Spring Expo Goodies Post #12

I've already showcased some of the cards that made their way into my Ottawa Senators Frankenset. Today, some cards from the third set I'm working on. Players who made an early stop in their hockey careers playing my hometown Kitchener Rangers. It's a varied crew, and I have acquired most of the cards from guys, but am still 10 out as of this writing. Mainly from guys from before my time as a collector, and guys who only had cards in their rookie years.

But, I'm not going to dwell to much on the Garrett Burnetts and Claire Alexanders of the collecting world today, and will instead focus on the ones that dropped off my list at the Expo. Most of them come from before my time, so its really going to be more along the lines of posting cards as opposed to memories of the players.

Pure 70s. In the sense that we really need more cards where the featured player looks a little like a homeless Robert Reed.

But, he does look more coherent than Tom Miller. Tom seriously looks like he had the drinkingest night ever the previous night, forgetting that the next day was 'hockey card photo shoot day'. I don't think a photo of someone that messed up had ever been preserved for posterity until Nick Nolte's mug shot surfaced.

Peter only played in 6 NHL games, but I'm still proud to welcome him into the set. If for no other reason than the cartoon on the back of his card:

It also would qualify as a Zero Year card for Nick @ Dime Boxes, as those 6 games he played were exclusively for Colorado.

As best as google can tell me, Jerry is the only player in my collection that has passed on, having lost a battle with cancer in 2006. He spent a few years bouncing between the North Stars, Flames and the NY Rangers before retiring and becoming a golf pro in the Maritimes.

Finally, someone I remember! He only spent one year in OHL before being drafted by the Thrashers, and getting shipped off to the Hawks before even playing a game there. He's spent most of his time in the minors since then, but has tasted the bigs for about a dozen games.

Dennis only played 6 games with the Rangers in his career, but he still counts for this project. Technically, this is actually a card I got through sportlots, but it is really to unique not to showcase.

Gee. That pack looks a little thicker than its mates.

I was in a repack mood, so off to Target this morning it was. I'd never picked up a solely football repack before, so it was one of those that ended up in the red basket. I'll get to it later in the week. I looked around to see if anything else interested me. There were a couple boxes of 2012-13 UD Artifacts nearby. I'm not really interested in building that set, despite its small size. There were two packs on top, and on closer inspection, one appeared to definitely bigger than its neighbour. A quick pick of the two packs confirmed it. Probably a blocker card, but I still felt like taking the risk.

That's enough for now. A pack and a repack. $9.00 on the ol' credit card and it was time to see if my first foray into pack searching (scanning? observing?) was worth my while.

Bingo!

Not numbered, bit a nice entry into the binders for Leafs hating me after the events of about a week ago. It's always nice when the swatches are different colours as well.

Since I really don't want to scan just a single card, here's the rest of the contents of the pack. The best part about a short base checklist means some really good players among the base. A pair of HOFers among them in this pack.  I'm generally not a fan of hot having backgrounds at least partially visible in the cards, but it isn't too bad here, especially with the darker jerseys. It does look really bad on the Carter, though.

Masked Mondays - Week #19 or Spring Expo Goodies Post #11

Off and running again with more goodies from the raiding of golatender boxes at the show.

As soon as I set my eyes on an image of this card, it went on the wantlist. The great thing about the Pinnacle sets as of late is that they give a story about the image featured on the card. In this case, it is about the mask design. However, it mentions a character from a cartoon known as "Lucky Luke. Unfortunately, that's on the other side of the mask. Oops. This is just a music playing bull. He's often used the bull motif on his masks, and the guitar is simply there for the Blues team.

Way back in Week #2 of Masked Mondays, I posted a side shot of this mask. I wanted to add some more photos of this one. Here's a nice front view, and one that shows how nicely parallel this mask was.

Saluting another sport on your mask is, for me, a definite no-no. It isn't really a good idea to remind people of what they could be watching instead of your game. Just like a member of some local yokel band wearing a Beatles/Rolling Stones/any established band t-shirt.

And to leave one that I'm not too crazy about, for one that I really like, in spite of being a Leaf mask. It's hard for a Leaf goalie to resist putting a callback to the history of the franchise on their mask. The Carlton St. Cashbox is front and center, and the big "M" on the side, along with many other Leafs legends.

Happy Victoria Day!

Or Tara Day, based on your wrestling loyalties.

Spring Expo Goodies Post #10

Most of my purchases were stuff for my Frankensets, trade bait, and simply stuff I found interesting. My player collections really didn't get a lot of additions to them. In fact, in terms of single cards, not a single player had more than 3 cards in the box.

But, it was a seven way tie for first place, so I'll make a 21 card dent in the box.

Grabbing a trio of cards for my Delgado and Guerrero binders shouldn't be much a surprise.

Even 3 cards of Rusty Staub fit nicely into my collection. I love the old school blue uniform on Rusty.

Now we're getting into the realm of cards that really didn't seem to fit my personal collection. 3 Jack Morris cards? I'm guessing with 2 of them being painted cards, it makes sense in retrospect. Although I'm not sure how that Twins card fit into the mix.

I guess with his recent passing, Earl Weaver was fresh in my mind. Seeing these cards, I'm can just picture Earl giving Alice Sweet advice on putting in tomato plants, among other things.

3 Ichiros? The Perez card fits in. The double bat studio card is suitably goofy. But much like the Morris Twins card, the Heritage is a puzzler as to why it was in the box.

