Compare and Contrast

 

Let's look an autograph that uses the sticker space nicely. The letters are legible, with nice cursive that you don't have to look at the name printed on the card to learn who the player is, letting the autograph shine. You are disappointed to see it and later realize that Joseph Yearby never made it in the NFL. But this still becomes an easy addition to the penmanship binder.

And then there's this.

Rangers Roundup

 Back to the COMC to-be-posted box, and just in time as the OHL regular season winds down, here's some cards of Kitchener Rangers alum

Most of these cards fall under the category of "cheap because of e-packs". Except this one. This one was rather cheap due to a rather short NHL career. The one-and-done Contours set was never available in epack form. 

E-pack posts generally mean there are going to be a lot of parallels from UD flagship releases, so here's 7 of 'em! The silvers are usually <30 cents over at COMC, with the French parallels usually being about 5 cents more. A cheap way to build numbers. 

I missed this one the last time I did a COMC Rangers post - so Ryan Murphy is lucky enough to get a scan all to himself!

Kubalik might only have spent a half-season here, but he's the volume king this time around with these 4 cards joining the silver & French parallels shown above. 

Even a lot of the numbered cards are in the 60-75 cent range. Such as this Golden Burst parallel of John Gibson. 

Even non-star autographs are reasonable, with this also not cracking the $2.00 threshold. Logan Stanley cards are nice for an additional reason - not only did he play for the locals, but he's also from the area. I don't collect hockey cards of people from the area, but if I can cross them over with another PC, let's pile them on! 

There you have it!

Oh! Is the Great Grayson Shillingford going to play Slotback?

 

When I saw this name, I couldn't help but think of a frequent credit riff during the Joel-era of MST3K. And I couldn't resist re-using it here.

There's one thing that is pretty interesting about this card. It was the only one of his career. Period. Not just the only hit - the only card. No base cards. No patch parallels to this. Only this card and its other 799 swatches. 

There can't be too many other players who have had that type of cardboard career.

With that story behind this card, I might as well show off the back as well!

2023 Adventures in Repacks - Part 7.4 - A Hundred Hanger

 The finale!

Another Donruss opener.

A nice start with a great photo on the Todd Heap (solid design too for the insert photo) and an always welcome Special Teams card. 

Another ST card! That Cade McNown is probably about as high-end as the cards in this repack go, and it adds a card of one of a handful of players to do the technicolor yawn on the field. OL mojo too!

4 straight 1990 Pro Set cards. That's repacks for you! But that does kinda get offset with a pair of Platinums.

Not too much of note here in the final portion, but still a perfectly acceptable repack experience on the whole.

2023 Adventures in Repacks - Part 7.3 - A Hundred Hanger

 Off to the other side!

A rather foil-y start to this. 

Chris Stams wrapping up an unfortunate Bengal is probably going to be on the top when I rate the photographs in this repack. Earl Campbell's is a pretty nice usage of a 70s era photo that doesn't look like an older photo on a modern card. And I will repeat my love for the 1986 Topps design.

Some 80s stuff here. Special Teams love for the first one, and "Butz gets his Man" making my inner Beavis chuckle. Still, good for him on having that moment preserved on cardboard. Earl Campbell makes another Texas appearance, and that Marcus Allen just screams out 'Mid 90's card'. 

Lots of the same sets we've been seeing frequently so far. Except that Warren Moon. That's the first 2015 Prizm in this. 

Aside for the Moon, my favourites in this part may have been the older stuff - the Stams, the Allegre, the Butz. Everything Butz!

There you have it!

2023 Adventures in Repacks - Part 7.2 - A Hundred Hanger

 

Both Prizm and a star player! That's a really great way to start off the second half of the first 50.

Looks like the Harvey Williams content will continue on both sides of the first portion. While that Gold Medallion parallel is pretty nice, the Kirkendoll Texas card is the one that really hits my sweet spot, since this set was the only one where he made any sort of appearances. I love obscurity!

I sometimes wonder who the absolute worst person I've posted a card of on this blog was. I've posted a card of Rae Carruth. There was that 2/14 billiards guy who is on the Ohio sex offender registry for gross indecency with a 12-year old. There was Mike McBain, although he's on the registry on Nevada. I voluntarily added a Milton Bradley auto, unaware of his loathsomeness.  And now, there's Anthony Smith. He's been convicted in the murders of 3 people, and the jury deadlocked on #4. Quite the contender! 

And yes, that's our friend Harvey Williams on the Platinum card. The Alshon would be nice, but is a 2/14 dupe. 

Harvey Williams #3.  He'll vanish in the second half. Warren Moon brings some Hall of Fame content to this, and I like the close-up Edgar Bennett as one of the better photos in this portion, probably just behind the Abdul-Jabbar as my favourite. 

