2/14 Literature

 My 2/14 collection finally has a booklet card! 

Naturally, it is an on-the-cheap addition of Christian "which ocean" Hackenberg.

But it does include a giant patch and a signature, which makes up for the pain-in-the-arse these cards are to store.

It wouldn't really be a booklet card without at least some reading material to go along with it, right?

There you have it!

Bills, Bills, Bills! And Lions.

 

Time for some group break goodies from a couple case breaks of Luminance and Elite. Depressingly, both products had Josh Allen as the cover boy on the original pre-order packaging, but went with Joe Burrow and Kyler Murray on the actual release. How does that predict the Bills content in the boxes?

I already got a Josh Allen base card in my personal box of this - here's a few more to go with it. That's not the complete set, as I didn't get the Carlos Basham base card. 

And while I didn't get any hits from this, I did get a pretty nice low-numbered parallel from it. The green does go nicely with the field background used on the photo, even if it really doesn't work with the team colours.

Here's the elite base set. I like seeing all the different uniform styles over only three cards, even though the photo quality goes down (although it would be hard to beat the Luminance Diggs and its uniqueness).

As for the rookies, only Rousseau dupes up as a base. Basham's card is an Aspirations parallel, and I love that they included his nickname on the card. I hope that some future auto cards of his are signed with 'Boogie'.

More Rousseau here. This would be such a great card for a U of Miami super-collector.

And here's an auto! Stevenson was the only Bills draft pick for one of the marquee positions in the draft (6th rounder), and this is is my first auto of his this year. I've got a Spencer Brown sitting in my COMC inventory, so completing a collection of their 2021 draft class' certified autos is within reach before kickoff.

I also decided to take a chance on the Lions spot, hoping to get some Penei Sewell to fatten out a future mailer to Cards on Cards - and here's a pair of his cards.

And a bonus for me! Even if he doesn't end up with a legendary career, Amon-Ra St. Brown will have the best name of this rookie class. This should be an on-card autograph. As for the blue ink, I believe those are the second most common of the Pen Pals autos, but at least it will match the team colours for Detroit.

There you have it!

The Name Game

 

Sure, you notice his love for fresh fruits, but that almost makes you ignore he has a name that sounds like a shopkeeper on a British children's show from the 80s. 

Much Ado About Murray

 Back to the COMC mailer, and today, it is the Jamal Murray content contained within. 

If the content had a theme, shiny might be the term one could use to describe it. But then this would be the outlier, as the only thing shiny about it might be that green foil used to indicate that this was a parallel.

I can't use parallels either, as this base card, featuring one of my favourite looks (two images, not the same and with different jerseys) appears.

And there's also an insert to throw that off.  And it isn't one of the shiny parallels either.

But here's some colour - a Holo Green and Yellow Laser parallel, that looks loud enough to have come from an Optic release, but this is just plain old Donruss.

Mosaic! There's a product with some load parallels in their releases.  Going clockwise from the top left, there's a Reactive Orange, Reactive Blue, Green and Pink Camo version of the base card. 

This orange parallel isn't reactive, but it does provide the only numbered card from the break, and it also puts me at a Dalmatian-worthy 101 cards in his PC.

There you have it!

Mets Catch-up

 Last week, I showed off a bunch of Jays from case breaks of Diamond Kings and Stadium Club. Today, it is the Mets turn.

The perfect DK variety among the 3 base cards the Mets I landed. A veteran, a rookie, and a legend. The Seaver is a SP, and there were also SPs of Lindor and DeGrom that I didn't get.

But there was a nice variety among the inserts. The Artist's Palette adds some colour to a rather blue and white set.

DK did bring my only hit from the cases. I like the variety in swatch colours, but I'm going to have a hard time believing that the brown swatch is from a Mets uniform.

Switching to Stadium Club here are some vertical base cards!

And some horizontal ones.

While I didn't really luck out with a bunch of parallels on the Jays side, the Mets side got me a bunch of them. Red foil! Black foil! Black and white! WOO-HOO!

But here's the best of all the parallels - all foily and shiny and chromey and numbered to just 25 copies!

After all those base cards, a pair of inserts seems like the perfect way to end it. I still need the Pete Alonso to go right in the middle of this triumvirate, so that's probably a wantlist card at some point in the near future.

And there you have it!

