Decisions, Decisions

Do I add this card of Terrence Long to my penmanship colllection, or to my Mets collection? Seeing as he made 3 plate appearances with the Mets, striking out twice and grounding into a double play in the other, he might seem like a perfect candidate for the latter.

But I  also figure there are more autographed Mets card out there than autographed cards of guys with legible signatures, so I'm going with the penmanship one.

And there you have it!

As Good a Day as Any

 Even with the World Series just a few days in the rear view mirror, it is still a fine day to start digging into my most recent incoming mailer from Dennis @ Too Many Verlanders, and start with the Blue Jays content.

I was certain I had this one already. I did - in my Canadian Content collection. Not in the Jays one. So this fixes that and adds Dasan into the team collection. Even if that looks to be a Team Canada jersey photoshopped into a Jays one.

Time to start digging into the bulk of the content, and leading the way is one of the handful of base cards in this post out of Snapshots. Springer's foil parallel provides the only appearance of the City Connects in this post. Bo's card is my first one of those ASG parallels. Those negative parallels remain nightmare fuel.

The Reactive Orange parallel makes me nostalgic for the rather calm foil parallel in the first group of 9. It is just a coincidence that I started with and also ended the two groups with a base card. It might be look like a parallel, but if it was a standalone set's base card, then of course it counts. 

The only numbered base parallel. As best I can tell, this /499 is a green crackle variation. I miss being able to find out the type of parallel with out having to go to either COMC or TCDB. 

Relic #1. The swatch colour is so similar to the blue in the background, it almost seems like UD forgot to include the actual jersey piece with the card.

Autograph #1: Oh Reese McGuire, you'll never live down your time in a Dollar Tree parking lot.

Especially when you result in a rare W for the Toronto Sun.

And let's end it with the best of both worlds, at least if you want to consider a manufactured baseball piece to be a relic. And since this wasn't the year that they used the E-ZEE Fade ink on the card, it still looks very nice. It's my 6th auto of my favourite player, all of which are Blue Jays ones. I really should try to find a Mets one to keep them company. Or even a Marlins one.

So, thanks for all these additions, and all those still to come in future posts!

There you have it!

Stats on the Back

 

Now this might be one of the more interesting career stat lines you'd see on a card.

Who does this belong to? 

After posting Darryl Henley last week, here's an even bigger fuck-up!

It's Lawrence Phillips!

His numbers were really good, especially in such a pass heavy league like the CFL, but he still had his issues and moved on to Calgary, where he'd play a half season before they had enough of him as well. The rest of his mess of a life is documented pretty well. Suffice to say there's a reason he hasn't even appeared in Nebraska Cornhuskers themed sets since this.

Here's the uncropped back of the card.

There you have it!

Colours

 

Not too much today - just a couple of swatches obviously from alternate jerseys used on cards today. The Elias Diaz entry is a lot more obvious, since it is from an insert set dedicated to the City Connects. Arizona also has entries in one of those releases, but since the Ginter entry was the cheaper option, I went for that. I didn't need it to note that the yellow swatch is from one of those Diamondbacks variants.

So, there's a couple of slightly different swatches.

And there you have it!

2025 Adventures in Repacks - Part 33 - Too Long a Wait

 It really has been too long since I busted a Dollarama hockey repack, so here's one of them!

And it is all cardboard content this time, including a hit!

My usual clockwise from top-left of the repacked content means I'm leading with the hint. Not too bad of one as well, in spite of not being game worn but photo shoot worn. Kassian had double-digit seasons in the NHL, and that's always more interesting than someone who is one-and-done, but got a card because they had the jersey around.

The Canadian pack was also really nice. Two superstars (I guess 3 if you count both names on the checklist) and an interesting photo from an outdoor game. I suppose there could be a better view of the jersey in the photo, but there are other ones available.

Fortunately, the 90s pack is there to provide junk wax blandness. But there was Whalers content and a Team USA jersey to move it slightly beyond the usual.

Classic New Jersey Devils green! Even in throwback form, a great way to end it!

There you have it!

Drug Use is Life Abuse

Of all the players who could appear on an anti-drug card, Darryl Henley might be one of the worst option

Although to defend it, the reason he's still in jail probably isn't the cocaine trafficking, but the attempt to hire a hit man to take out the judge and a witness in his trial.

At least the back remains honest. He trafficked drugs, he didn't use them.

There you have it!

New 2/14 names

 My latest COMC shipment made its way through the latest postal strike to my place, and as always, it is filled with 2/14 content. Including some new names! Let's meet them!

Dennis @ Too Many Verlanders is pretty good when I send out the Bat-Signal for a card that is on ebay in the US, and that I don't want to pay $20+ shipping for a base card. I knew the odds of getting a team issued Ohio State card was nill, so I just so waited for this to drop to a reasonable price to add it. You'll be seeing a card that wasn't of a Buckeye in a future post that qualified as a Bat-Signal card.

The 2/14 baby among this sticker is Iheb Mbarki, as the other football makes its appearance in this post as well. He's probably the first Tunisian in my collection as well. So, there's also that.

The 2005 Sinon Bulls team set is so obscure, it doesn't even appear at TCDB. But there were enough other Chao Hang Cheng (or Cheng Chao-Hang) cards there for him to make the birthday list, and to find one card of his at COMC.

Finally, not only does Kris Huffman enter the collection, but he also will enter with a complete cardboard history into the collection, as these were the only two cards of his career. Still two more than I have, though!

Kris Huffman was also the hardest of this group to see if they passed the google test, as he matches up with both a winless MMA fighter and an NCAA women's basketball coach that was far more successful with her career.

