2020 Adventures in Repacks: Part 31 - Fleas!

 It has been way, way too long since I had the opportunity to head to the St. Jacob's Flea Market for the necessities. Corn on the cob. Blackberry jam. Pork tails. And cards! I grabbed my usual $5 brick while there as well. These are a brick of about 55-ish recent cards, with a hit in the middle. This time, there were also football and baseball to go along with the hockey. While I did get one of the latter, I also got a baseball one.

I'm going to list the contents by year and product.

2012 Bowman Chrome - Shawn Marcum, Ian Kinsler - Not the most exciting way to start with this trip back to 2012, so I'll opt for this one over the Marcum because of the 'turning two' factor.

2016 Topps Holiday - Brandon Belt, Starling Marte, Jeremy Hellickson, Cole Hamels - I'll always enjoy card where the photo syncs nicely with the borders 

2017 Topps - Christian Yelich, Royals Team, Ken Griffey Jr - All-Time All-Stars - Gotta scan a Griffey card!

2017 Topps Chrome - Bruce Maxwell - And here's the hit. Bruce was the first MLBer to kneel during the anthem, and might also have been the first to point a gun at the head of someone delivering food to his home. He's now in the Mets system. Because of course.

2019 Topps - Robinson Cano, Matt Davidson, Albert Pujols, Robert Gsellman, Wilmer Difo, Matt Chapman, Josh Bell, Kolby Allard, Kohl Stewart, Christian Yelich, Cesar Hernandez, JD Martinez, Mookie Betts, Brad Boxberger, Kyle Schwarber, Jacob Nix, Joe Musgrove, Ray Black, Corbin Burnes - 2019 really brought the volume for this, with a bunch of base cards. I didn't bust too much of flagship last year (or this), so I like the Mets contnet, a throwback, a player taking the air, and some nice horizontal cards. I like Boxberger stretching beyond the border.

2019 Heritage High - Justus Sheffield, Francisco Liriano, Skye Bolt - Might as well highlight the guy here who probably hears "Very funny. What is your real name." daily.

2019 Platinum - Javier Baez, Derrick Rodriguez - I busted no platinum at all last year, so I'm just gonna highlight both the shiny cards.

2020 Big League - Clayton Kershaw, Jack Flaherty, Curtis Granderson, Ryan McMahon, Yusei Kikushi, Max Fried - I'm highlighting the back of the card this time, because I don't think I have any cards that mention the Marvin Miller award. A nice farewell card for Cranderson.

2020 Topps - Yandy Diaz, Brett Gardner, James Marvel, Lou Trivino, Danny Duffy, Sam Tuivailala, Rowan Wick, Michael Taylor, Victor Robles, Elvis Andrus, Tony Wolters, Avisail Garcia, Jose Trevino, Tom Murphy, Stephen Strasburg, Willi Castro, Kevin Gausman, Spencer Turnbull, Aaron Judge, Brock Burke, Chris Shaw, Brewers Team, Brian Goodwin

2020 Topps Inserts - Decades - Felix Hernandez, Turkey Red - Chipper Jones

Lots of 2020 too, but the photos weren't as interesting here. So, you get the inserts and another throwback uniform.

And here's some Prizm to end this. The Stanton is a 'white wave' parallel, with Merrifield being a red, white and blue. Joe Palumbo was one of the visible cards, so I'm scanning that as well to make up for the fact I didn't scan the other,  which was the '17 Royals team card.

There you have it! I'll cover the hockey at some point in the near future.

2019 Adventures in Repacks: Part 25 - My Repack Has Fleas

Have I really not made a trip to the flea market this year for various edibles (corn on the cob, jams, pig tails) as well as cards? Looks like it. To remind, you, these bricks of cards, contained mostly recent product, are $5 at the market. They include a pile of (mostly) recent cards, along with one hit per repack. I grabbed a baseball one, and a hockey one. Here's the hockey one's contents, which instead of my usual method of going card by card, I'm grouping by release:

2006 Hot Prospects - Ryan Miller - This card is surprisingly old for being in one of these. It was also the visible card on top of the brick.

