Another TMM/TMV trade - Part 1

Yup. Another pile of Wolverines/Tigers went Michigan-ward, and the goodie bubble envelope returned this week. Among the stuff was a complete Update set from 2000 Tradition as part of his cleanup giveaway. But, I'll focus more on the cards that I wasn't expecting (along with saving some for a rare masked Monday).

Opening up, a vintage card that dropped off my Top 10 list. as you might have guessed, Dobie Craig is on his way into my 2/14 binder. I also love that the card features a position you haven't seen on football cards in ages - the flanker. This might also be my first card featuring that designation.

The only other 2-14 card in this package was an on-card/manurelic auto of Richard Hamilton. It is nice to finally start to add autos of Richard Hamilton to my collection. This is my second auto of his for my collection, with my third on the way.

And here's someone making his debut in the hits portion of my CanCon collection. Getting both a relic and an autograph on the same card.

And to wrap up the hit portion of this, a beautiful Blue Jays patch from Shannon Stewart. Surprisingly, this thick three colour patch is /300. I won't complain about that since it is a beautiful addition to my Jays collection.

And to wrap this up, goodies for my team collections:

One lonely Raptors card. But, it takes me back to the original uniforms and home games at the Skydome. And one Raptors card is still better than zero.

And these two for my Marlins team collection. OK. It's just two of my favourite players who happened to be Marlins at the time. This is actually my first Piazza Marlins card, kinda surprising for someone like me that likes the odder cards of my favourite players.

Only three Blue Jays base cards in the package.

Here's the Bills content. There's a pair of inserts from 2013 Topps I'd been looking for, as well as a /299 shiny parallel of Chris Gragg.

And to wrap things up for this post, the Mets content. There's another orange parallel in this one, but this is /250 of for Matthew Bowman. But, I'm most excited about the card of Gary Sheffield. Much like with Piazza and the Marlins, this is my first card of his as a Met.

Thanks for part 1 of the trade, Dennis! I've got at least two more posts to come out of the deal as well.

Mailday: Group Break basketball goodies

Finally, both my expected envelopes showed up today. A huge envelope of cards as part of a trade with TMM (much of that was a 2000 Fleer Update set), and the second envelope being from mojobreak, containing the goodies from a basketball random I entered. Luck was on my side as I ended up with the Celtics through the ol' randomizer. That's a pretty good team to end up with a mix of products, especially considering that the products have a nice mix of retired stars and current stars. And since they were my favourite team before the Raptors came into existence, that's also a bonus!

Unfortunately, I only got one autograph out of the break.

But it was a beautiful one.

The Chief! If you only get one autograph with the Celtics, Robert Parish would be high on the list of ones to get. Perhaps behind Bill Russell and Larry Bird, but he'd certainly be in my top 3. As a bonus, this card is a die-cut numbered to 10. A definite keeper for me.

This was the only other low-numbered card that I got. I had to look it up to find out what specific parallel this was. It's an onyx.

There was a third numbered card - the teal parallel of Pistol Pete was /249. Shiny cards!

Crusade base! At least there aren't too many choices if you want a Vitor Faverani card.

Knight Court? Much as I like a third Rondo card out of Crusade, I'd rather have a card of Markie Post. Or Dan-Dan Fielding.

And to wrap up Crusade, here's a pair of cards from the Royalty subset. Seeing Larry Bird was expected, but Cedric Maxwell was a more surprising find.

Only card out of Momentum.

Off to last year's Select. This is yet another example of a card that looks awful in the scan, but looks gorgeous in hand. You can't read the name on the card. You can't read the name. You can't read the subset. So to fill in the gaps - this is a Dave Cowens card from the Hall Selections subset. This might be most border ever on a card, but for a Hall themed subset, it works.

Other select cards included this shiny, Prizm-y Jeff Green

And the base. And this is why having a team with a long history in a basketball break can be fun. Finding a card of John Havlicek and Rajon in the same base set.

