One Card Only: A Little Art with your Auto?

And it is very appropriate art to go with a musher's autograph.

Mailbag Time!

The trader mailbag opens again, with a pair of small envelopes from Baseball Card Breakdown and Cardboard Clubhouse. I'll be leading with the former, and hopefully not get them mixed up as I go.

I consider the removal of cards from the Bark in the Park the one thing that soured me on the Big League set. A fun set for set builders should be right up my alley! And then they weren't there. Booo! Fortunately, BCB remedied that with a 'sample' of what could have been.

I really should post a picture of Charlie in his Blue Jays collar. The only problem is that he's in full coat now, so it hides under his curls.

OK. Here is an older photo of him with his previous Jays collar.

And here's the back of the card that never was.

TJ Graham's career for the Bills wasn't that spectacular, but at least he did get a nice parallel in team colours.

Although he never made it beyond AA ball, that's still far more of a professional career than I ever had. As for the autograph itself, you can make out two of the letters. That's better penmanship than the autos I posted from that tin of Premier a couple days ago.

And it ends with a random sampling of Jays and Mets. I love the Canada Day cap that Morrow is sporting in his photo. The cards in the lower corner are numbered, with Rios being /999 and Turay limited to 1599 super shiny cards.

Switching to the CC envelope, here's some stickers! The Smith and Raines are fine - I just didn't crop the scan correctly.

The Iooss collection is an insert set I've get way too few cards from. After this mailer, I think it stands at 2 now.

I was always amused how, when he'd come to bat at Olympic Stadium, the announcer would turn up the Frenchness of his name to 11. I guess I amuse easily.

And here's a whole bunch more Expos. Although there are a lot of fun names in the recent Archives release saluting the 50th anniversary of the Expos, I was disappointed that Warren Cromartie wasn't on the checklist. Even if they stuck to living players for that insert set for auto purposes, meaning no Mack Jones, Gary Carter or Charlie Lea, I figured Warren would be part of it.

Ending on a couple Senators, including a Radek not named Bonk.

Thanks for these, and I'm always reloading for mailers to send in your direction.

One Card Only: Monday Morning Cuteness

Awwwwww!

2018 Adventures in Repacks - Part 38

Just the Dollarama usual today. One 15-card hanger. One Surprise bag.

I'll start with the hanger, under the rule that it is really hard to pass on a card with a visible all-star uniform card.

Behind it. 7 straight junk wax cards. But at least that Sault Ste Marie Greyhounds card will give me the chance to use the 'dogs' tag on this post.

1994 Leaf was one of the less legible designs of the 1990s. That's a Stephane Matteau card. If I had to pick the set that a Senators card would come from, ITG Signature Series wouldn't be it. The other visible card in the pack was the Hall/Martin card. 2011 Between the Pipes appears to have been the only set with cards that featured the late Seth Martin.

The Surprise bag's contents.

The 90s pack. That is one quality mullet that Rick Tocchet is sporting. That's a 9/10 on the Jagr scale.

The promised rookie card comes from a rookie-only set, but I guess it still counts.

And the miscellaneous group of 6 is the final one of the repack. The Hextall card is actually a foil parallel, so that's more than what I expected.

But there you have it! Mailbag time next!

Little Dog Cards

I'm dog people. So, on occasion, I go for canine-themed card posts. Here's one such occasion, with a couple little dog cards. Not little dogs, but little cards.

Here's a card that came up while doing the Challenges. It was reasonably priced, and I decided to make this the oldest card in my collection. Assuming COMC's cataloguing is correct, this card is from 1901.

There's a little more information on the back, and a little more about Major Richardson's War Dogs here. 470 photos, you say? That's quite a few packs of smokes for someone who wanted to collate the set.

Welcome to flavour country!

I think I better wrap things up with a second, less nicotine-themed image.

Stacks of Wax - April 2017 - Part 10

As the month draws to a close, time for some Opening Day. I'm not bothering with the base cards as you've probably seen them already, and I landed the entire base set from the box, as expected. Plus, I've busted so little Series 1, I really don't want to go through it noting which cards are S1 and which ones to look for in S2.

So, you get the inserts. Starting with the two on the checklist I wanted to pull, and did.

Because, AWWWWWWW!

Seriously, AWWWWWWW!

This was the other one I was hoping for. While I might have preferred to see this in the former of the 2015 Gypsy Queen insert Walk-Off Winners, but I'll take what I can get. Especially since the odds of there being any sort of Jays card like this in 2018 releases is probably nil.

A more detailed look at the inserts tomorrow. 

My Best Card of 2016

And this should surprise no person who has looked in on my blog over the past two months. But this deserves another post for P-Town Tom's contest.

I fell in love with this card before it even entered my collection, and named it as at least the best Sens card of the season.

When I got it in hand, my only complaint was that it didn't follow up on the goings on from the front of the card, although Upper Deck did so on their blog.

Fortunately, this card is acetate so there is no room for the good news on the back of this card.

A great example of a photo on a card telling a story.

COMC Pick 6: Cards with Dogs

As a dog person, I'm required to pick up cards with any sort of canine reference on them. Here are 6 from my COMC To Be Posted Box.

I don't know if this as far off the mission statement of this post as I can get, but it still fits. An insert from 15-16 Panini Complete from the NBA Cares subset. Most of them feature the players building houses/playgrounds, but here's a nice casual one of Kyle Korver from the Hawks reading to children. And a doggy on the book is enough to count it towards this collection.

