Another Raptors Post

 Any excuse to return to my recent COMC mailer, and a small bunch of Raptors cards.

Opening up, here's a card from their first season. John Salley seems way too pleased to be a member of an expansion team.

I pulled a card from this set out of one of my recent repack adventures. I figured I liked it enough to add a Raptors card out of it to my collection. 

Court Kings is always a "when in doubt, add one to the shipment" decision. 

McCaw might not be a Raptor here, but I did want one of his autographs for my Ring Recipients collection. He probably won't get one in Toronto colours, so this will have to do unless Panini does a sticker dump.

A one-colour swatch, but it is Chris h, so it is a nice little addition to the binder, since he will be the first HOFer in team history that you think of for their time in Toronto.

And here's the big winner in terms of volume - OG Anunoby. He's yet another late draft pick that has developed nicely for the team. Ujiri truly is a wizard.

And there you have it!

Finally Flawless

As in, I've finally got a card from Panini's super-high-end Flawless in my collection.

Despite being a fairly obvious choice for inclusion in products like Archives, or in World Series themed subsets, Joe has been absent from Topps products, not counting Rediscover buybacks, for about 15 years now. Which basically gives me the choice of either paying an absurd amount for an older card, or not caring about licensing and buying something from Panini.

I think I made the right choice.

The back does describe his most famous home run, so at least I've got that to go along with it.

Joe's penmanship? Also flawless.

2019 Adventures in Repacks: Part 27.5 - A Week's Worth

The fifth and final day worth of Dollarama goodies sees the final 40 cards in the baseball hanger get covered.

2014 Heritage Minors - Preston Tucker - What's an easy way to get me to pick a certain repack? A visible Heritage Minors card will do the trick.
1989 Score - Kelly Downs
1990 Donruss - Tim Jones
1989 Donruss - Ernest Riles

1988 Topps - Ernie Whitt - Jays card #1.
1986 Topps - Darren Daulton
1989 Score - Mitch Williams

1996 Finest - Joe Oliver - And it is unpeeled!
1991 Leaf - Bryn Smith
1995 Ultra - Garey Ingram

1990 Fleer Update - Joe Kraemer - I still haven't decided if this card where Kraemer looks to be peeking around the corner is a great photo choice or an awful photo choice.

1997 UD - Eric Karros - A Tatooine photp (tm: gcrl)
1997 Pacific Crown - David Hulse
2001 MVP - Gabe Kapler
2009 Bowman Chrime - Seiichi Uchikawa

1987 Topps - Gary Carter - Mets content.
1990 Donruss - Greg Vaughn

1999 Stad. Club - Orlando Hernandez - Anything that highlights that leg kick is a perfect photo of El Duque.

1987 Fleer - Bob Ojeda - Another Met!
1991 Topps - Greg Harris
1990 Topps - Bip Roberts
1992 Score - Jeff Carter
1995 Coll. Choice - Chris Gomez
1993 Bowman - Kevin Stocker
1990 Topps - Kevin Appier

2018 Bowman - Mike Soroka - Cancon!

1986 Topps Traded - Bob Tewksbury - Another card from a traded/update set, but minus the photographic quality of the Kraemer.
1989 Topps - Ken Phelps
1990 Donruss - Ozzie Smith
1988 Topps - Ed Hearn
1989 UD - Mitch Williams

1987 Donruss - Roger McDowell - Wow! It was McDowell!
1991 UD - Chuck Crim
1992 Pinnacle Team 2000 - Ben McDonald

1988 Fleer - Tom Henke - The final Jays card of the repack.
1991 Fleer - Mark Thurmond
1992 Donruss - Dave Henderson
1997 Preferred - Paul O'Neill
2012 Topps - Brandon League

2011 Just Drafted - Starling Marte - And to end this - an oddball from a set I'd never heard of!

There's still Sunday to go for this, and I'll be covering one of those Walmart Power Cubes tomorrow.

Nationals Exposure

As soon as I read that there would be an insert set saluting the 50th anniversary of the Montreal Expos in Archives this year, I knew I had to grab the Nationals spot in a group break, if for no reason but to expand my Expos collection.

I'll get the actual Nats content out of the way right away with the base cards.

And the inserts. At least I can say I'm a completist.

