E-Packing 2/14s

Off to my latest shipment, which included a pile of additions to the hockey portion of the 2/14 collection. Some of these were acquired through trades on the epack site, some through cheapness on COMC. 

The best thing about Ryan MacInnis is that if I accidentally pick up a dupe of one of his cards, I can add the additional card of his into my Kitchener Rangers collection. There were two in this shipment, and this was the one I opted to add to the 2/14 binder. In a slight follow-up to the last post, the MacInnis family is another father/son pairing in my hockey collection. Al's limited to the Rangers alum binder anyhow.

John Hayden's Compendium entry is the only other player that had their count in the collection jump by a single card. 

There's a big jump now, as I add these 5 cards of Brandon Sutter to the regular binder.

And a pair of Exclusives for the hits/numbered binder. These are fairly tough pulls out of the flagship release, so it was nice to add these for a reasonable cost.

And because there seems to be no better place to show this off, here's the completion of yet another father-son combination.

Petr Mrazek starts with a scanner bed worth of cards. He's also due to become only the second Maple Leaf in the collection (Walt Poddubny) sometime during the 21-22 release season. That moves them out of the 3-way tie in the basement among Original 6 teams, where they were tied with Boston and Chicago.

Shininess!

And numbered-ness!

And those 13 Mrazeks still aren't enough to give him the top slot in this post. It is Nikolaj Ehlers that takes the volume title in this one, starting with yet another scanner bed worth of cards.

Only 2 shiny cards, though.

But he makes up for that with a 5 pack worth of numbered and/or relic cards. 16 cards total gives him the title this time.

And all those cards are still dwarfed by the Kitchener Rangers alum content in the shipments. I'll cover those when I am in the mood to scan a bunch of cards, but not feeling too verbose.

There you have it!

 

A Hall of Famer's Autograph! (And other inserts)

 I've shown off some of the base cards in my hobby box of Update. What else (other than what is described in the title) was in it? 

I'll start with the box topper of Chrome-ness. 

If I'm gonna get a parallel, it might as well be in the team colours. The shiny blue beauty is /149.

Here's the standard 1986s from the packs. That Reggie, with the classic Oakland uniform is the easy winner in this group, even against a lineup that includes Trout and Jeter.

Not numbered, but these are rare enough to fall 1:315 packs. It is even better when one of these tougher pulls end up as a hit for the team PC. 

Even more plentiful are the All-Star insert card. Which don't even include photos from the game this year. While that does mean there's some nice photos like on those horizontal cards, it does kinda defeat the purpose of this set. The backs don't even say anything about the game. They just recap their first half stats as "All-Star Game Creds". Zzzzzzzz.

Off to parallels, here are some 1:10 packs silvers. 

And some 1:14 /2021 golds. Nice to see that Franchy photo make a second appearance.

Unlike with the Series 2 box, I didn't get any /10 clear parallels. The lowest I'd get in this was this Independence Day /76 parallel of Wilson Ramos in the snow. 

For the insert set whose name is almost shared with a blog's title, there's the Topps Cards That Never Were. As the name would hint at, it shows what a player's solo rookie card might look like if it appeared in an earlier season. It's only 10 cards, so it is the one I'm most likely to make an effort to complete. 

The 70 Years of Topps inserts continue. 

As do the Platinum Players die-cuts. Griffey, Robinson and Stargell? What a group!

I promised a HOF autograph, and here it is. Baseball Stars might be the most generic name ever given to an insert set, but if that's my only complaint about this card, that is a good one to have. After finally getting a redemption of Cavan come through, I've got another father-and-son combination of autographs, joining a pair of Acuñas and Vladdys. I love that the photo used is from the early stages of Biggio's career as well, making it pair even nicer with the Cavan. Maybe I should throw in a Conor auto as well (they are inexpensive enough) to complete the family tree.

Either way, that's a keeper!

And there you have it!

