2022 Adventures in Repacks - Part 28 - Baseball Hanger

 

This is the final 'new' repack I have. All that's left are a few more 'forgotten but not gone' ones. Better restock! 

Looking behind Yaz, here's what we find. O-Pee-Chee content always warms my Canadian heart, no matter who the player is that gets the bilingual feature. Kolodny never made it above 'A' ball, so I love the obscurity there. And there's some Mets content in it! Even better, it is Heritage Mets content! 

Gypsy Queen isn't really known for having memorable photography on its base cards, so getting a bunt photo on one of them is an unexpected piece of cardboard beauty. That's some horrific airbrushing on that Bohm. I'm not sure if the uniform or batting helmet looks more obvious. Vanguard isn't a set you often see in repacks, so that's also pretty nice. 

Here's your hit! Back-to-back repacks with an acetate auto in this. Perez is still doing the minor-league thing, but missed 2 straight seasons, and this year's stats are dire, with a 0-4 record and an ERA over 9. Still, this is set aside for the Tigers fan on my trade list.

There has been nice stuff so far, but that Van Landingham easily wins the nod for my favourite card in this. That's only because of how his name stretches all the way to his shoulders on the back, and how the photo perfectly captures that. Also - a snowy Christmas card!

Heritage wraps it up.

Uniform Hunting

 One of the things I enjoy doing at COMC is looking for uniforms that didn't make appearances on cards during their time of actual use. Usually, that means home NBA or NHL uniforms, since cards from the 70s and 80s used to originate from games in Washington. 

That was my rationale for grabbing a  Darcy Rota autograph earlier this year.

And that was also my rationale for this:

Since there are not a lot of pictures of those home white lightning bolt jerseys available on cardboard in original, non-throwback form, I had to settle for an autographed one. Benson isn't a huge name, despite being a #1 draft pick, so the price was reasonable.

And the photo on the back includes the lightning bolt on the shorts. Even better!

There you have it!

2022 Adventures in Repacks - Part 27 - Sunday Surprises

 The last two Surprise Bags that I've had sitting in my to-be-posted box for ages. Time to restock!

Here's the first one!

I'd comment that I'd be surprised about finding a Paramount card in this, seeing as this really is not a set you see a lot of  in repacks. But then I'd just have to go back to my last post, where I found one that made its way into my Kitchener Rangers alum collection.

Yeah, that Ovie card is nice. But the photo variation from that release is even nicer.

The Binnington will be making its way into the mask binder. And that might be a helmetless in-game photo. But the rest of this is pretty blah.

Those Swedish packs are probably my favourite things from these recent repacks. It really doesn't matter if I don't recognize the names - I like the obscurity factor. Although I did recognize a name in this one, with former Flyers/Islanders goalie Tommy Soderstrom appearing on an insert. This is similar to the Sidelines cards from Pinnacle, but this one is rather boring - just that Soderstrom watches the stock market. 

No Swedish packs in this one. But maybe (doubtful), there will be something worthy of that holder. 

It might not be there in terms of book value, but that wild dive makes the Salo definitely worthy of being preserved in that snap loader. It even towers over the great photo on the Larose. You know the grouping is great when a Satan card from the lost 04-05 season is easily the worst card in the repacked pack.

Sens card! Player falling! Martin Brodeur as the HOFer! That's not too bad either!

And the final 5. This is easily the dullest of the 3 in this on the whole, but that Electric Ice parallel of a super happy Ronnie Stern is again pretty notable, as we have the second helmetless (likely) game photo of this post, as he celebrates one his 9 goals from the previous season.

Even without the Swedish pack, the second one easily contained the more interesting cards.

There you have it!

Rangers Round-up

 Another bunch of Kitchener Rangers alum courtesy of my latest COMC shipment.

Most of it was stuff from e-packs, either picked up on that site, or cheaply on COMC. This is one of two exceptions, as those weren't a thing yet in the 2012-13 season. Sadly for Clarkson, Eastern Conference Champions was as bragging as his attire could get, as it would be the Kings getting the Stanley Cup that season.

And the other card is this shiny, patriotic entry. It is also a Tim Horton's card - so it is a food issue, too! Bonus!

In terms of volume, it was Dominik Kubalik who wins this battle, with this scanner bed filled with cards. He only spent a half-season here, but it still counts for that PC. 

John Gibson's 3 cards doesn't come close. 

Reid Valade's content is one of those direct entrants into the collection. He was undrafted, so this might be the extent of his content in the collection. 

I'd probably not be happy if I busted a box of Platinum, either on e-pack or an actual box, and my one-per-box auto was a fringe NHLer, but I'll take advantage of someone else's lack of success with their box and pay a little more than dollar for another autograph for the collection. 

Gregory Campbell doesn't have a lot of cardboard proof that he spent a season in Columbus. But I have one of only four pieces of metallic proof. This was the final season in the league, but it was one that did get him a Stanley Cup in Boston to follow up the Memorial Cup win in 2003.

There you have it!

Always time for Chronicles

 I recently busted some 2022 Draft Chronicles, so why not follow that up with some of the NFL variety.

The draft product promised Playbook & Playoff. Here, I get Pinnacle.

