple of Blue Jays cards of guys who never played for the big club, although one of their offspring should be there sooner rather than later.

And to finish off the mailer, here's some more Jays. I'm surprised I didn't have that gold parallel of the Josh Thole - that's one of my favourite Jays cards in recent memory.

Thanks for these, and I hope the package I sent your way made it their safely!

One Card Only: While the Gettin's Good

Why wait until Update to get my first Joey Bats card as a Met?

I doubt whatever photo they use on it, if he even makes the checklist, won't be as emotional as his tip of the hat (helmet) on his return to Toronto.

Here's the back of the card. This joins Coghlan's dive last year and Pillar's 3-steal trip around the bases as my third Topps Now card.

2018 Adventures in Repacks - Part 31.2 - Repack from Wally World

The other 8 packs.

I was looking forward to busting the pack of MVP, since outside of a random card in a repack, I'd never come across any of it before. Oh yes, this was one of their border-intensive designs. It looks like it crushing poor Sergei. The Classics parallel is easily the favourite here. A St. Pats jersey? A one-game NHLer? That's my kinda card.

I generally go right to the gold cards in the Score packs, but figured Boucher's final base card, following a 10 game stint with the 'canes was worthy of a highlight.

It is easily quality over quantity with the golds, as despite being outnumbered 4-2, the best cards are the gold parallel of a Kitchener Rangers alum alongside that great anthem photo of Byfuglien.

The final flagship UD had some nice stuff as well. Both posts gave me the chance to post a card featuring a Wings uniform from an outdoor game. And that Canvas Young Guns is a tough pull, landing at 1:48 packs in either hobby or retail. Bonus: He's a Kitchener Rangers alum, along with also being the son of former Buffalo Bill Carlton Bailey. A perfect card!

The Parkhurst seems almost an afterthought, but here's some cards for the ol' mask binder from that.

There you have it! No hits this time, but there was enough interesting stuff to make it a good repack choice.

2018 Adventures in Repacks - Part 31.1 - Repack from Wally World

I looked, and found some 16-17 packs in this, with these being the results on the whole.

1 02-03 MVP
1 06-07 Parkhurst
1 09-10 UD S2
2 09-10 OPC
6 12-13 Score
1 13-14 Score
1 13-14 UD S2
1 14-15  UD S2
1 16-17 UD S1
1 16-17 Parkhurst

I'll just use random.org to pick which packs get shown off first. And they will be:

I'll go through these chronogically.

Parkhurst are always fun for the variety, even if you don't land one of the on-card autos. Mike Keenan and Gump Worsley in the same pack? Great!

There were a couple inserts in the first of the UD packs. I have no complaints over a rookie year card of Jamie Benn.

Not too much team variety in the OPC packs as they started. 3 Avs and 2 Leafs? But I get an Alfredsson, and it is always nice to get my favourite player, even if it is a dupe. My fave might still be that Rafalski, for providing a photo from one of the outdoor in an unexpected set.

A Gordie Howe insert adds a little something to the first of the Score packs.

My second Alfredsson of the break! Also a dupe, but again, a favourite player pull is always great. As are the photos on the two horizontal cards.

Some more horizontal cards with interesting photos and a Crosby insert ends this group of 8. I'll end this repack tomorrow with the other 8 packs.

3 Downs. 3 Boxes: Third Box.

Time for this hobby box fest to end.

As I got to this box, I finally got hit with some dupes. In fact, only a handful of cards were needs that dropped off the list. But, I did get some dupes of guys I'd be looking for a second card of anyhow, such as Marc-Olivier Brouilette here. He's a 2/14 baby, and this is his second card in the binder, joining a card from his Alouettes days.

The dupes continued over here among the red parallels, as Beard, Coombs and Rose make their second appearance, having also had red parallels on the previous post.

At least the golds were new.

Two golds means two purples. Both of which have interesting photos. Defensive players with the ball are the football version of pitchers at the plate, and it looks like Brian Jones is making a catch with his facemask.

At least both the game jersey cards were of active guys! With his helmet on, Jon Gott just looks like a sentient beard.

The autos here were pretty good, and were my first to feature two guys from different teams. Trevor Harris has been comfortably leading the Redblacks to the lead of a rather questionable division, and Luke Tasker makes me 3-for-3 with hits from the Ticats. If the name seems familiar, he's the son of Bills Special Teams legend Steve Tasker. This means I've acquired an auto of both father and son this year.

Despite all the base dupes, a pretty good box on the whole with the hits. By the time you read this, I'll hopefully have the needed cards updated on my wantlist.

From hobby boxes to repacks with the next post.

