Your 2024 Donruss Mets

 A whole bunch of group break Mets.

There are definite differences between various teams in this. In comparison, the Jays had zero content in the veterans portion of the base set. The Mets got 7. I'm not sure how Alvarez still counts towards this set given licensing issues. Maybe he signed an individual contract? Either way, getting a Bobby Valentine card in 2024 is amazingly great.

And in comparison to 2 for the Jays, the Mets have 6 cards in the higher number Rated Prospect portion of the set. 

Optic parallels are mixed in with regular Donruss this year. Here's a nice selection of them. I'd complain that I wanted to get a Bobby Valentine here...

But I ended up with a trio of shiny parallels of his. 2 silver base and one Optic holo. And that's it for unnumbered parallels.

As for the numbered variety:

Here's Colin Houck in purple form.

And in Pink Velocity as well.

Joining those is an autographed parallel, meaning this break almost doubled the Houck portion of the collection to 9 total - all Panini issues.

Everything so far has been a parallel, even the auto. So, finally I get to show off an insert. Again, I have no idea how Alvarez still qualifies for an unlicensed set, but I'll just assume some lawyer signed off on it. 

But there you have it!

2024 Adventures in Repacks - Part 21 - Back to the Repack Mines

 It's been over a month since I busted something officially repack related, so I'll remedy that from the Dollarama.

Here's the contents - that 10 card box was the perfect size to hold the mascot relic out of Pro Debut that I posted not that long ago.

Perfectly fine start. I like it when a (relatively) recent grouping includes more cards that aren't flagship. Even if the design/font choices make the name a little challenging to read on the front.

There's nothing but flagship in the (new to me) 2020s pack. But I get a couple anniversary patches, and the Mike Smith gives a nice look at his mask where he enhanced a pretty generic design with the oil derrick down the middle.

The 90s pack was the expected junk wax entry, but in a quest for something interesting, I'm going to highlight the LaFrance. They tried to include a second photo on the back, so what to do when they only have one photo available? 

Just use a cropped photo of a jersey.

It is more interesting than a re-used photo, at least.

There you have it!

Whoops!

 I forgot to include some base/inserts/parallels of Blue Jays received in my Night Owl recap post from last week. And they were right there in my 'Scans' folder.

So here they are now!

Forgetting about a Diamond King card?

What was wrong with me?

One Week Late

 

You'd think Summerslam weekend would be the perfect time to post a WWE blaster. You'd also be forgetting that I'm a complete idiot and rarely plan things. But better late than holding off until next year's Wrestlemania.

Pack 1:

The bronze parallels, in this case the Rodriguez, fall one-per-pack. That's an easy way to get to an average of nine parallels per blaster. Getting the same person more than once in a pack isn't a rare occurrence in Chronicles, but I assume it is a little rarer in the WWE release. It is also interesting to see Rollins and Lynch appear back-to-back.

Pack 2:

It's a little harder to see here, but Kofi Kingston is the bronze parallel. That's a lot of base designs here. Golden Age makes its debut in Chronicles, and given how the new baseball releases does include a lot of retired players mixing in with the prospects, I'm surprised it wasn't done there. Like with Classics, that entire portion of the list contains retired legends.

Pack 3:

There's the first cover boy to make an appearance with Bron Breaker. Given that there are women as part of the subset, they can't really call it some variation on Kings, so the Eddy Guerrero card is a Ring Rulers. Faarooq is the first non-bronze parallel, being the Silver Wave version. 

Pack 4:

There's the only numbered parallel in the box. It is also the last non-Bronze one, meaning I only landed 8 as opposed to the promised 9. 'On Average' rears its head.

Pack 5:

There's the second cover boy, with the bronze parallel of Rey to start it off. I still have a challenge not spelling his ring name as Rey Misterio Jr, since I was familiarized with that watching lucha broadcasts from Mexico before he started working regularly in the US. Ditto for Eddy as opposed to Eddie Guerrero. 

Pack 6:

I'd prefer to see a different photo used for the second one, but Illusions really adapts the best to the bronze parallels with background making it very obvious. I may not have got a card of the Rock here, but I did get a card of his daughter in Ava. She's really, really green at this point, but so was The Blue Chipper, Rocky Maivia when he debuted.

There you have it!

Welcome Dan Poirier, John Seaman & Alejandro de la Rosa!

 3 new names in my 2/14 collection!

 

All 3 of these new faces appear in minor league cards. First up is this patriotic jersey, sported by Alejandro de la Rosa. He joins MMA fighter Montana as the second person in my collection with that last name. I'm always interested in oddness like that in the binders, especially for names that aren't the most common in the USA. Two folks named Smith? Big deal. Two named de la Rosa? Awesome!

Depending on your level of juvenility, John Seaman might have the most giggle-worthy name in my collection. As for me,  I'll go outside of my 2/14 collection when I have the desire to laugh at someone with an unfortunate name, thank you very much. This is also John's only card of his career. Alejandro had 2. And even with the 2/14 collection, he's no Harry Colon.

Among the three, this is the closest that any of them got to a mainstream card, in the sense that you could actually pull this from packs at the time. I'm always surprised when I get new cards, especially pack-pullable ones, from the junk wax era. It's always "How did I miss this?".

And since I don't have any more new 2/14 cards to show off for a bit, here's a couple of players making repeat appearances. Adams jersey looks like he was wearing it when he committed a spree killing, so that's unfortunate.