This might be the most true base cards I've ever pulled from a single pack of Chronicles, across any sport. But, at least there was a Bills card in the mix, and any new Josh Allen is a nice little addition. 

Regular Chronicles tends to follow up the paper cards with chrome/prizm-ish cards. Here, you get matte cards. While it looks really nice on the Gridiron Kings card, not as much so with the Luminance. But I do like getting a card of a guy named Gainwell - a great name for any offensive player on a football team. 

Both had at least one bronze parallel per pack. I'd rather see another set represented. 

Much like with Donruss and Score in 2022 Draft, they flash back to the 1992 Pinnacle release here. Not too bad of a look, but they really needed to ditch the foil on the bottom, and add the position in the upper corner to make it a little more accurate.

If I'm only going to get one chrome card in this, it might as well be a Mac Jones. 

This definitely lacked the variety I usually see in these, but at least there was a Josh Allen appearance.

2022 Adventures in Repacks - Part 26 - Another hanger

 

Hanging around the 7/11 was this hanger. This means that there were two hangers there that had a James Neal card as the opener. But we have different teams and different sets (this one is regular SP), so we still have the variety of the repack.

I would have gone for the Patrick Kane as the opener, as those Superstars cards were somewhat SPd in that release. We also get the olbigatory 1990 Bowman stuff. Some would be wowed by  the Brett Hull base card, but I'm more wowed by the amazing mall hair behind Craig Simpson. 

And  your hit! Pretty nice how this is dated in several places to coming from the Skills Competition, even though the he's sporting a jersey with only a couple stripes of red on it in the photo from the event.

CHL and AHL uniforms are my among my favourite parts of these for the randomness factor. While Boyle did reach the NHL, and was still playing as of last  year, Gajewski never got beyond the ECHL, which ups the obscurity factor and makes for an even better card. That is Ray Sheppard sporting the throwback jersey on the Detroit card.

WOO-HOO! Kitchener Rangers alum Boyd Devereaux starts this off.  Also, in an interesting combination, you get a pair of goalies from the Sharks inaugural season with the very obvious Hackett, and the less  obvious Hayward.

And your finale. More CHL fun with someone who did reach the NHL, and is now playing closer to Portland as he was recently traded to Seattle. 

There you have it!

Extending the Senators

The finale of the 21-22 NHL season's flagship releases dropped last Wednesday. Mind you, there are plenty of releases of mid-range products still to go, including Artifacts, which usually hits the market in October of that release year. 

But that gave me a chance to get into a group break to wrap up the season.

They only warranted 4 base cards among the regular cards. Formenton is the only one here I've had cards of previously in an Ottawa uniform. 

This was an interesting case, as all the Young Guns within were missing the foil "Young Guns" logo. That included the two Senators as part of the checklist. As I write this, there's only one such card up on ebay (probably from this same break), so I'm guessing cards with this 'feature' are pretty rare over this print run.  This does likely mean that I'll wait for e-packs, and pick up some cheap replacements.

The foil did show up on the clear cut parallel, though.

And here's one more Sokolov appearance, in canvas form.  Even though I already have a couple CHL cards of him, this is a solid start to his portion of the team PC.

Like last year, a bunch of other sets also make an appearance in the set, to give it a slight Rookie Anthology vibe. First up, here's some 06-07 retros. Last year had 05-06s. 

1999 also gets retro'ed with these SPX cards.

Numbered card 1!

And here's #2. You've got to flip this over to see that this card is /100 as UD3 gets a salute on this gold parallel. There's plenty of time left to go lower, but as of  now, this is the lowest numbered card I have of the young Senators star. Until that changes, this beauty of a  card is in that spot.

There you have it!

The Newest 2/14 faces

 Even if it only means looking through the lists at TCDB, I always like finding new candidates for the 2/14 binder. And after last time, I now do a basic google search on them to see if they have some rather nasty  skeletons in their closet. 

Stefan Andersson only looks like a serial killer in his photo. There's no evidence he actually is one. Fortunately for him, he does have a less insulting option available if he want to show proof of his pro hockey career. That one, alas, wasn't available at COMC.
 

A Medal of Honor winner! Certainly that can't be problematic...

"pursuit of hostile Apache Indians"... I have no way of knowing either way, but that definitely doesn't sound as noble with just those words through 2022 eyes as it may have at the time.  Fortunately, there's a lot more to his career than just that. I particularly liked learning that he received a Bachelor of Science in Agriculture when he was 73 years old. That just makes him seem like a cool older guy, almost worthy of a card merely for that accomplishment. 

Soccer sticker! Annotsara is the second lady  to join the soccer portion of the collection, alongside Erica Skroski. 

If the design worked so well for 1977 NFL, why not recycle it across the pond for a 1978 release, albeit with the slight alteration on the position?

I can say with reasonable confidence that there has never been a time where I've made an effort to find out if a 7th round draft of the Arizona Cardinals makes the team. But now I have. But even if he does, I still doubt that Panini will release cards of a late round Offensive Line guy. But, Hayes did have a couple cards in the e-pack USA  Football release, so I was able to go back to 2017 to get these cards. And these are, at least for now, I have copies of the only 2 Marquis Hayes cards there are,

There you have it!