2017 Adventures in Repacks - Part 29 - The new $3 usual

And now, the $3 for 80 cards baseball hanger. As with my first of these, I'm scanning everything. That likely won't continue through further ones, but maybe my mood will change.

Lindor was one of the 4 visible cards in the box. It took me only until the second card to pull a Met this time. Shea also makes a horizontal appearance as well. That's Chuck Knoblauch on the Shades card.

When combined with the first repack of these, it took me 100 cards to get to the first Blue Jays card in one of these. I have no memories of Kohlmeier, but faux Heritage stuff is always fun.

More Jays content. 1983 is another one of my favourite Topps designs, so it is nice to land a Jays card in that design. The Nix is a nice looking full bleed photo as well.

WOO-HOO! Scott Scudder is not only a 2/14 baby, but that is one of the cards I didn't have in the collection yet. That is surprising for a card of a player who was really only active during the junk wax era.

An umpire card! Awesome! Sanchez was the visible card on the back side of the Lindor stack.

Starting off the second pile is a Rich Harden for my CanCon binder, some legend cards from the Ted Williams set, another Jays card, and the somewhat strange bunting style of Mariano Duncan. Good start.

I hope I don't have to wait until 2030 Heritage for there to be a design that incorporates a cap into the design again. Archives! Make it happen!

Yes, that Ausmus counts towards the mask binder.

Impressive stare from Stewart, but it really wouldn't achieve perfection until he'd move on to Oakland.

There's a second 2/14 baby in this repack, but this time it is a dupe. There's my 6th and final Blue Jays card this time, a nice upgrade from zero last time. The Cano ends this on another interesting photo.

And there you have it. Both of these have been pretty satisfying for the cost. Definitely more to come of these.

2017 Adventures in Repacks - Part 28 - The $3 usual

There are now two options for $3 at the Dollarama. The usual is the 15 card hanger and Surprise Bag for a hcokey fix, or the newer $3 for 80 baseball card hanger packs. Time for one of each, with the hockey today and the baseball next time.

As usual, starting with the hanger.

2011 Crown Royale - Dale Hawerchuk - Nothing beats a cool looking card as one of the visible ones. I think the cards from the legends portion of the set were SPd, but since I'm not set building and keeping the card, I don't care too much in the long run.

1995 Parkhust Mikael Renberg - I found one of these in the last Surprise Bag I bought at well. Musta been a lot of them at repack HQ.
1991 SIS - Trent Cull
1991 Score - Randy Gilhen
1992 UD - Kevin Todd
1995 Topps - Brian Savage

2000 Black Diamond - Theoren Fleury - Now here's a set that doesn't make a lot of repack appearances.
1993 Premier - Al MacInnis
1991 OPC - Ulf Samuelsson
1992 Score - Carey Wilson

1995 Assets Gold - Petr Sykora - I'd never even heard of this set before pulling this card.
1991 Score - Rick Wamsley
1993 Draft - Alexei Kudashov
1990 Bowman - Patrick Flatley

2010 OPC - Fabian Brunnstrom - And the other visible card.

A great first card, and a couple of sets I didn't expect to get cards from make this a pretty good $1. Off to the Surprise bag.

All cardboard content this time. I'm kinda excited to bust the Platinum, since I don't think I've busted any of that since the initial release.

Even if it is junk wax era, it is always nice when you get a Gretzky from one of these.

I'm not going to shoe everything from the Platinum, but this was a pretty nice set with a nice mix of casual and action shots to go with the full-bleed photos.

There's a nice variety in the miscellaneous pack as well. Ladies content. Vintage (modern Vintage, at least), Ray Bourque and another obscure repack set on the Nylander in 1996 Leaf.

The 1000 pt packs usually consist of a junk wax era card of someone such as Glenn Anderson. I was surprised to see a recent card of a current player, and one with an interesting photo as well.

And three of the goalie pack cards are qualifiers for the mask binder. Sorry, Chris Terreri. Mika Noronen easily wins the category of "most likely to also be used a heavy metal album cover" with his.

That's a satisfying $3. How will the baseball match up?

Cheer-up Champs

The passings over the last few days has been really depressing for the game show fan in me (Monty Hall), the music fan in me (Tom Petty) and the wrestling fan in me (Lance Russell).

As a pick-me-up, I'll show off my 10 favourite cards from my most recent box break of one of my comfort food products.

Time to dig in!

#10

There were, as expected, three fish cards in the box. But this was the only one I needed.

#9:

A gold parallel for my Sens collection.

#8:

A gold parallel for my Rangers alum collection.

#7, 6, 5 and 4.

The box promises 2 relics per box. As you can see, I landed 4 of them. Aside from the mask binder card, not much for the PCs here, but I like that there isn't a plain white swatch in the bunch.

#3:

An on-card autograph makes the top 3. Not the most spectacular of the bunch, as he's been a fringe roster member the past few seasons. But an auto is an auto.

#2:

This is the second straight box of these where I've landed one of these #1 draft pick cards. They fall one per case, but I'm not really sure if they qualify as case hits. But, this should take a good chunk out of the cost of the box, at least.