But there you have it!

Forgotten Packs - Part 2

 

A repeater this time around - sort of. One of those GQ is a hobby pack - one is a retail pack.

I'll work this left-to-right, meaning I'll start with the multi set salute that is Archives. They may have overdone the 'What if?" aspect in 2021. Two Jays appearances are nice, even if they're dupes. The Slam Diego isn't, and it's probably my favourite card in this post.

A pair of Mets and a Votto for my Cancon collection. Pretty solid pack for the Ol' PC.

Mini!

And there's method to my madness of putting that mini up separately from the rest of the hobby pack - since I duped up with it in the retail one. I'd ask 'what are the odds?', since someone would try to work it out, and figure it out with all the photo variations considered. 

At least that Billy Burns insert is a nice consolation prize.

There you have it!

Mailbag: Night Owl

 Back to the mailbag again, and a somewhat bulkier than usual mailer.

Even if it isn't a SP, knocking anything off the set build for Heritage is nice. Only 50 left, including 41 SPs at this point. (I really should add them to my wantlist linked at the side)

Bills! Bills! Bills! I had absolutely no memory of Dominic Rhodes with the Bills. Google told me that he never played a regular season game with them - he was signed and released before the 2009 season. So it is a photoshop special. Kiko Alonso will always be (in)famous for the jersey story on Deadspin from his rookie season. Cornelius Bennett's 'Big Bear' entry is definitely the 'drugs were involved' concept both in this post, and probably Bills cardboard history. Fortunately, his entry above is much saner.

A couple numbered cards, both which don't bring back the best of memories. Losman for his on-the-field performance, and Hardy for far more depressing ones.

The Mets content was even more numerous than the Bills stuff. The best thing about the Now/Then insert sets is that it allows for people that rarely make appearances in modern card sets to show up. Although Garr has made a few appearances in autographed for in Archives releases. Other than that, give me the wonderfully garish, Diamond Kings-ish background on the Cosmic Chrome of McNeil any day.

The Mets also get some numbered content.

The Blue Jays portion of the team collections in this was the smallest, but the mightiest. Kevin Smith, who went to Oakland in the Matt Chapman deal, And there's an autograph that I knew was on the way after seeing it come out during a break, but it was still nice to see. Even if it meant 2/14 baby Gabriel Moreno had to be traded away to bring in Varsho. 

I'll also never be able to forget the fact that Daulton was born 9 months and 1 day after his father Gary's last MLB game. 

Nice as that was, that wasn't the most interesting item in the package. This was, bringing some quality cardboard-themed literature to the table. This is a book from 1988 that includes a picture of every Expos card out of the flagship set from the team's debut to the publishing date. There's also a few paragraphs worth of recap of the previous seasons through 1987.  I definitely picked up the Blue Jays version at WH Smith at the time, but really doubt the Mets one was available on this side of the border.

I should probably open it up to scan a sample page, but that would likely mess up the spine, and I can't see myself doing that to a book.

But there you have it!

Help Me If You Can!

I searched for autographed cards of former 76ers player/coach (and most important to me - 2/14er)  Fred Carter on ebay. I found this for a nice price, but I'm not really up to paying $20 for shipping up here. Since it isn't a certified auto, I'm not certain I can use the COMC mailbox feature for it. 

He's probably low enough on the totem pole of autographs to be at the "Why forge it?" level, so I'm comfortable adding it. Plus, it looks enough like his certified autos that it might be worth the risk.

So, a little assistance from one of my trading partners would be very appreciated.

Forgotten Packs - Part 1

I came across another small cache of packs, all of the baseball variety, that I'd acquired at some point, but never posted. I'm not sure if these were from repacks, the LCS, or somewhere else, but I'm going to start going through them. First up, the 3 packs with the most cards, going from fewest to most.

All the way back to 1994 for this one.

The middle row provides a couple additions to PCs, with Quantrill bound for my CanCon collection, and a more obvious Jays entry. Darrin Jackson gives the photo most likely to be recycled into an unlicensed set. Other than that, lots of junk wax mainstays - Bosio, Devereaux, Gallego.

Remember Vince Coleman's stint with the Royals? I didn't until I got this card. Chad Ogea had the most unfortunate last name pronunciation at the time. Apparently, it was enough to fool Manny Ramirez.

Speaking of unlicensed releases...

If they'd done the entire players portion of the set like the Utley or the Buck, they might have been able to get away with it. But then you see Josh Willingham, with the helmet logo able to be seen completely unobscured, and you're "What in the sam hell were they thinking?!". And "Is the lawyer that said 'go for it!' employed anywhere today?".

Finally, a pack acquired so long ago, I didn't even have the packaging any more. I just put everything into a small slider box, and forgot about them!

Except for Gaetti, nothing too interesting about the first 1/3 of the pack in a photographic sense.  But I do get my first Mets content of the packs.

And they come back-to-back. The Team 2001 insert was successful in predicting that Sanders would still be in baseball in 2001. Looking at the checklist, the overall average seems pretty good, even including a few HOFers in it. As for the others, only Dan Wilson had a career extend into 2001.

That Pagnozzi isn't the most exciting example of a play-at-the-plate photo. Eddie Murray makes his second appearance, and Ken Griffey Jr is always nice to find in any pack.

There you have it! 9 more to come over the next while.