2018 Adventures in Repacks - Part 37.2 - Familiar Fleas!

From a new repack, to one I regularly show off - a flea market brick. As with the usual ones, these are $5, and contain about 50 recent cards from mostly mid-range sets, with a hit in the middle.

Out of the gate, some Platinum and some Ice. The decision to make some of the base cards All-Star game themed resulted in some fun cards in the set this past release.

Those flagship base cards were about as low-end as the cards got in this.

There were a lot of Artifacts in this, and a lot of SP Authentic base cards in this one. So, even being a Leafs card, that Sittler was a nice break. I probably would have loved that set and its design were I Leafs fan.

There's the hit of the brick. A two colour swatch on a card for my mask hits binder. Great! That die-cut of Shanahan is pretty nice as well, and I may even like the acetate design element to it better than the actual hit.

As I said. Lots of Artifacts in this. Although I don't mind too much, since 16-17 was one of my favourite designs for the release.

And here's some SPA. But this grouping also brings lots of interesting stuff. A Sens card. A Rangers alum. Gretzky. And a set I don't see much of in this, UD Mask Collection.

Might as well end this with some more Artifacts, even though last season's bare bones design may have been one of my least favourites.

But there you have it!

2018 Adventures in Repacks - Part 37.1 - Something New!

Something sorta new at the Dollarama! The 80 card baseball packs might be taking the cold weather season off and replaced with 80 card hockey packs. They are $1 more than the baseball ones, but 80 cards is still a nice amount for $4. Let's see everything!

Off and running with the left cards. The baseball ones seemed to have a lot of late 80s cards, while the hockey ones seem to trend towards early 90s. But at least one of them this time was a French version. Even though it is the junk wax era, that Nieuwendyk is a really great card, especially with the visible shadow.

Gotta show off the back of 1993 Leaf card. The new Leaf release included autoed buybacks from this set, and I was really tempted to try a box and see if I could hit one.

Steve Konawalchuk was always a favourite name of mine to say out loud. Stanley makes an appearance on the Jim Paek card. He was the first player born in South Korea to lift the Cup, and was the first to reach the NHL period. I don't think there could be a better photo for a rookie card than that. 2/14 baby Calle makes an appearance here, but it is a binder dupe.

About time some 1990 Bowman made an appearance. It wouldn't be a repack without some! Ilya Byakin is the first player so far, I had no memories of, cards or otherwise. He was an 11th round pick and spent parts of two seasons with Edmonton and San Jose. The photo on the Osborne is another new favourite of mine. A face-off photo, but it really doesn't seem to feature the players taking it.

The first half draws to a close with a goaltender intensive portion, although only the Miller qualifies for the mask binder, since Hasek was still sporting the plain gear and Nabokov is a dupe. 3 Senators cards so far was more than I'd expect.

A nice start to the second part of this with a pair of Landeskog cards. While the flagship card is a Rangers alum dupe, that Platinum base card is a new one. The Esposito is a sorta precursor to Archives/Heritage, with a new photo attached to a familiar design. In this case, this is 1969-70 design, Tony's rookie year.

There's a reason I didn't include the back of the Jeff Daniels Leaf card.

That's because I got dupes of it within the same side of cards. And there's my first ever San Diego Mariners card. WOO-HOO! Grosek is the player on this side of the repack that I had no memory of, including cardboard appearances.

Looks like 1991 UD had a pair of great shot from above the ice with a nice usage of shadows. Why does the cynic in me think they were from the same game?

And here's the end of it. They aren't insanely valuable, but that insert of Kenins was unexpected as this drew to a close.

And there you have an 80-card repack! All I ask for is a few keepers out of thse, and I've got some mask binder cards, some Sens and interesting miscellany. Perfect!

Stacks of Wax - Box 6 (Or Tin #1)

I'll return to repacks tomorrow, but still have one more thing to get to.

When combined with the cards from the hobby box I picked up, I'm probably about a dozen or so cards away from completing the non-Young Guns portion of the set. If I'm going to highlight a card from the base, why not show off the MSG roof, along with lots of team history in the background?

Speaking of Young Guns, here's two more.

And another one. With both the tin and the box, I've knocked out two of the three big YG cards, with Kotkaniemi probably the third.

There's a Winter Classic over-sized card per tin.

There's also a Rookie Commence insert. That sounds so awkward as a name for a subset. Almost Engrish-y.

Some familiar insert sets make their appearance as well. The first two were guaranteed, but the Shooting Stars are about 1 in every 3 tins. They are rarer here, like with the hobby boxes.

The final card to show off is a simple one-colour relic, but these are also not that easy to come across in a tin, at about 1 in 5. And it isn't a plain white swatch. Still, the hit probably isn't as big a pull as the Rasmus Young Guns.

And that's it for the boxes/tins of November. Repacks. Sweet repacks return tomorrow.

