Trade w/ Scott Crawford - Part 5 of 6

In which I knock 150 Blue Jays cards down to a far more manageable 12 scans. Will I be able to manage to same for the Mets portion of the trade? Likely not. But, here's some of the goodies!

This is easily my fave of the bunch. For one thing, it is a pretty unique pull. For the other thing, it does appear to have some Froot Loops stain in the upper corners.

I don't think I had this Danny Ainge already. Too lazy to check.

Since when I think of Toronto, I certainly think of the mountains that surround the city.

I guess this one was a Blue Jays card at this point.

Ron Fairly was one of three cards that I still needed, at least to my knowledge, for my Jays Frankenset. The first is the Doug Howard that sits atop my wantlist. The second is a Josh Thole. More will enter the list when Update drops.

Only one new Joe Carter for my PC of his, but it is an interesting moment of impact one in the cold of Chicago.

Here's Jim Clancy looking like the man your mother warned you about.

The only O-Pee-Chee in the box. No Lanceur on the front? BOOO!

You could probably buy that hair/sweatband combo at a costume shop right now. I was pretty young at the time, but I don't recall that ever being a good look for anybody.

One of those players that might not have been superstars, but were still popular during their Toronto run. For me, it was his status as a dog person.

Hey, Tim! Tell me about the time you pulled that guy out of a foxhole in 'nam!

To wrap this up, a Delgado quintet!

One more post to go! I'm not relishing trying to cut down the Mets portion to something manageable.

In which I loathe somebody

Not sure who to loathe though.

A) The US Postal Service.
B) Canada Post.
C) Canada Customs
D) Some combination of the above

Since this quintet of Mets refractors that I grabbed of Listia, and were postmarked stateside on September 13th, arrived yesterday.

At least they arrived.

And they're shiny!

Why I hunt Wolverines - Great Trades

My seeming ease at finding Wolverines cards, especially hockey, leads to a lot of packages heading to Ann Arbor, and a lot of return packages heading to Kitchener. Here are the results of another one heading north.

I've recently split my masks binder. One is devoted to masks from before the 04-05 season, the others from after. While in terms of base, it is pretty even, the hits really don't even out so well. I'd lamented such. Maybe Dennis read that, since this envelope was filled with pre-04 hits.

To start it off, how about 8 new relics? There's a Hall of Famer here in Belfour. There's one of my favourite masks in Dunham. There's an oddball uniform in the Terreri. I never knew he made a stop on Long Island, but apparently he did for 8 whole games. Guy Hebert's time at MSG was a smidge longer, going for 13 games. Even though his swatch is the only white one in the bunch, it still includes some stitching, so it isn't too plain. Some of the cards state what the jersey piece is from. Hebert's is from Anaheim. Flaherty's is an Islander swatch.

And to sit in the middle of this page:

Simply to keep the page uniform.

That's still not it for relics.

Tom Barrasso or an Arturs Irbe? Barrasso wins the mask war, so he'll go in facing frontward.

And with apologies to the Manny Fernandez relic on the back, this one is on its way into my 2.14 binder. My 50th hit in the collection, and the 10th that came in a package from Ann Arbor.

But, it wasn't just relics. There's also an auto bound for my early years binder.

I love the BAP sets for making autos of players that you wouldn't expect to see autos of easily available. Martin Biron really doesn't really qualify for that.

But with all due respect to Mr. Gardiner, he'll still have played over 300 more NHL games than I ever will. Plus, he has this bit on his wiki entry "On May 4, 1986, Gardiner, who was 14 years old at the time, helped rescue two men and two boys from possible hypothermia on the Mattagami River along with some friends. On December 11, 1987, he was awarded the Medal of Bravery".

And who says a card needs to be a hit to be spectacular? This is a beauty, and it is surprisingly heavy. This subset would have been easy pickings for pack searchers.

Back to masks, here's the only new one for the newer binder.

It's a Milwaukee Admirals mask. I didn't think he was still in the NHL, and it turns out he's now in Sweden. It's never a good thing when you type someone's name into google, and the second AutoComplete option includes the word 'bust'.

And here's the final hockey card. I thought the "E" in the upper right was some card vandalism. Turns out it wasn't after a quick look at COMC. This is also my first solo hit of Redden.

But there was some football as well.