There you have it!

Random Jays

 It just seems like the perfect time to show off a few random Jays that were sitting in my COMC to-be-posted box. 

Sidearm pitchers like Eichhorn just seem to be made to be included in a Sportflics release.

I'm including the reverse of the card, mainly because there can't be too many write-ups on cards that emphasize how slow a pitcher's pitches are. Plus I can imagine since the quote was from Earl Weaver that several variations of 'fuck' were removed from the sentence.

I'll always love odd ideas for inserts, and an action figure theme, complete with a die-cut portion specifically for the hanger. It is something that almost implies that if you submitted this for grading, you'd get just a picture of a middle finger in return. I'm tempted to try, but am just too cheap.

Ken Huckaby is best known for being the guy Derek Jeter slid head first into and separated his shoulder as a result. But I guess that's better than being known for something that negatively impacted their team at the time.

I had a few choices if I wanted a salute to Lance Parrish's career swan song with the Blue Jays in 1995. A play at the plate during an obvious Spring Training game was the best one. 

I'll end with the only hit of the bunch, also meaning I ended with three straight catchers. Charlie O'Brien's time in Toronto was more notable for his debut of the goalie-style catcher's mask than in-game action, but he was still a pioneer in one portion of the game. That's enough for me!

There you have it!

Tip-off!

 The Raptors start off tonight, in a city that probably considers them to be background noise at this point to the sports scene in the city. But I still realize that this is the perfect day to show off much of the Raptors content that has shown up over the past few months.

I added this to my COMC inventory quite a while ago, back when I considered there zero chance he'd get an actual Raptors card. With his role as a veteran bench guy, I thought this would suffice to salute his time here. And then he showed up in some lower-end sticker dumps last year. Oops.

Sandro Mamukelashvili signed with the Raptors this off-season. I'm thinking he might slip into a lower end release as a Raptor, but this will satisfy my desire to add a card of his to the binder.

Alijah Martin was a 2nd-round pick in the most recent draft. Since he is a rookie, he'll certainly show up somewhere in a Raptors jersey during the season. He looks to spend his time between the big club and the G-League 905.

Speaking of the 905, of course their cards count towards the collection.

Now, some actual Toronto Raptors card. Ulrich Chomche was a second round pick last year. He made into 7 games, and that's the extent of his Raptors career, as he was among the final cuts going into the season. It seems this was an injury situation, so it really follows the recent Christian Koloko story, and the sense that you hope he makes it back to league. 

Jamal Shead's addition puts be a Ja'Kobe Walker away from completing the set from the 2024 Raptors draft class.

I do realize that pursuing the entire Raptors portion of the 2019 Road to the Finals insert set would be a futile endeavor that would do nothing more than drain my wallet, probably to bankruptcy. But at least I've now completed the entire first round portion of it.

Now, it is time to move away from the COMC stuff, and on to the stuff from a group break of Revolution.

I didn't get the complete base set, but seeing as this was only a part case, I wasn't surprised. Plus, I'm guessing the rookie/legend portion are SPd. Still, I did get one. And I'm OK with that. My only surprise is that there weren't any of the City Edition jerseys yet. Fortunately, there's already one with RJ Barrett rocking it sitting in my COMC inventory.

Since I did also get a Fractal parallel of that Walter card.

While I didn't land a base card from the Legends portion, it was made up for with a trio of parallels. There's another Fractal here, but also a Lightning parallel /175, and a Cosmic /99.

And one more autograph to go along with it. I'd already had one of his, but I can't have too many Raptorgraphs!

There you have it!

Montreal Flashbacks

 Just a bunch of Montreal baseball cards today - no particular reason as to why, but there's never really a bad reason to show them off.

Seeing Jackie in a Montreal Royals uniform, and reading about the team he would eventually debut for, makes this pretty easy to find the source for the photo. And it looks like we head off to Havana for it.  That makes this a rare three-country photo thanks to the brochure. 

If it weren't for Fleer Tradition, there would be no cardboard evidence that Todd Zeile ever played for the Expos. Since it was the Update set in 2003, and the regular set in 2004 that were the only cards featuring him there. He'd actually be with the Mets for a repeat performance in 2004, and that got a few more pack-pullable options, such as MLB Showdown and Topps Total.

Not to complain about an Expos appearance post-relocation, but a family-themed card of Tim Raines should probably have him with the Orioles, and also include a photo of him with his son/teammate.

This was probably a case of just going through COMC, looking for the least expensive relic, and adding it to my inventory. If you look carefully, there's a hit of a pinstripe in the upper corner.

Start with a non-Expos card, end with one too. Sure, this Heritage retro card (out of Pro Debut) is a Harrisburg Senators card, but since they were affiliated with the Expos at the time of the era if not the release, this is totally, 100% an Expos card. My binder - my decision.

And there you have it!

Always a Reason

 

This seems like a rather odd card to add into my miscellaneous collection. But I have my reason.

For this one, it is because I found this story amusing.

And it also provides a perfectly logical reason as to why a lot of modern autographs are illegible. Although I would need to see a Darryl Ashmore cut auto to verify this.

There you have it!

Uniformity

Just a whole bunch of alternate uniforms in today's post. I probably would have called this something throwback related, but then there's that Seahawks entry in the lower corner. It makes the bottom of a lot of Seahawks-related worst uniform combo lists. and when you're up against the all-neon color rush uniforms, that says alot.

Other than that, it is nice to see how the other teams' entries evolved, especially on ones like the Eagles and Jets with wildly different color schemes. 

 

There you have it!