Logos also count, as this is my second card featuring the Peoria Chiefs changed logo. James does appear to be out of baseball now.

Danny is still around in baseball, and still in the Mariners system. He's been battling injuries, though, and missed all of '14 due to injuries. Great logo, though.

Moving on to real dogs, with one of those "How did I not already have this card?" cards, as Brian Bogusevic protects the dogs in the stands with a great catch.

And a couple dogs making appearances on hockey cards from the sometimes oddball photos in the Be A Player releases. This is actually the second appearance of dogs on an Uwe Krupp card, as his sled dog training also appeared on a 1992-93 Pinnacle release. This is the first canine card for Curtis, though.

And there you go.

Monetary Value: Common

Cuteness value: Off the charts!

Expo Recap - Post #12 - Opening Day, and Opening a Case Hit.

And to wrap this up, here's the last of the wax I busted via the Expo.

One of the more interesting elements of Opening Day is taking a look at images that will be making an appearance in Series 2. Since Series 1's #1 featured a home run being brought back by Mike Trout, it is appropriate to see more of that coming up in Series 2. Along with a nice Carlos Correa.

A little more variety is visible among the interesting horizontal cards. I really like how Fenway is also as much of a star on the Ortiz as the player himself is.

The Opening Day Edition parallels fall at a rate of 1:7, so 6 per box looks about right.

But this was a pretty good pull for a so-called base card. This is a photo variation of Bogaerts, and these fall at a rate of 1:393 packs. So, while I didn't get an actual hit from the box, I still did land a pretty tough pull. I should probably ebay this, but am more tempted to hold on, hoping some Red Sox fan will come across the Tejada variation and want to swap for it.

Onto the inserts!

Starting with the least interesting of the group. Just a generic slugger-themed insert. I got 7 of these - at least one was Joey Bats.

With Opening Day stars lacking the lenticular action from previous years, these really aren't as nice as before. At least I landed a Met, and didn't land a Ryan Braun, who seemed to follow me around over the past two years. These are 1:24, so I did slightly better than expected.

I thought that Bubble Trouble would be like those bubbles refractors from previous years. It turns out that it is just a player blowing a bubble.

Striking Distance inserts, which cover players approaching milestones, is a neat little set as it gives fans things to look for during the current season.

While alternate reality isn't nearly as cool as the Franchise Flashbacks from last year, the backs of the card point out the difference between the regular and alternate uniforms. But why would you use a photo of Buster Posey in full gear when you want to show off the uniform of the player as opposed to the player himself?

Superstar celebrations return in this year's set. It is nice to see some variations in these, at least with my pulled cards, than just the standard Gatorade dump and shaving cream pie.

But my favourite insert portion this year, as with all previous years, is the mascot portion of the set. While normally, I'd be most excited about acquiring Mrs. Met's likely cardboard debut, my status as dog people has to make Hank my favourite of the mascots.

Because, AWWWWWWW!

Seriously, AWWWWWWW!

And while it seems like this would wrap up the Expo acquisitions, I still have one more thing to get to:

Hockey Clear Out

Namely, clearing out the hockey portion of my "to be posted" box.

And what better way to start with some pure WTF from Collector's Choice and their Warriors of Ice insert set? That's supposed to be Jarome Iginla riding the fire-breathing horse.

And from WTF to another. Puck Junk called this the worst card of 2010. I'd hate to see the card that beat it. Of course, that meant I had to add this to my collection. At least he was granted the privilege of having his face visible on the Victory and Certified issues. Although not his Donruss.

The Be A Player series could offer some strange photos as well. But at least I can add this one of Kevin Haller to my 'Cards with Dogs' mini-collection.

This is my second Antti Aalto collection. I add his card only because Aalto is first alphabetically among all players in NHL history. Unless someone even more Scandinavian passed him lately.

A nice view of the Cleveland Barons uniform was lurking around my wantlist for a bit. It was added to my COMC cart, and it fell off earlier this week. If you're thinking "That design would be perfect for an autograph!", you're right. There are autographed versions of this card out there.

Back to back posts with players wearing toques? Why not?

This mask just screams out "I was just traded from New Jersey to Buffalo, and haven't received the new mask yet." He never played for New Jersey, so I'll just assume he is yet another guy who looked to heavy metal album covers for mask inspiration. He is one of a handful of goaltenders to get credited with a goal, though.

So he'll always have that.

I'm not sure who Marian Hossa knew at Pacific to get not one, but two gorgeous photos on cards in 2002, but I won't complain, especially since both of them come against the Leafs.

Rangers alumni! Mike Robitaille had spent all but a few games the previous season with the Canucks, yet the jersey still looks like an airbrush special. Because why wouldn't it? David Latta spent 36 games over 4 season with the Nordiques, but never got a card. So, I add this one from his time in the AHL. Because any port in a storm. And Derek Roy had made several appearance. But this might be the most Kitchener Ranger intensive backs there have been. 

See?!

Of course there will be some Alfredsson content in the latest COMC shipment.

As well as 2/14 content. The Sutter is an unnumbered silver parallel.

And wrapping up back-to-back posts with a Milan Hejduk relic. While this isn't as patchy as the last one, this specific one is an important addition. I received one of this card's printing plates in a previous trade envelope from Dennis @ Too Many Manninghams. I always like to have at least one of the cards to go alongside it. 

So this is that card. 

And there you have another post. Back tomorrow with something else.