A perfectly fine repack experience so far, if not for the murderer's appearance. 

There you have it.

2023 Adventures in Repacks - Part 7.1 - A Hundred Hanger

 I've had this around for about 6 months - I guess that's long enough to wait before showing everything off!

Here's the package. One rather basic set for a starter card, and one that's nice and foil-y.

Although AJ Bouye does make frequent appearances in the larger base sets, since he played on the defensive side of the ball, he was never a marquee player in the more hit-based products. That's a perfectly fine start. 

The starting card might not have been foil-y, but the card behind it was, and it makes it a back-to-back Jaguar to start. There's a couple of sets that will appear frequently in this repack, with the 1996 Stadium Club and 2010 Prestige showing up for the first time. Harvey Williams also shows up for the first time. Brown and Droughns provide content for future mailers to alumni collectors. 

Bills content! WOO-HOO! Manziel was all over the covers of products during his draft year. Now, he's repack filler. The 1986 design, with its gridiron background, is a very nice look, although I can't see a dark background being too popular today with those that want the new stuff graded immediately (THE CORNERS! 9.5 ONLY! NOOO!). There's Harvey Williams #2, and the first of many cards from that Texas set. 

Another Bills card! Even if it is Trent "At least I'm not JP Losman" Edwards. That Prestige of Jennings is an Orange Extra Points parallel. While the basketball ones were /499, these weren't. That Ricky Proehl features a throwback Cardinals from 1994. With the plain helmet as well, they're frightfully boring. Brandon Weeden continues the Browns QB misery. Who would have imagined that there would be issues with drafting a 28-year old in the first round? 

There's the first 1/4! 

2/14 Hunting through Group Breaks

 2023 Series 1 has dropped, and I did anticipate the checklist to check if Topps' flood of rookie cards would include Ethan Small and Gabriel Moreno. When I saw that they did, I had to get in on some group breaks to scour for new cards for the 2/14 collection.

How'd that go?

3 Ethan Smalls, the base, a gold foil parallel, and a Chrome 1988 out of the bonus packs. While his first MLB numbers weren't mind-blowing, neither were those for his teammate Corbin Burnes in his rookie year, and he was also all over releases. Can't miss out on the possibility!

These cards moved his total to 5.

Even if Moreno's time in Toronto has ended, I'll still prefer his Jays cards over his Diamondbacks ones, no matter how much success he may find in Arizona. I love that the powder blues are now in the 2/14 collection as well. His total is '8'.

What other goodies were pulled alongside these, other than a bunch of team sets?

Not too much for the Brewers slot, with the most interesting being this 1988 blue parallel. Team colour (if not shade) matches are always nice little bonuses.

But, I did luck my way into a bonus Rip Party pack with the Brewers spot. It just contained the base parallels with the Rip Party logo, but it is highlighted by some decent names with Mullins and Robert, the latter sporting a sweet alternate uniform.

Definitely more volume, and variety when it comes to parallels on the Toronto side, with the big one being that Vladdy. It is an Orange Foil /299. It is joined by a gold foil, a gold /2023 and a rainbow foil parallel. 

I'd probably like these playing card parallels a lot more if they were like the inserts out of O-Pee-Chee where they can be assembled to form a complete 52-card deck of cards. If hockey players can survive with some of them ending up as the Queen in a deck, so should baseball players.

I also got the base parallel of this, but a /299 one is more worthy of a show-off. Also, getting a Shawn Green in a 2023 release is nice little surprise. 

And let's add a hit for good measure. They're even better when the swatch colour matches the photo colour.

There you have it!

Mailbag: Mets

 

Back to the TMV mailer for the Mets content contained within. At least with most of this card having the space taken up by the manupatch, you're not focusing on the picture, of which Schinden looks more like a 60-year old bait salesman than a rookie pitcher.

A whole bunch of miscellany.

And here are some numbered Mets. There's another one of those still-odd Moments and Milestones cards. I could probably fill up a binder of them, and still not have the 'base' set of them. Even Topps can lay an egg once or twice. It got #2 on a TCDB poll of worst sets, and is worth every bit of venom sent its way. That doesn't mean I won't gladly add cards from that set to my binders.

Start with autos, end with autos. PJ Conlon only appeared in 3 games for the Mets, and in MLB, but he was the first player born in Northern Ireland in more than a century to have made the big leagues. He might only be the back-up this season with Omar Narvaez but at least this makes this portion of the mailer topical! 

And there you have it!

Any Cardboard Port

 

When you realize there probably won't be a card to commemorate Adam Gaudette's part-season with the Senators, and you want your Sens collection to include an appearance of any player who made an appearance on cardboard as a Senator in your collection...

a sticker will have to do!