As soon as I saw this pop up at Too Many Verlanders, it was a full-fledged - WANT! WANT! DO WANT! Aside from a Robert Woods relic from a Walmart Exclusive hanger box, this is the only Bills insert I have from the set. Interestingly, there only seem to be 30ish cards in the subset, but 4 of them are Buffalo guys from the glory years. Smith, Reed, Kelly and Thomas.

Which reminds me to get my 2013 Topps football wantlist and tradelist in gear.

And to wrap up the package, there were about 16 cards for my base set of 2013 Topps Football. Naturally, the Bills card was the best of the lot. I still need about 60, so if you're building as well, or want some inserts, look for a post on the weekend.

Thanks for all the goodness!

A COMC blaster (tm. Shoebox Legends)

As defined by Shane @ Shoebox Legends. Put the cost of a blaster into a purchase of cards at COMC. For about $20.00 and shipping, I ended up with 19 cards. Most of which were swallowed up by one card. Which I'm going to lead with.

My first 1/1 for my 2/14 collection! My decision to pick up a COMC blaster was influenced by the fact the person who had this in their lot put it on sale, knocking the cost down by about half. I wasn't about to spend $20.00 bucks for a 1/1 of a guy with a rather short NFL resume, but I'll gladly add a unique item to my collection for half that. It's my third plate, and all of them are black plates. What are the odds? Don't answer that, math-types.

And under a buck to add my second Anthony Wright card, and first hit of his to my 2/14 binder. If you count the plate as a hit, these are my 48th and 49th hit for that binder. With #50 about to be posted tomorrow.

The overall total now stands at 463, with the addition of these cards:

I swear - this is just a basic piece of relatively thin cardboard. It's from a Kahn's giveaway set. It's not an X-Fractor.

Why not add a copper parallel to my collection? It is an easy decision when the numbered parallel is cheaper than the base. There's only 2006 more of these out there! Collect 'em all!

And a gold parallel to wrap up the addition to my 2/14 binder.

What else? How about almost a page worth of new cards for my every Raptor ever collection?

It would be a page worth, but look closely at the Bayless. He's actually listed as one the Grizzlies. Oops. Of these, 4 are numbered cards. N'Daiye is 199, Huffman is /500, Dixon is /499 and Douby is 2009. Of this bunch, the Pops Mensah-Bonsu is my favourite. Simply for the reason that it is a card on a guy named Pops Mensah-Bonsu.

I saw the Berroa pop out of during Nacho Grande's break, and decided, since I didn't have the Royals, that I still wanted the card. I saw the Ben Sheets pop up somewhere, and again it joined my wantlist when I first saw it. As for the Halladay, it seemed like a nice bookend.

Who? He's the current back-up for the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, and also their short yardage guy when they need someone to go for the final yard on a sneak. He'll probably be offered up in the expansion draft, and it wouldn't surprise me to see him as an Ottawa Redblack next year.

That's back-to-back days with CFL references in my postings. I'll probably have to explain Oskee Wee Wee tomorrow.

At this point, I had $3.88 left on account. With $3.00 for shipping, I had .88 cents to spend.

So I decided to finally add some teal into my hits binder.

A morning Surprise

Meaning that this is the perfect morning to post the content of a surprise box. The good news here is that it was all cards - no supplies.

Starting up with the 8 card mix

2010 SPX Anze Kopitar

2005 MVP Viktor Kozlov - A perfect card for a new pack. A brand new card of Viktor Kozlov for my 2.14 collection. WOO-HOO! Quite the audience for the game as well.

1990 Score Ed Olczyk
1990 Upper Deck Ed Olczyk - Back-to-back Olczyk cards from the same year. The bizarreness of repacks strikes again!
1995 Topps Garry Galley
1990 Topps Dirk Graham
1994 Donruss Garth Butcher
1990 Pro Set Mark Tinordi

Superstar pack
2005 UD Sergei Fedorov

2001 Be A Player Steve Shields. One of five new cards for the masks binder! This might actually be one of a handful to end up in there backwards.

Since the back is even better than the front!
1991 Score Michel Goulet
1994 Donruss Sandis Ozolinsh

2012 OPC John Tavares. Not bad for the guaranteed superstar card.

2000s pack
2006 UD Rostislav Olesz

2003 Upper Deck Rookie Update Andrew Raycroft
2006 Fleer Dwayne Roloson. I much prefer back-to-back mask binder cards as opposed to back-to-back Eds.

