Rangers Roundup

Back to the COMC box, and today I'm pulling out some Kitchener Rangers alums.

Minor-league sets can be fun. If you run out of players, then perhaps a coach will get a card. If you still have room, then the Director of Scouting gets a card. Such as here.

Staying with the minor league cards, Greg Puhalski was a third round pick of the Bruins in 1983. He never played in the NHL, but had a lengthy career as a minor league coach and player. As best as my googling can tell me, both WIOT and the Distillery are still around in Toledo.

This will be the final non-NHL card of this post. Last season was Stanley's first season with the Rangers, having been moved from Windsor. The Jets selected him in the 2016 1st round.

Tobias Rieder sticking his head in a painted coyote's mouth. Perfect for a canvas parallel.

Patrick only played 9 games in the NHL, but his European career did include a stop with a team called the Wolfsburg Grizzly Adams. Which may be better.

Hit time! Mike Hough was a member of the 1982 Memorial Cup winners, and then carved out a lengthy career in the NHL. I'm amused at how BAP airbrushed out the logo on Hough, but left the Tampa logo visible in the background.

Another auto to end this, with a couple bright red swatches thrown in for good measure. Ryan has wrapped up his first season in the Minnesota Wild organization.

And 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!

Mucho Mets - COMC

The final of my Mets posts for the time being, as I grab some of the cards from my COMC 'to be posted' box.

This one defaulted its way into the lead position of this post. The rest group nicely with another card or two in this posting, or is the only hit of the post. Since, in general, I like to end with hits, you get a Gallery card of John Franco.

All-time Favorites allows for some welcome designs to return, and for the puzzling appearance of Barry Lyons in a release in the 2000s. But Barry is still an honoured member of the penmanship collection.

Managerial Heritage!

And some Piazza as well.

This brief posts ends with a sorta Mets card, but a minor league card is good enough for me. Conlon had an interesting journey earlier this year as he was claimed off waivers by the Dodgers, only to be claimed by the Mets off waivers 4 days later. At least he had a sense of humour about that:

I believe he's my first auto of someone from Northern Ireland, at least until my auto of Fit Finlay arrives.

There you have it!

Mucho Mets - Optic

Now, the group break goodies from the non-MLB licensed side of things.

The Mets warranted 6 base cards in the set, and these were the regular ones. The collation was erratic, as I got 2 Syndergaard base cards, but 6 of Rosario.

What I lacked in base cards of Thor were made up for in the inserts and subsets, as I got 4 Diamond Kings of his to make up for the lack of regular ones. Only one each of the 1984ish Rated Rookies. though.

Shiny!

Shiny, and numbered - /299.

Another shiny numbered card - /149. The blue on this is almost a perfect match to the team colours, making it my favourite of my numbered parallels.

It beats out this /99 red parallel of Dominic Smith.

Autos! I'll do them in order of rarity.

A base auto, my third of Amed.

Still unnumbered, but there's a nice shiny auto of Chris Flexen.

But this one is both shiny and numbered. It scans like a dirty green parallel, but this one is a gold /10.

And there you have it.

Mucho Mets - A&G

Off to the mailbag again, and the Mets content from a recent case break of Allen & Ginter. Maybe this will take the sting away from last night's mess of a game.

While it did land me an extra card, I'm not too crazy about these Home Run Challenge cards being in Ginter. They really throw off the theme of the set when you pull one.

Regular base.

SP base. The SP don't really seem as SP as one sees in something like Heritage, as I got 3 each of these in the case, while getting between 4 and 6 of the regular base.

There's a hot box in each case with all the cards being glossy parallels. That brought a few more Mets into the binder.

Minis! The bottom 3 were all Ginter back parallels, to go alongside the two black border parallels. The only dupe in the whole grouping was a second regular back of Todd Frazier.

This was the Mets only entry in the internationally-patriotic World Talent series. I just wish they'd centered the globe on this over Cuba for a little more accuracy.

There were also a couple of inserts from the Fantasy Gold Mine series. I don't need Fantasy themed cards in football, and I'm equally uninterested in them in baseball sets as well. So, I end with Cespedes. No hits out of Ginter, but when I get to Optic next time, that will be remedied.

There you have it!

2018 Adventures in Repacks - Part 27.3 - Wally World

Time to bring this home with these 8 packs.

A retro update parallel highlighted the 13-14 UD pack. These may be the most garish design of these parallels in recent memory.

A gold parallel was about all that was notable about the Score pack. At least it was a need for my "I swear, I'm not building this parallel set set build".

Shininess in the platinum pack! That's not just your regular ol' rainbow parallel. That's the White Ice /199 version instead. And I get to use the Spezza tag again!

The MVP pack was so blah, I couldn't pick a most interesting card. So I'm scanning everything.

At least the all-base UD pack had a sorta-celebratory Zadorov.

 New 2/14 card. I'm genuinely surprised I didn't already have this 2/14 card in my collection.

Cool insert in the Parkhurst pack!

But an even better base card. While this isn't as great as the Young Guns card I pulled from a cubed pack, this is still my second Auston Matthews rookie card I've got from a Walmart repack.

Those Player Credential cards are absurdly cheap at COMC thanks to their availability in e-pack form. But they're still nice addition to my misc. binders. And there's a Rangers alumni as well.

That's a pretty solid ending to the packs. Mailbag stuff next time!