#1:

The random, Ginter-ish nature of this beast makes it hard to pick a favourite subset. But, I'll pick the one that sticks to hockey with the traditions insert. I would have probably opted for a bushier beard on this, but it would be a minor beef about this card. Plus, it does feature a cameo from Stanley to make up for it.

While this wasn't a loaded box like last time with a Super Rare Gretzky, still a fun break.

That Wasn't Part of the Deal!

So, I made a 50/50 trade with the Collector. I dropped by a little too late to get the Mets option or the Blue Jays option. So, I opted for a general basketball option. I figured that it would be most similar to busting a repack.

But there wasn't just basketball (which I'll get to later), as there were three groups of cards in there for some of my PCs.

Let's start with my Kitchener Rangers alumni collection. I really like the ITG card of Andre Benoit, since that has to be my first Hamilton Bulldogs card in the binder.

Andre Benoit can also be found in my Ottawa Senators collection, as can these folks. I busted a lot of 2013 Score, but can't remember if these are in my Sens collection. I know that rainbow foil of Spezza is new. Plus, you have the only occurrence of Alexandre Daigle and Finest in the same environment.

And how about a bunch of 2/14 cards to wrap things up. I was really surprised that I didn't have that Gaborik base card from Black Diamond. It just seems like one I would have picked out from a dime bin ages ago. The top 3 members (numbers wise) of the football portion all get two new cards each (Kelly 74, McNair 68 and Bledsoe 59).

Thanks for the bonus cards! I hope you enjoyed the cards I sent your way!

Seeing Red

The product isn't even a month old, but I have busted enough packs, and saved enough wrappers so far to qualify for a wrapper redemption pack. They contain 5 red parallels of base cards from the set, and 1 red mini. Let's check it out!

Not a very spectacular design, but this isn't designed for display.

That's actually a pretty good pack for my PC additions. Boedker will go nicely into the hits/parallels portion of my Kitchener Rangers alumni binder. Still, the best is that Erik Karlsson. I saw a Sens logo on the card back when I opened the pack, and was elated that it was his card.  Beyond that, there's an alternate jersey and an anniversary patch. I guess that means Brock Nelson is the dullest of the batch.

And it is a local kid on the mini!

While there weren't any parallels of the major rookies in the pack, that Karlsson made hanging on to the packs more than worthwhile.

2017 Adventures in Repacks - Part 27 - Baseball is Back!

After a long absence, baseball returned to the Dollarama. I can finally be honest in my blog title, as more than just hockey cards can be purchased there for the time being.

It cropped badly, but how can I pass on 80 cards for $3? And how can I resist picking up 4 of these? And since 80 is a perfectly round number for even scanning, how can I resist scanning all the cards?

Ginter. Triple Play. A legends card. That's a fun way to start off my return to the baseball repacks from Dollarama.

And there's the first big winner of the repack with the Zimmer manager card. Sheets is a rather unfortunate last name to have on the back of jersey. And there's a couple of HOFers as well.

My first Met of the repack! A really great variety of sets here. Junk wax. Faux vintage. 1993 Leaf (Yes, I'll show the back later). One of my favourite designs in the 1983 Topps. That might be one of the few 2001 MVPs I've got as well.

A very junk wax portion of the repack, but at least that Puhl can go in my Cancon collection.

A couple recent cards, my first Expos card and a nice looking Eddie Mathews. The Kaline was the visible card opposite the McCarthy.

I really like the random legends content in this. The Jharel Cotton was easily the most recent card in the repack. Considering I've only busted one of those three-pack hangers of this, it's a nice surprise.

Two repack dupes as the Gott and Clemens were both in the first half. Geez.

It is mixes like this that make repacks fun.

1) The oldest card
2) A 'Fun' card
3) A legend
4) The ivy of Wrigley
5) A comparatively svelte Bartolo
6) A bunting photo

The competition for the Mr. Lumpy Face award in Houston back in 1988 was truly top-notch.

And the end. But before I wrap it up, the notable backs.

An autograph photo. 1993 Leaf. A cartoon. Repack perfection.

I missed baseball hanger packs. No Blue Jays content, though. At least I landed a few new Expos in the process, though.

A Good Start to the Season

The NBA preseason hasn't started yet, but a product for 17-18 is already on the shelf with Contenders. Time for the goodies from a group break of that.

The veteran base set consists of 50 cards. Both of these have the same numbering, and I got the same # of each (8) from the case. So, which one is actually the base card and which one is the variation is still up in the air when the package arrived. COMC lists the white jersey as the variant, FWIW.

At least this /99 parallel is distinctive.

A perfect card to transition over to the NCAA portion of this set.

The Raptors only had one draft pick this year, and this was he. OG won't be on the court when the season starts due to injury.

Now this is the perfect way to start off my 2017-18 Raptors collecting season. Not only did my first autograph of OG join my collection from this break, but it is the popular Contenders cracked ice parallel. Yeah, it is a sticker, but this is still a really nice way to welcome him to the binders.

And there you have it!