And finally, Hoops. I ended up with a complete base set. But, since that worked out to 10, scanning the team set would be a challenge. So, here were the gold and the red back parallels.

And finally, the Hoops inserts. The Bill Walton Hall of Fame Heroes was the only dupe I got in the whole break. And since it was my favourite subset of the set, and the fact that it is Bill Walton, I really don't care that it is a dupe.

So, a good break in terms of both quantity of cards and quality of the hit. Now I just need to find a more secure home for the Chief's stickergraph.

Two bubble envelopes - Two cards

Neither of my expected envelopes showed up today, but a pair of them still did. Two envelopes for a pair of cards. One was expected. One wasn't.

Firstly, the expected card. I'm certainly expecting Sammy Watkins to be all over the various releases this year, so adding at least one hit of his shouldn't be too much of a challenge. Cyril Richardson on the other hand? He was a 5th round pick. He's also an offensive lineman. I doubt he'll even have base cards in other sets. So, it is Bowman and Bowman only for adding his cards to my collection. Unless he also signed a bunch of stickers at the same time as these. In which case, at least this one was on card.

And the second, unexpected card. This one comes from the fact I filled out one of those No Purchase Necessary things at Upper Deck's website. Not a bad free card at all. Considering the only one I can find for sale online is going for $29.99 at COMC, I'll take a free one gladly.

Mailbag: Trade w/ The Cardboard Mistress

Or someone that has a cardboard mistress. Either way.

It began with a request over there for a small # of Ginter cards needed to complete the sets. Just my luck, one of the few cards I had from last year's set was the Don Mattingly Across The Years card. So, I parlayed that into a Lucas Duda relic. I also threw in a pile of set building football cards, and the bubble envelopes were off!

Here's the Duda, but there were far more goodies in the bubble envelope.

Like die-cut David Wright!

A Wilmer Flores insert!

And a nice, shiny, prismy, refractory, whatever they call it of Matt Harvey, numbered to a perfectly logical, but still odd 227 copies. They call it a stat line parallel, or something, but I'll call it a Jackée Harry parallel.

Cripes, I'm old enough to drop a reference to 227. And to have a sitcom immediately pop into my mind whenever I see that number.

And aside from the hit, probably my favourite item in the package - my first Chipz chip. Chip is the appropriate singular, right? The zed throws me.

There were a nice number of Blue Jays card. Easily, the highlight of them was this beautifully gaudy Jake Marisnick green refractory card.

And speaking of green, there were even a handful of Raptors cards in this package.

And the best sees me add a card featuring their St. Patrick's Day uniforms to my team collection.

Thanks for the goodies! And head over to MCM to see if you can turn your inserts into a relic as well!

2014 Adventures in Repacks: Part 38.1 10 basketball packs

Time for yet another repack. This time, a basketball one with 10 packs awaiting me.

Said 10 packs were:

2 packs 1990 Fleer
1 pack 1990 Skybox
1 pack of 08-09 First Edition
1 pack 09-10 First Edition
2 packs 09-10 Aderenalyn
1 regular pack of 09-10 Prestige
1 rack pack of 09-10 Prestige
1 rack pack 0f 10-11 Classics

I'll group the 1990 stuff and the Prestige together for the first post, throw in one of the Adrenalyns and hit the rest tomorrow.

Now, I suppose I could post the contents of the 1990 stuff, but I really don't feel like typing Shawn Kemp and Glen Rice three times, since the top-notch collation of the early 90s resulted in the two Fleer packs being practically identical. Best card of the junk wax bunch?

A sweet Clyde the Glide from Skybox. There may be several million of these out there, but it is a nice looking card with the Skybox design, even though he appears to be soaring as opposed to gliding. Hey. It is junk wax era cards - take what you can get.

Now, something a little less common with the 09-10 Prestige.

Only 5 cards in the standard pack. I can't complain too much about that when I get a Celtic (my pre-Raptors favourite team) and Bill Walton rocking spectacular facial hair.