2014 Showcase - Steve Yzerman, Ryan Johansen, Drew Doughty - Excepting inserts, I'm scanning one card per release. I was never a big fan of this design, so here's a patriotic entry.

2014 Showcase Flair - Patrick Marleau - The first of 4 non-hit inserts in the repack.

2015 UD - Brad Richards - Only one of these, but it is a pretty nice photo at least.

2016 Ice Frozen Fabrics - Noah Hanifin - And here's the hit. A plain white swatch, but a hit is still a hit.

2016 Tim Horton's Pure Gold - Jordan Eberle - Food issue card! And I guess this also counts as an insert.

2017 Parkhurst - Vladimir Tarasenko, Nikita Kucherov - And here's the last of the inserts.  I really like how the red on this doesn't cover the entire background, giving sort of an illusion of the flashing lights.

2017 SPA - Jonathan Drouin, Logan Couture, Nathan MacKinnon, Devan Dubnyk, Brent Burns, Vincent Trochek, Henrik Zetterberg - Not the most exciting design here.

2018 UD - Steven Stamkos, Jordan Staal, Jimmy Howard - Jordan is placed just perfectly to look like a human hashtag as opposed to it just being the number sign behind him.

2018 Platinum - Claude Giroux - Only one choice here.

2018 Trilogy - Doughty, Johnny Gaudreau - While UD does tend to overdo things with the gold, it is reserved enough here to be just fine.

2018 Artifacts - Corey Crawford, Nikolaj Ehlers, Artemi Panarin, Jonathan Huberdeau, Jaden Schwartz, Andreas Athanasiou, Devan Dubnyk, Bo Horvat, William Karlsson, Brayden Schenn, Ben Bishop, Mike Smith, Anders Lee, Anthony Mantha, Reilly Smith - That is a lot of Artifacts base cards. Might as well highlight the 2/14 baby, even if it is a dupe for that collection.

2018 Ice - PK Subban, Dylan Larkin, Mikko Rantanen, Jamie Benn, Sean Monahan, John Gibson, Eberle, Jack Eichel, Evgeni Malkin, Brad Marchand - And the most recent product of the bunch is some Ice. The Subban was the other visible card in the brick, but here's a new card for the Kitchener Rangers alumni PC.

And there you have it!

2018 Adventures in Repacks - Part 37.3 - Unfamiliar Fleas

This repack fest ends with another flea market repack. This one was a little bit different than the usual. $2 for a 25 card repack in a team bag. No hit guaranteed, but it is still reasonably enough pricing-wise.

Here's the first visible card. A Heritage insert is a nice way to start.

Despite no hits being guaranteed, there's a pair of numbered cards to start off with the Shields being numbered /61. McAvoy is still doing the minor league thing up to this season. Mets content and a mini as well. I've already got my $2 in terms of being an interesting repack.

More Mets content! And more inserts as well. Despite the lack of the logo, the Billy Williams might be favourite in this grouping. Even moreso than the Dickey, which I probably have about a half-dozen of.

3 groupings, all with a Mets card. That's PC efficiency! The 2011 Ginter of Matt Cain was the visible card on the other side of the team bag.

I'm kinda upset that I stopped this at just 1 of these. That'll learn me. Open the repack before leaving, not after, and if it is worth it, go back and clean them out.

2018 Adventures in Repacks - Part 37.2 - Familiar Fleas!

From a new repack, to one I regularly show off - a flea market brick. As with the usual ones, these are $5, and contain about 50 recent cards from mostly mid-range sets, with a hit in the middle.

Out of the gate, some Platinum and some Ice. The decision to make some of the base cards All-Star game themed resulted in some fun cards in the set this past release.

Those flagship base cards were about as low-end as the cards got in this.