3 Downs. 3 Boxes: Second Box.

Time for the second of the boxes.

I'll probably only do one of the base cards per box. I'm just highlighting this one since it seems to be the type of photo that would look so much better in the horizontal format.

The red parallels.

The gold parallels. Kicker love in this! I got three of these, since I only ended up with one of the purples.

The Alouettes alternates may the uniforms that look the best in this design.

The two relics in the box. Neither player is active in the CFL at this point. Fantuz retired in the off-season. Messam, on the other hand... So I am 1-for-4 in terms of active players on the relics. Not good, but at least two of them were Ti-Cats swatches.

Double blue from the double blue on the autos, even though Lemon is with the Lions now. But, I'll take it, especially with the rarity of OL autos in the hobby as a whole.

There's Box #2. One more to go in the next post!

3 Downs. 3 Boxes: First Box.

The 2018 edition of Upper Deck CFL release dropped on Wednesday, and on paper, it seemed that it might be the best since the product's debut. It had a 200 card base set, but none of it was short-printed like previous years. Each pack would also contain either a hit or a card numbered to 150 or less, so it would feel like you'd get something nice out of each pack.

Let's see what my first box held!

This is the base card design. The cards are entirely vertical this year. Maybe the border on the left side could be a little thinner, but that's the only real complaint I have about this design. This also marks the first appearance of Antoine Pruneau's photo in the base set. He had a card in 2014, but that made the news for featuring a photo of Marcus Henry on it.

The card backs. You can't tell here, but they cut off at 5 years of stats. The photo background and design's colours change based on the parallel. Red for red, etc.

Speaking of red, here's all those parallels. Nice and bright.

Golds seem a little more subdued. As you can tell from these two scans, both kickers and offensive linemen get cards in this release. But, with the ability to have 22 cards per team (198 cards/9 teams, with 2 checklists), UD's rosters can go a little deeper.

The purple parallels are the lowest numbered parallels available. They're probably my favourite of the base designs, not so much for the numbering, but the comparatively rareness of the colour in cards.

Let's see the hits! A really good start for me, as I get a Ticats swatch first. The jumbo swatches are the only appearance of the O-Pee-Chee name in the releases. The card really doesn't have an OPC feel to it, as it is super glossy, just like the regular game jersey cards. The jumbos are rarer, at a rate of about 1 every 6 boxes.

And here are the autos. I'm glad that Adams included his number on his sticker, otherwise I thought UD might have reused a sticker from his 2011. He made the highlight reels last week for a rather unique celebration, and the CFL will now allow the use of props in TD celebrations.

And there you have it! 1 box down. 2 left!

Sportlots Miscellany

I took advantage of the new Sportlots Box feature to pick up a bunch of cards in smaller quantities from various sellers. Let's see what I got!

Most of the shipment was damage to my wantlist for 2018 Stadium Club. This was the one I was happiest to knock off my list, and it was significantly cheaper than at COMC, even with shipping figured in. With the approximately 20 more that were in this, only 8 left to finish it.

Only 1 left to finish off the non-SP portion of 2017 Heritage Minors. This was the bigger need of the two remaining. Also, Mmmmmm...Bacon.

I realized I lacked a Juha Ylonen in my quest to get a card for every member of the Ottawa Senators who had one with the team. He only donned the uniform for 15 games, but still got a BAP card out of it.

I do have cards of Mike Brodeur as a Senator, but my inner weirdo would much rather have a card of him on the Greenville Grrrowl.

Random Alfie!

Another card of an obscure netminder, with this one bound for my masks collection. Underhill's 1 game was still enough to get him a card. His mask is from his time with the AHL's Manchester Monarchs.

I'll end this with some 2/14 cards. That Muresan/Bradley was on the verge of breaking through to my Top 10 wanted list for a bit. That would probably have remained true even if Muresan wasn't a 2/14 baby.

And there you have it! I'll start showing off the cards from a 3 box break of 2018 Upper Deck CFL with the next post.

One Card Only: If Cards Could Talk

This one would probably sound like Q*Bert after Coily the Snake jumped on him.

Mailbag: Cards on Cards Part 1

I'm handling this mailing in two parts, because there were two distinct parts to the envelope. The first was an absolute torrent of Mets, but there were a few others that I still think deserved a salute of there own.

There was just one Raptors card, but it is a pretty nice one. JYD is probably still one of the more popular Raptors in team history.

Along with that some major damage to my Stadium Club wantlist. Only 8 to go! While the Koufax is really nice, my fave in this bunch might be that Jackson. Classic Oakland green and yellow against a perfectly cloudless blue sky. That's baseball!

A bunch of Mets still to come in a future post!