2000 Pacific Omega - Ryan Bonni/Zenith Komarniski. I have no idea who either of these two are.
2005 Parkhurst Viitaly Vishnevski

And finally, something new to the packs, at least for me - a pack of 1999 Upper Deck.

Robin Regehr
Andrew Ference

Josef Marha. My second card with that made me say "Who??" of the repack.
Alex Mogilny

Curtis Joseph. Card #4 for the mask binder.
Doug Weight
Martin Gelinas
Ziggy Palffy
Chris Osgood

Roman Turek. And the last card isn't just a card for the mask binder, it is also an easy candidate for the best card in the repack.

So many masks, it should be masked Mondays again.

I love you, Bobby Ryan

Seriously, who wouldn't want to give a response like this to a particularly douchebaggy Leafs fan?

If you're wondering why Jules is punch in the face worthy, just plug "The Secret Life of Bobby Ryan" into your favourite search engine.

And since I should at least post one card with a post, here's a nice shot of Omar Daal.

Under $30.00 at a card show - Part 3

$15. 32 packs. 4 cards per pack. 3 downs.

Let's dig in!

For a 100 card set, with decent collation, I should finish the set with 1 box. Unfortunately, there were parallels or an insert in each pack, so I ended up 4 cards short.

Final totals.

96 base cards.
22 red parallels (1 dupe)
3 gold parallels.
2 relics.
2 Friday Knights inserts.
2 Fusion Force inserts.
1 Core Players insert

That accounts for everything. Let's look at the cards:

Here's the design for the base for the respective teams. I really do like the look of these, despite washed out backgrounds. The logo being worked into the design really does help, although the Edmonton card is a little loud. They're all die-cut, but that leads to a problem. The insert cards were the only rectangular cards in the set, and it was easy to feel which packs contained the inserts. If anybody were of the type to search packs on CFL cards.

Here's the red parallels. There's only one Uncle Miltie when you're a CFL fan. And that's Mr. Stegall. Here's what is probably his most famous moment in the CFL, and one of the most incredible endings to game you'll ever see.

The best thing about these sets is that you're tempted to fire up google wondering what happened to these players after their CFL days.

Corey Holmes became the mayor of the small town of Metcalfe, Mississippi. And got indicted.

Let's look at the inserts.

These were the three gold parallels I pulled - each numbered to 175. Although I remember Tyree Davis (not to be confused with David Tyree) signing with Hamilton, I don't think he ever played for them in a regular season game.

My favourite inserts in terms of design was the Friday Knights series. I've mentioned my love for designs that work the city/arena/stadium into the look, so it really isn't a surprise. I could do without Lawrence Phillips being on the Calgary one, though.

I wonder if he'd do a TTM signature via prison.

The other two insert sets were pretty generic.

The hits?

Not a good start for a Tiger-Cats fan. But there is one plus.

The back actually gives an approximation as to when and where the jersey was used.

And the other?

A little better. I do like the bright green swatch on this - as it should be for a Riders card.

Under $30.00 at a card show - Part 2

Let's get to the rest of the non-CFL box.

I added 3 autographs to my collection yesterday - this one was the only non Senator of the bunch. OK, so it isn't really primo penmanship on this signature, but I really do love the Enforcers set for adding some autographs of people we really don't see a lot of into the market.

Here's the first auto, albeit of a former Sen. There were a couple of his in this $2 bin - I opted for the one with the largest on card signature. Size does matter - or at least influence my card buying decision.

Hey! This guy is still a Sen!

And to wrap it up, here's 9 new cards for the mask binder, plus a new cards for my Senators collection. The dime box highlight here is the triple diamond SP of Evgeni Nabokov. I'm disappointed there aren't any cards of Richard Bachman in this year's sets. I would love to see his "The Shining" mask preserved on cardboard. I've also got a couple of classic Cujos there, and the Panthers era Luongo mask isn't to shabby either.

That and yesterday is $15.00 worth of cards, minus a 4th relic I picked as trade bait. You'll have to wait for that to show up elsewhere.

Tomorrow,  obscurity will reign supreme as I post a bunch of CFL cards!