Stacks of Wax - Box 5

This was the only box I actually picked up on Black Friday, along with a tin of 2018-19 UD S1. Googling lead to me to a LCS that was right along the LRT line in Edmonton, so I took a quick trip away from the celebrations, and grabbed something to bust.

I really like the design this year, with the pennant being sorta 1965ish.

Here's a base card sampler. The set is 300 cards, with the first 100 being active players, the middle 100 being legends, and the final 100 being rookies. I'm definitely within range of completing the set, so I've added the needs to my wantlist linked at the side.

I landed 6 of these /299 parallels in this in addition to the Franco Harris: Matt Ryan, Elvin Bethea, Jaylen Samuels, Michael Gallup and Malik Jefferson. The only difference other than the numbering is these have red backs as opposed to the yellow/orange that the regular ones have.

Some more parallels, with the shinier Von Miller being /175, and also having a red back as opposed to the standard ones on the regular chromium. I also picked up chromiums of DJ Chark and Antonio Brown, and a second /99 card of DJ Moore.

Inserts!

The first hit, is a relic in all its plain white glory.

However, the guaranteed auto looked pretty promising.

Yup. That's a nice one, especially since there do not appear to be a lot of Darren Woodson autos on the market. And his penmanship is passable. I'd probably like it a lot more if I was a fan of the Cowboys.

There you have it!

Stacks of Wax - Box 4

And the final box from the stacks is probably my favourite recent Panini release, mainly because it reminds me so much of another favourite - Rookie Anthology. You might not be able to tell due to the positioning of the logo on the plastic, but there are 6 packs with 8 cards each.

Pack 1:

Hey, that's only 7 cards! Even if that Acuna /99 is pretty nice. So, why only 7?

That's because I believed this card deserved to be shown off on its own. They're small, but those are 4 really nice patch pieces. They're all off of the Camden Yards 25th anniversary patch. That's pretty nice, and then you combine it with an on-card auto, and that's a pretty good card.

Oh, it is also 1/1. To get more technical, it is a Rookie Cornerstones Onyx. Not black, but onyx. Because that's classier. And it is extra classy since it is written out as text. I'd call this a certain keeper, but if someone can dig up a similar true 1/1 for one of my PCs, I'd listen. Hays struggled this past season, and didn't return to the majors, but this is still a beauty.

Wow. Getting this in the first pack certainly means that there's really not much to really anticipate as this goes on.

Pack 2:

A noble effort by the second pack with a numbered Mets card in sorta team colours. The Gohara autograph is a gold parallel. At least there's also a pretty nice Illusions base card as well. I think the dual photos make this my favourite of the designs used in this set.

Pack 3:

The last time I busted one of these, I also got a /299 Molina Press Proof parallel. I sent that one off to Kerry @ Cards on Cards in a recent bubbler. Now I've got a keeper for me! The pinstriped Crawford is /199 to wrap up the numbered cards in this pack.

Pack 4:

A points card. That's a blah way to wrap up the hits. But at least there was the first Ohtani from this product I've pulled. The Bryant is the base Cornerstones, but it is still /99.

Pack 5:

There's the 5th, and final appearance of Clint Frazier in the box.

Pack 6:

Although none of the hits were Yankees, the box had a lot of them. The pair of Judges move the total to 10, with that Limited being the only numbered parallel from the Bronx. The red McMahon (/199) and the green Cano (/49) were also numbered.

And there you have it.

Stacks of Wax - Box 3

Over to basketball, and a cheap, but fun product. Much like Upper Deck Ice, Clear Vision is (was) an all-acetate product. It isn't too expensive, likely because hits are pretty tough pulls, falling 1 every 5 to 6 boxes. But the boxes do come in the always rare colour of clear.

The cards are most clear, except for the player and the coloured background, which are also raised on the card. I'm amused that the portion includes space for Jeremy Lin and his late 90s boy band hair.

Each pack contained 3 base cards, then either a rookie, a parallel, or an insert. There isn't too much special about the base card photos, but here's a Hoosiers alternate jersey.

The two rookies. That's the second appearance of a Trey Lyles card over the last few days.

And your parallels. That Grant Hill is really compacted on the background.

And an insert, which does have my favourite design of the break. While the Visionaries subset isn't exclusively the domain of players sporting eye wear, it works perfectly. Kareem also has a card in this subset, and it looks just as great. Although if they had to extend the checklist as deep as, say, Kurt Rambis, maybe I'll just stick to the coincidental pairings like this.

I said autographs were tougher pulls. Not impossible ones. The good thing about the longer odds in pulling them is that they tend to be pretty good ones when they come out. Blake might not be as hyped in Detroit as in L.A., but I'm not complaining.

One more box to go, and despite the Blake Griffin and Curtis Martin appearances so far, my favourite pull, from one of my favourite recent products is still to come!