Damage Done

 When I hit ship on my latest COMC cards back in May, I was given an arrival date of late September. It showed up yesterday, giving me a 6-week bonus.

So, It looks like I'll be highlighting these for the next bit. First up, it was the major portion of the shipment, knocking out a bunch of cards from my set build of 2013-14 Rookie Anthology. 

I'd already landed many of the major names from the Rookie Selection portion, namely the McKinnon , Galchenyuk, Rielly and the Forsberg. While I'd pulled several Barkov auto/relics from the other sets, I never got one of these.

If not for the Barkov, this Hertl would have been the big name.

The penmanship skills of the Dual Rookie Class weren't exactly the best, so that really leaves the battle between DeKeyser and Hertl for the nicest autograph in the group.

With apologies to my regular trading partner in Ann Arbor, I'm keeping this Trouba for the set. 

There ended up being 13 total Rookie Selection cards in the shipment. Of the rest, I'm highlighting this because with the somewhat unexpected yellow swatch to make it the most colourful of the bunch. I now have 90 of the 96 cards in hand, 2 outstanding redemptions, 1 never-fulfilled redemption (Up yours, JT Miller) and 3 that will be in hand at some point.

I can always throw in a few bonus RA cards, such as this pair of Kitchener Rangers alums.

And I can also add a card from what might have been the only insert set I didn't pull a card from - Complete Rookies. L-R, theres a jersey relic, a seam, a patch and a fight strap piece.

There you have it! More from this shipment next post as I'll recap another pile of Jamal Murray additions.

All About the Penmansip

Another card that makes its way into the binders based solely on the handwriting skills of the signer. But it does also feature a classic jersey, amd a really nice design with great usage of team colours in the background.

And the classic logo on the back as well!

So there is more than just a nice signature for this card.

One Card Only: A Little Art with your Auto?

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

COMC Basketball Randomness

There's never a bad time to hit my COMC-to-be-posted box, so here's some more of those cards as I highlight the basketball content that has been waiting in there for however long it has been.

This card could go in my Raptors collection, my Celtics collection, my Grizzlies collection, or I could separate the cards and add it to all 3. Since I've already got Wright and Williams in those collection, I'm choosing the third of those 4 options, the Grizzlies collection. Amaya was undrafted, but played in 34 gamesin their debut season.

I picked these two up in the same e-pack of Goodwin Champions. Decent enough for having no license.

This guy might be a basketball player. He might also be a janitor that stole Dominique Wilkins' warm ups to pretend to be a player and fool the Topps photographer. Either way, this rivals some 70s hockey cards for overall skeeviness of a photo.

Who says a nice celebration shot can't come from the intros?

Curry has the shortest NBA career in league history. 3.9 seconds. And that's still 3.9 seconds more than anybody reading this has ever come close to.

And a couple autos for the penmanship collection. That classic Warriors jersey Short is wearing is pretty nice too.

There you have it!

All About the Penmanship

I'm wrapping up my week worth of COMC with a bunch of autographs that salute my most beloved characteristic in a signature - legibility.

A legible signature and shininess as well! That's a certain keeper of a card! Sadly, Irv has started abbreviating his signature to I. S. Jr on more recent releases. That follows the trend of Kenny Golladay, who went a full signature, to 'Kenny G', to KG. I guess if you're signing thousands of cards en masse, you need to be efficient.

He may have issues with spacing, but I can read every letter in Daeshon Hall's signature. And that's all I ask for. He bounced around practice squads, but seems to have found a home with the Eagles as of now.

The football portion ends someone both pictured, and still playing for the Eagles. Looking at his signature throughout the rookie year, Mack remained consistent without switching to just his initials on the auto. Nice.

If you've got a lot of space to work with for your autograph, you might as well use it. Charlie Simmer does, even though the last name is a little flat. But you do have the number included, and classic Kings road jerseys, so that offsets to make a great card.

The last two autographs are both from people who passed away recently. Harry Howell died earlier this year, but maintained a nice looking signature on all his cards. Plus, even with the 'Vault' stamp on it, this notebook design is one of my favourites that ITG used.

This post will wrap up with another autograph from someone, who, like Howell, is a both a Hall of Famer and someone whose number hangs in the rafters of their team's home arena. And it is a nice addition to my Celtics secondary collection as well. He's the 5th autograph I have of someone whose number has been retired by Boston.

There you have it!

One Card Only: A Signature for Summerslam

And the Signature for Summerslam is a very legible one from the Shenom. Enjoy the show!

A Lovely Addition to the 2/14 Collection

It is my second card of Kristen Dalton's (both from a Dead Zone themed set), but my first autograph of the actress. The 2/14 baby uses the provided space nicely to create a great signature, and this might be an example of an autograph that isn't off-sticker, but off-card. But I'll definitely prefer that to bare-minimum squiggles that are out there. And her imdb page indicates that she's keeping busy, so good for her!

There you have it!

One Card Only: Glittering Penmanship

He didn't have the most illustrious NBA Career, being limited to only 7 games more than me, but at least he has some really nice looking autographs out there. Strangely, he's initals-only in most products, but has the full-name in all Gold Standard releases. There's probably a pun there, but I won't try it.

One Card Only: PenLADYship

If your gimmick is that you are a classy lady, you'd better have handwriting worthy of the title. Fortunately, Lacey Evans does. No nastiness here!