2021 Adventures in Repacks Part 30 - 1 + 5 = 6.

 

I'm continuing to finish up my latest 'straight from the source' repacks, and all that was left was one of those 250 card football cubes, and this. I've busted one of these before. This was the other one that was in that shipment.

I'm not going to show off the entire contents of the pack, but here's a couple PC dupes. 

And the insert in the pack was an interesting two-sport crossover, even if it wasn't an action shot. These do tend to make an appearance in the canvas portion each season.

And the Young Guns. In terms of book value, the Anderson is the easy winner, with his values getting a slight boost over the playoffs. There's two future Senators there as well, as Mete and Zaitsev suited up for the team this past year. Balcers returned to the Sharks organization via waivers, after coming here in the Erik Karlsson trade. So it remained interesting to me beyond the notable Anderson card.

There you have it!

2021 Adventures in Repacks Part 29 - A Baseball Surprise

 

Let's do another one of these!

Here's the contents.  

I am not going to highlight the entire pack, but I'll show off my personal highlights. I like the casualness of the Jose Lind card. Whatever defensive play he made looks totally routine. The Saberhagen was the only Mets content in the whole repack, and the Kruk is so close to moment-of-impact greatness. I had absolutely no memories of either Figueroa or Levis.

As always, 70s/80s was all 80s, but that glossy McCovey makes up for it. 

Last time, a 90s repack got me a CC Sabathia rookie card from 1999 Update. Here, there was nothing close to that level of awesomeness. I guess I'll highlight a Jays alum, a minor league card, and some Stadium Club.

The Pitchers Pack was probably the most interesting to me. Pitcher at the plate (even if it was hidden on the back of the card, a couple Blue Jays (Perdomo wouldn't see the bigs until 2020 with the Brewers), and one of the finest players ever to be born in Saudi Arabia.

But the 2000s pack was pretty solid as well. Surprisingly, only one flagship set card appeared here. The Padres appearances is pretty nice, with the ticket motif and some camo options. The Eric Young looks fairly normal based on the photo on the front.

But on the back, he looks to be the only person who looks terrified to be heading into the batting cage.

There you have it!

Lotta Lowry

 

I did say there was a significant Kyle Lowry component to my latest COMC shipment. How much ido I consider significant? This much!

It was entirely cards in this, with this pre #7 sticker being the sole exception. As I wrote yesterday, the best multiple image cards are ones that showcase multiple jerseys. He switched to the more familiar number in the 2013 offseason after Bargnani was traded, so his 2013 entries have both options.

The name being repeated on the right looks odd when the name is right there on the top. But again, no repeated image on the front, and different jerseys make it a winner.

Why is an insert out of Totally Certified named 'Registered Mail' as opposed to 'Certified Mail'? 

Out of this whole group, I only duped up once on the insert set/parallel combo. The shinier one is a Horizon parallel.

Court Vision did make multiple appearances, but it was spread across two different sets and years.

No hits in the mix, but there were a pair of numbered cards in there. The Excalibur is /149. 

And the rest of 'em! Stretching from 2012-13 all the way through 19-20 for a nice cardboard summary of his time in Toronto - whatever may happen this offseason. 

There you have it!

Recapping Raptors

 

While I planned to recap the Raptors portion of some recent group breaks, I opted to also throw in this card into this recap out of my most recent COMC arrivals. For the simple reason that all the other Raptors content in the shipment were Kyle Lowry cards, and I really didn't want to shoehorn this into a post that was entirely one guy. 

A pretty nice design for a card out of a set named Mosaic, and the montage doesn't re-use the same photos on the front. Even better - 3 different unis as well!

A break of Contenders didn't work out so well. But at least here's a base set of the three players you expect to find when a base set is limited to 3-4 cards per team.

But at least I got one numbered parallel from the mix. 

Unlike contenders, I did not land a complete base set of Raptors from Crown Royale. 

But the missing player did show up in a beautifully gaudy Crystal Blue parallel. 

And I landed a hit this time around, with my first Malachi Flynn relic. It joins an auto of his I got earlier this season. A nice way to mix things up in the binder. 

Nothing super rare from the breaks, but the Raptors aren't that expensive this season in breaks. Unlike next year, where it will balance out with them having the #4 pick in the draft, and will be priced accordingly. 

There you have it!