Time For a (Box of) Update

 

This box, to be even more precise. I'm not sure why the basic hobby boxes dropped today, when the jumbo ones were out last Friday. Other than to make the "gotta be first" crowd pay more for the privilege of busting packs. 

Which I'm perfectly OK with.

First pack. First card. It almost looks like the diagonal lines are acting as a chair for him.

But there was plenty of PC goodness lurking behind the opener. In fact, the next two were Lindor for the Mets PC, and my second card of 2/14 baby Yermin Mercedes. Add a Jays card and a second Met, and that's a first pack I can really enjoy. Interestingly, this pack contained card #1 in the set (Lindor), as well as #330 (Nolan Arenado).

And why not show that one off as well?

OK. Enough about Pack #1. What else was in the box? Base card wise...

Yermin wasn't the only 2/14 player to make his flagship release debut in Update. Ryan McKenna, of whom I had a dozen Bowman/Minors cards of, gets his first Topps MLB card in this. 

Mets content? I got the complete team set out of this, when combined with the cards in that earlier group of 4.

Alas, the Jays set was not completed, and it was the Alek Manoah that eluded me here, being part of the 22 cards I didn't get in the box. That Cimber is a beauty of a card - alternate uniform and a great sidearm delivery. 

The Checklist/Season Highlights part of the set was the exclusive domain of saluting no-hitters. Six cards in this portion of the set salute the first 6 no-hitters of the season. 

And to wrap this up, a selection of my favourite photos in the box. Catches, bunting, weather, celebration and some nice framing highlighted my box.

I still have the parallels and inserts to get to. While the Series 2 box got me both a /99 Vintage Stock and a /10 clear parallel, this one didn't get me anything as low as the clear card. It did get me a Hall of Famer's signature, though. That's next post!

2021 Adventures in Repacks Part 44 - Surprising Baseball

 

Let's do one of these today!

With these as the contents!

Looks like clockwise-from-upper-left means that I lead with the hit this time. And here it is! Not the most spectacular one, but a hit is a hit, even if it is a plain gray swatch.

While Billy Hamilton is a fine player, it is somewhat of a stretch to consider him a superstar. Nice Wrigley Icy on his card, however. The Scherzer Gold Label is a slightly rarer black parallel. 

The 12 card pack is, as usual, all over the place. All 3 of my team collections make one appearance, but that Martinez gets the nod for the best card in this grouping, as well as the entire repack, for being a food issue, and being a team history card. You also get an insert set with Glove Stories, and even some mid-range sets with Showcase and Finest also appearing. Randomness rules!

If you're opening Premier, that's the card you wanna see.

And here's what accompanied it.

Finally, the Pitchers Pack, which was the more consistently interesting one of the group. 1990 Upper Deck brings a pair of interesting photos, with one of the more obvious Spring-Training photos ever to appear on cardboard. There's more Wrigley Ivy, and some Heritage Minors too. Even that final card is interesting...

based on the story appearing on the back of the card.

There you have it!

Mailed Mets

 

And now, the Mets portion of the Ann Arbor mailer. 

If you're going to get an award-winner card for a member of your favourite team, it is hard to beat when that award is a World Series MVP card. 

A sampling of the base Mets. 

And some shininess. While that Mark Clark may not be super blinding, it is a refractor. 

The hits portion begin with some more press proofs from 1997. As with the Jays content, these are limited print, but not serial numbered. Baerga is /2000, while the Wilson is a gold press proof /500.

There's more of this one than those ones, but this one has a serial number attached to it. Cerda came out of the bullpen for a couple season in '02 and '03.

Mini-relic! OK, maybe not a mini in the A&G sense, but still smaller than your standard card by a bit.

Prospect Premiums just seems like the most forced alliteration ever. Nice looking card though.

Two swatches. Two different colours. That's all I ask.

And why not the best of both worlds to wrap this up? I still can't come across cards of Lucas Duda without having the urge to start singing Camptown Races ala Foghorn Leghorn. This remains true even after Lucas' MLB career ended. Still.

All I have left is some miscellany, which will be covered before the week is out. There you have it!