Mailbag: Wes' Grand Finale - Post #1

All around the blogosphere, people are posting their recaps of the loot from Wes (jaybarkerfan) and his last hurrah of busting wax. It is time for me to do the same. The goodies were extensive in the container, so much so I imagine it will take at least 4 posts to recap everything. I need to start somewhere, so today, it is the football content.

Bills! Bills! Bills! An excuse to break out the Bruuuce label is a great way to start off a post. McCoy is still a Bill for now, but might be cut for salary cap reasons, or general scumbaggery. 

Here's a handful of numbered Bills cards as well. 

Here's the first football relic of the post. Zay had an interesting off-season last year, but recovered enough to lead the team in receiving TDs. 

Finally, a somewhat odd relic. As a linebacker, Preston probably didn't touch the football on the date in question (and I'm not looking up a 4.5 year old preseason game to find out), but this is still pretty cool with it being tied to a specific game. To be more accurate, this is a 2016 Panini Day - Game Dated Materials Cracked Ice card. Preston is now with the Bengals.

I'd also hooked Wes up with some CFL content. Here's some numbered cards out of 2018 Upper Deck. I busted a lot of this, and each pack contained either a numbered card (150, 50 or 15) or a hit. Buckley is the interesting one in this group, as QBs out of Canadian universities rarely make CFL teams in that position. He retired in the previous off-season to go to med school.

Speaking of hits, here's two of them from this. Both of these guys have signed with NFL teams this offseason, with Thurman going to the Bears and Spencer to the Steelers. If I didn't group all my cards from this set together in a single binder, Thurman would be an easy addition to the penmanship collection.

And we head back in time for even more CFL to end the post. Crandell had a decent CFL career, leading Calgary to the 2001 Grey Cup title and has moved on to a coaching career in both the CFL and university ranks. Calvillo is just professional football's all-time yardage leader. No big deal.

And there's one post from this. As I stated earlier, there will be at least 3 more. 

One Card Only: Mr. Goalie

This is another day when I'm not feeling too verbose, so here's a nice on-card autograph of an Iron Man, if not necessarily an iron stomach. And yet another example of a beautifully legible autograph from someone in his 80s.

Expo Recap Part 7

And now, some not so vintage miscellany.

And nothing says not-so-vintage like a shiny card.

I'd only bought a little bit of Update, and there were at least a couple photos that I was interested in adding to my collection, and these were the two that I didn't land in the handful of packs.

A numbered Mets card with a bonus of it being Mets colours, if not necessarily the shade.

Yup. This still counts as a Bills hit. At least with Peterman as part of the team's recent history, people have forgotten about how EJ didn't really pan out, since at least he didn't pan out with Nathan's panache.

Random Kitchener Rangers alum relic!

A half of the card featuring Senators (although that has to be an Islanders swatch under Zenon) counts as a Sens card. This relic collection commemorates the 800+ minutes of time this foursome spent in the sin bin during the 11-12 season.

I wish they'd used one of the photos from his mid 70s OPC cards, but he still looks enough like every high school's drug dealer in this to make it a great card. And it is a Minnesota Fighting Saints card! Nice penmanship as well.

There you have it! Back to 2009 with some O-Pee-Chee tomorrow!

One Card Only: Slithery Penmanship

I've got scans done for pair of a trade posts, for my 2/14 collection and another RA box. But, I'm lazy today regarding actually typing stuff up.

So, I'll hit the hobby box of 2018 Topps WWE Heritage I busted, and show off the autograph from the box. This is a silver parallel /25 from the Big Legends Autographs portion of the set. The sig itself is gorgeous as well - I just love the snaky nature of the last 'S'.

There you have it! Maybe I'll have more get-up-and-go next time.

Random Autograph Sunday

With a significant order from COMC likely to arrive before the end of the month, I might as well continue to work my way through my to-be-posted box. Today, all the autographs within.

This is the only auto in the group that had a relic attached. I added this to my inventory last November, after Posey had been named MVP of the Grey Cup. He's trying the CFL pit-stop route back to the NFL as he's signed with the Ravens in the off-season.

Mr. Irrelevant 2015!

Football brings several of the candidates for the penmanship binder. Perry brings a perfect signature to the table with every letter visible. The 'y' looks like it might be a case of going off the sticker, but it isn't as the crossing line is separate from it.

There was only one hockey autograph left in the box, and it is one of my favourite names to say out loud - Jean-Jacques Daigneault.

When I noted that Lenny Randle had added a happy face drawing to his autograph I realized he had to join Jimmy Mann in terms of adding that particular bit of art to their signature. He's #3 in terms of penmanship binder candidates.

The late Wally moon is the final penmanship binder card. I love it when people in their 80s and older still have/had beautifully legible signatures.

This one has been in the to-be-posted box for about 2 years now. He was coming off a great year as a Rule 5 draft pick by the Mets, but the rest of his Mets career was not memorable, and he's now in the Cardinals organization.

And there's a bunch of autographs!

All About the Penmanship

Time for the distaff side of things to get some handwriting love.

The calculations show that Titus Worldwide really knew what they were doing when they recruited Dana to crunch the numbers. At least in terms of having a legible signature through her entire name. There are a few contenders for nicest auto on the ladies side, even if some do abbreviate things.

I want to say it was an appearance on the Raz blog that inspited me to throw this one into my cart for penmanship reason. Great cursive, and I love the 'f' and the 'J' looping together as one. Perfect for my first bowler autograph!

And there you have it! Hopefully, I'll finally have some Series 1 tomorrow.