There were a lot of Artifacts in this, and a lot of SP Authentic base cards in this one. So, even being a Leafs card, that Sittler was a nice break. I probably would have loved that set and its design were I Leafs fan.

There's the hit of the brick. A two colour swatch on a card for my mask hits binder. Great! That die-cut of Shanahan is pretty nice as well, and I may even like the acetate design element to it better than the actual hit.

As I said. Lots of Artifacts in this. Although I don't mind too much, since 16-17 was one of my favourite designs for the release.

And here's some SPA. But this grouping also brings lots of interesting stuff. A Sens card. A Rangers alum. Gretzky. And a set I don't see much of in this, UD Mask Collection.

Might as well end this with some more Artifacts, even though last season's bare bones design may have been one of my least favourites.

But there you have it!

2018 Adventures in Repacks - Part 28 - Fleas!

Here's the flea market repack I referenced in my last post. It is a typical brick, with a bunch of cards with a hit in the middle for $5. What is unexpected is that this was a baseball repack. The stuff isn't as recent as the hockey bricks, but this was still fun.

It was Chan Ho Park leading the way in this pack as the first visible card. I'm going to try to group the cards together in themes the rest of the way through the post.

There were a stack of thicker card visible at the side of the brick, and I was curious what they were from. They were this 9 card stack of gold parallels out of 2003 Bowman. There's a few guys here I'd never heard of, as could be expected, but a Met is a nice highlight. I didn't remember that future Jay Rajai Davis was a Pirate at one point.

More Bowmans. Another Met. Another Jay.

Not a lot of 2010 stuff in this. What there was came from 2010 Topps Update and 2013 Topps S1. I really like the Bobby Wilson photo with how casually he's arriving at the base.

Here's some random UD stuff from the 90s.

The "Who need the MLB license?" portion of the repack. That Gwynn is still a really sharp card, though, and I really don't notice it so much on the legends portion of the Diamond King cards.

Returning back to licensed stuff, here's a nice little sampling across the various brands that appeal to that sorta thing. That's Gil McDougald in the upper corner on a reprint from 2001.

Some actual older cardboard. The Wills is a nice card, despite a couple creases. I love the classic "now with" and OPC cards. Is it an Expos card for that binder? Maybe.

The hit. A plain white swatch, but at least it is of a star player.

And there you have it. I liked the variety more here than the hockey repacks, and kinda wish I'd picked up a second or third one of these.

Flea Market Hejduks (and more!)

It took several months, but I finally got a chance to get back to the flea market again. I did get one of the usual $5 brick repacks, but I'll get to that one in a later post. Today, you get just a handful of cards I picked up as singles.

While I do have a few new Hejduks to come in a bit, I'm starting with a mask binder card. He only played under a minute in the NHL, but is still memorable for his battle with multiple sclerosis. Jordan is now the Flames goalie coach.

And just a random card for my miscellaneous collection. This is from the 2011-12 ITG Canada vs. the World Roots of International Hockey Subset. ITG definitely had some oddball stuff in their releases, filled with guys who rarely saw cardboard previously. 

Here starts the trio of Milan Hejduk cards. These would be foil parallels in future releases, but here they're MicroMotion parallels.

One Beehive card deserves another.

Finally, the best of the day. 2 quarters for an Ice Medallion card /100 of Milan? No complaints about that! This is my first Ice Medallion out of any hockey set, and it is on its way to my 2/14 collection. His totals are now 188, 14 in front of Marian Gaborik.

And there you go. The flea market repack is up next!

2017 Adventures in Repacks - Part 31 - Fleas!

It has been too long since I dropped by the flea market, so in addition to the tasty treats I picked up, here's the $5 brick of cards I got.