Now digging into the rack pack, things were much better to start. So much awesome here. A rookie of DeRozan might seem to be the highlight for a Raptors. It is, but it is closer than you'd think. Firstly, we've got a card of a guy named Slick. Slick. He ain't no Jive Soul Bro. Seriously, it is always nice to pull a retired player who doesn't get that many appearances. Also of interest - B.J. Mullens. He now ties Tyus Edney for third overall in terms of 2/14 basketball guys, far behind Muresan and Hamilton.

And the second part of the pack. The McGrady is numbered to /300. More legend love here with Cousy and Robertson as well.

Ande your typical blah pack of Adrenayn. At least one of the cards was shiny.

Part 2 tomorrow, depending on what comes in the mail. There's two packages I'm waiting on.

Touching the stove again

I'm not proud. I was at Target, and decided to try another one of those hanger boxes of contenders. As before, they had 18 base cards, and two autos. The first of these hanger boxes I busted saw my two autographs be of a pair of guys with a grand total of 7 games between them. Will I do better this time?

That's a better start with a rookie ticket auto. Megna spent about a half season with the big club this year. He was undrafted, and if wikipedia can be believed, is one of only a handful of NHLers to be born in Florida. Interesting pull!

And my second autograph was a pretty nice one. Even if it is a sticker dump, it is always nice to immediately recognize the name you see on the card. Even better, it isn't even a bad signature, with a nice way to work his number into his autograph.

The second go-round was definitely better than the first, even though the base cards were mainly dupes.

Mailbag! Trade w/ Shoebox Legends

At a couple recent shows I went on a small hunt for O-Pee-Chee Hartford Whalers cards from the 70s and 80s. After sending off both a bubble envelope and a PWE over the past 2 months, the return package came. Here are some of the highlights.

As yesterday, it is probably cheating to lead with a hit, but it was the highlight of the envelope, and a wonderful addition to my collection of Kitchener Rangers alum. I'm not sure if this one, or the Mike Richards ring card will be the centerpiece of it, but it will be close. Also, this makes it first father and son combo I've got in my collection, joining the card of 2/14 baby (and also Rangers member/alum) Ryan MacInnis.

I knew this one would be arriving. That doesn't change my enjoyment on adding this Gaborik to my 2/14. After losing the lead briefly, he regains it with my 64th card of his, compared to only 63 for Milan Hejduk.

Highlighting a random Pro Set card when it was likely only used for protection? Why? Doug Shedden spent time with Kitchener in the late 70s/early 80s, and I'll add any qualifying card to my Rangers collection.

There were a few packs of 1987 O-Pee-Chee Leaders in the pack. The best of which was:

this Glen Hanlon. Another card aimed at my inner 8 year old. Why get excited over a Gretzky when you can see a goaltender immortalized on cardboard grabbing himself?

Let's transfer over to the baseball cards with more aimed at my inner Beavis. Huh. Huh. Huh. Huh. His name is Peter. Huh. Huh. Huh.

There was also a jumbo pack of 1993 Pinnacle in there. I'll hit a couple of the highlights. One of which was this Eric Wedge card, in which he shows off the end result of his "My First Mustache Kit" from Tomy.

The best of the bunch in there should have been the Mike Piazza rookie, but, unfortunately, part of it ended stuck to the card in front of it. But this Tony Gwynn, featuring the classic Padres yellow and brown.

Only one Blue Jay card in here, but is a parallel didn't have any of.

The majority of the cards were Montreal Expos issues. Overall, this Will McEnaney might have been my favourite. I have both this and his O-Pee-Chee cards in my 2/14 binder, but none in my Expos binder. Now, I've got at least one card of his in both.

How can anyone resist the urge to show off any 1975 card?

Team checklists!

Blue uniforms!

And for my favourite photo in the pack, here's an interesting pairing from Upper Deck. It is a "To Be Continued" effect with the first photo leading into the photo on the back. The sequence is not continued on the Moises Alou card, though. So I guess Walker held onto the ball.

Thanks for the goodies! I'll keep looking for Whalers!