Let's start the Expos content with a trio of base cards. I was kinda hoping they'd get one in each design. But that super young looking Gary Carter is kinda cool.

Here's one more insert before we get to the Expos specific insert set.

There's one each of these Expos card per box, and being a case break, I ended up with 10 of them. As I wrote earlier in the week, their desire to include autographed parallels did limit them to living alum. There's a few players I would have liked to see (Valentine, Cromartie) but I still like the content. That might be the first Maury Wills card  where he's pictured with and listed as an Expo.

Two of the three players to be sporting Expos caps in the Hall of Fame round out this group of 10.

Still one more Expos card before we get to the autographs. This green parallel is /99.

While this is an Expos autograph, it doesn't come from the anniversary portion of the set. This is actually one of the Fan Favourite autographs. This is the only one that's part of that portion of the set, with all the others being from the 50th Anniversary portion.

Those are pretty plentiful in the release, falling about one every 2.5 boxes. And that held, as I got 4 of them.

With all respect to Marquis Grissom, he's probably the least interesting to me of the Expos autographs I landed. That's mainly because I already pulled one of his autos from a previous release. I do like that he signed this vertically, realizing that the blue ink wouldn't go with the blue jersey.

Staying with the similar era as Grissom, here's what I really wanted to see from this. New faces for the hit portion of the binder. This also appears to be the first certified autographs of their closer from the late 1980s/early 1990s.

And here's another player who looks to be making their certified auto debut. He was listed on the actual 1969 issue as Jose Laboy, but Coco is far more interesting. His signature style is really interesting, as I didn't think there were too many people that write out their last name one letter at a time. Then I remembered that I just posted one a couple weeks back.

Maury Wills is a frequent signer for Topps, but much like this is appears to be his first pictured/listed Expos card, this seems to be his first autograph card where he isn't a Dodger.

And there you have it! That was definitely a worthwhile pickup for the ol' PC.

Mailed Mets

Courtesy of P-Town Tom.

OK. So this isn't the best photographic entry into Mookie's cardboard history, but any chance to start off a post with some Mookie cannot be ignored.

I guess I could have used this Mookie from this grouping of early 80s Mets instead. Maybe I was just leaning towards the first one being just slightly off-center.

Vintage!

There's always room in posts for any sort of 1998 Metal Universe. If you don't want a card that appears to feature a 100ft tall Carlos Baerga using Times Square as a batter's box, then what is wrong with you?

Sportflics! It was McDowell!

I had no idea that there was a Kevin Mitchell starting lineup card with him on the Mets until this showed up. And am thankful for it.

I'm using two cards I was completely unaware of to wrap up this post. I knew of the regular Donruss and the Baseball's Best version. I didn't know about the all-star version until it showed up in the mailer.

And there you have it! Thanks for all these goodies, and don't be surprised if an envelope with some 70's OPC Cubs heading to Peoria in the near future.

Mucho Mets

Today is as good a time as any to reach into my COMC-to-be-posted box, and post the Mets content within.

Gary Carter? Mr. Met? That's a great way to start off a Mets post. As a bonus, the Let's Go Mets is made from some sort of soft material. Does this count as a manu-patch?

Ollie Perez with his salute to Turk Wendell.

Some more Piazzas. Faux-heritage is nice, but a cardboard salute to his post 9/11 homer is the easy winner in this two-card battle.

The only thing better than a Topps Kids cards is two of them.

And the only hit in the Mets portion of the box was this Joe McEwing auto. While Super Joe wasn't close to superstar status, he was a cult favourite during some rather depressing seasons. And that's just fine for Archives Fan Favourites.

There you have it!

4,000,000 Points and Counting

So, I might be a little bit addicted to doing COMC Challenges when time and availability allow for it:

Just a bit...

Which means this seems like a perfect chance to show off some random cards I've acquired through Challenge-earned credit.

I still don't have the original of the sombrero-clad Bip, This will more than suffice in its absence, though.

Because when I think of somebody with the last name of Chen, I immediately think of Panama.

Random cool photo #1!

Random cool photo #2!

Random Joe Carter!

And to end on even more randomness, not one, but two umpire cards! While it is interesting to add the HOFer card in Barlick, the back of the Sheridan gives a great biography.

So, the original chest protector was actually a hotel registry book? Awesome! Card backs rule!