2016 Platinum - Jeff Skinner - One of the visible cards was this Rangers alumni card on top. It was a need, so this seemed like the logical purchase. Jeff played in his 500th game last night, a loss to the Jets.
2016 Platinum - Drew Doughty
2015 Contours - Logan Couture
2015 Contours - Tyler Seguin

2015 UD - Portraits - Jakub Voracek - To start a theme from this repack, there were a surprising number of inserts and parallels.
2015 Contours - Thomas Vanek
2015 Contours - Filip Forsberg
2015 Contours - Jordan Staal

2012 Black Diamond - Brendan Smith - A double diamond insert as well in this repack. Even nicer is that it is a rookie of a player still in the league.
2013 Black Diamond - Mike Ribeiro
2013 Black Diamond - Andrew Shaw
2013 Black Diamond - Alex Pietrangelo

2016 Parkhurst - Centennial Salute - Braden Holtby - Another insert. The 'pose with the puck' is a favourite theme on hockey cards.

2016 Showcase - Red Glow - Vladimir Tarasenko - And the first of my parallels.
2016 Platinum - Tyler Johnson
2013 Rookie Anthology - Teemu Selanne
2016 Platinum - Jack Eichel
2013 Black Diamond - Shea Weber

2016 Parkhurst - Centennial Salute - Alex Ovechkin - Another insert. I'm not the biggest fan of etching on cards like this and Black Diamond, but it looks nice here where Ovechkin is only in a small part of the photo.

2016 Overtime - Steve Yzerman - A Legends card out of Overtime was also pretty unexpected.
2016 SPA - Marc-Andre Fleury
2010 Zenith - Jamie Lanngenbrunner

2016 UD - Shining Stars Blue - Joe Pavelski - This insert looks even nicer as the blue parallel, to go along with the Sharks colours.
2016 Platinum - PK Subban
2013 Select - Dustin Brown
2013 Select - Alexandre Burrows
2016 Trilogy - Ryan Getzlaf
2016 Trilogy - Torey Krug
2016 Trilogy - Sam Bennett
2016 Trilogy - Tyler Seguin
2013 Trilogy - Shane Doan

2013 Trilogy - Dino Ciccarelli - A classic uniform.

2011 Artifacts - Logan Couture - And here's the one-per-brick hit.
2016 Trilogy - Blake Wheeler
2016 Trilogy - Martin Jones
2016 Trilogy - Tuukka Rask
2016 Trilogy - Anze Kopitar
2016 Trilogy - Dylan Larkin
2014 Trilogy - Claude Giroux
2014 Trilogy - Vladimir Tarasenko
2015 Portfolio - Cory Schneider

2015 Portfolio - Jarome Iginla - A nice helmetless photo from what I'll assume is the All-Star skills competition.
2015 Portfolio - Patrick Sharp
2013 Ice - Pekka Rinne
2013 Ice - Matt Duchene
2013 Black Diamond - PA Parenteau
2013 Black Diamond - Brandon Saad
2013 Black Diamond - Devin Setoguchi
2013 Black Diamond - Jimmy Howard
2015 Fleer Showcase - Johnny Gaudreau

2016 Showcase - Red Glow - Tyler Seguin

2016 Showcase - Red Glow - Pekka Rinne - Two more parallels. The red glow parallels are so much nicer than the regular, obnoxiously gold base cards.
2015 Showcase - San Gagner

2013 Score - Gold - Niklas Kronwall - This is how you do gold on a card and not have it look abrasive.
2016 SPA - Morgan Rielly
2016 SPA - Tomas Tatar

2016 OPC Update - Rainbow - Milan Lucic - Shiny!
2012 Artifacts - Pavel Datsyuk

2012 Artifacts - Daniel Alfredsson - Although this has to be a dupe for the Alfie binder, I still love getting cards of my fave player.
2012 Artifacts - Mike Modano
2012 Artifacts - Ryan Nugent-Hopkins
2012 Artifacts - Jordan Eberle
2016 Showcase - Rick Nash
2016 Showcase - Henrik Zetterberg

2016 Showcase - Kris Letang - And the final card. As I said, obnoxiously gold.

That's a darned good $5 brick. The inserts and parallels throughout really provided a good variety in the break. I probably won't be heading back until December, so this will hold me over nicely.