And finally, some hockey. Quite a variety of uniforms for Kariya. My hits collection really lacked that shade of green from the Mighty Ducks era, so I shelled out a toonie for that one. Not bad for someone that should have an outside chance of bieng in the HOF. The Kariya Classic card was part of a sleeve that contained it, and the Predators card. I only wanted the former, so I could complete the 4 card comic subset from the 1993 set. I'd picked up the Manon Rheaume card from COMC on Black Friday. The other two, the Daigle and the O'Neill, were also grabbed at the Expo, so they'll make an appearance here over the next couple weeks.

More from the Dimwit Break - The Best of the Rest

Time to dig through some of the other non-hit cards that arrived. The number looked to be in the 80s, so the chances are all getting scanned are nil.

Another one of the all time great names in the game. I'm sure some of you are thinking "What's so special about a name like Jimmy?", but you are wasting your time by objecting. It's a binder-worthy moniker.

I'm somewhat amused by Vinny Chulk being worthy of Diamond King status in a small set.

I actually needed this card of Chip Cannon for my Blue Jays Frankenset. 3 more cards to go! By the way, only two guys named Cannon ever got MLB level cards, and both were for the Blue Jays. Chip had a pile in 2005, and Joe Cannon landed one in the 1980 Topps and OPC releases. I share that with you because you don't have enough worthless baseball trivia floating through your brain.

While the Verlander or Santana no-hitter inserts didn't come my way through the randomizing, this one did and I'm glad it did. A nice new Gary Carter Expos card for my PC.

I think this was the only Blue Jays insert card in the whole set. And it is a photoshopped job as well. Yippee!

After getting the mini framed relic of Phil at the Expo, it's nice to add the base card of his to my collection.

And another pair of cards that perfectly utilize the frame design.

And to wrap up the rest of the goodies, my favourite picture of the bunch that came my way. The ball seems to be coming right at the camera. Simple, yet beautiful.

The Dimwit Group Break goodies roll in...

An envelope jammed with cards from the March Group Break (04 Diamond Kings and 05 Cracker Jack) and April (a case of 2013 GQ) rolled in. I elected to have both shipped together to save on the shipping costs for Samuel.

I'll just focus on the hits from the latter now. I toiled with picking either the Blue Jays or the Mets for it. I thought the Jays appeared to have a stronger hit ratio, so I went with them. As the break drew closer, and a few teams were still available, I also took a small risk and grabbed up the Rockies. I elected to share my extra base and insert cards, so I ended up with about 70 of those combined once all was said and done. But, tonight I will focus on the hits from the breaks.

Outside of something with an inanely low number, this was probably the card I was really hoping to see come out of the boxes. A sweet autograph of Joey Bats, smudge notwithstanding. I'm a sucker for cards with really clear signature, and to get one of a marquee player is even better.

That wasn't the only autograph I ended up with. Anthony is currently playing AAA ball in Buffalo, where he's averaging about a strike out per game. Not good, but I can always savour this video where he stole home earlier this month.

Two autographs deserve a third, so here it is, courtesy of the Rockies. Unlike Gose, at least he's had one at bat in the bigs so far this year. It's clearer than Anthony's as well, as I can kinda parse the first few letters of it.

While I did well for autographs, I didn't do so well with the numbered parallels. This one of Fowler /499 was the only one. The card does seem to be one of the better ones for showing how perfectly the frame and the border works with centering on the picture.

I also did bring home a relic hit of Brandon Morrow as well.

The short prints were the another place where I didn't do so well. There were a few that I could have pulled, but all I got was:

A pair of E5s. No sign of RA Dickey or Tulo except among the minis.

Finally, a move over to the March break. I didn't grab any hits, but still pulled a pretty nice parallel from my randomly assigned team with the Royals.

I'm already a sucker for Diamond Kings and their ilk, so ending up with this sepia of George Brett was really nice.

Thanks for the great breaks, and I'll start digging through the rest of them tomorrow.

Spring Expo Goodies Post #9

And I keep working my way though the box. Thanks to the fine folks at COMC for giving away boxes at the show. It's like they just knew!

If I ever, ever reach a point in time where I don't pull a card of a guy with a nickname like "Mudcat" from aq box, it's a time where I've lost the will to collect.

Yup.This was all about the hat. And probably a few too many pinstripes.

An Update card of Cecil Fielder from 1987. I've got plenty of Cecil cards from his time with Toronto, but none where his position was merely listed as 'Infiield". I don't think anybody in Toronto, even back then, would envision Cecil as a shortstop.

One of those cards that ended up in the box at the end of the day, but I'm not certain as to why I picked it up. It is a nice one, though.

I picked up several of these 1981 Topps checklist cards. I'm sure you, like me are wondering the same thing. On the right side of the photo, is that a child or a dwarf?

Ah, a cigarette ad on a baseball card. There's something you don't see at all today. I'm not talking about the Marlboro billboard. I'm talking about the fact Don Zimmer looks to have several pounds worth of tobacco hiding in one of his cheeks.

Most of the cards were photographed at the respective stadiums. Kudos to the Padres for mixing things up a bit.

Spring Expo Goodies Post #8

As I continue to work my way down to the zero in my Ottawa Senators Frankenset, the Expo helped as the cards needed were reduced to 20.

The real problem with this set is that zistle doesn't always have the team attached to the player, so there are some folks who suited up for Ottawa that don't appear to have cards. Once such person was on the first card.

One of hockey's more infamous lunatics, is probably best known for his time with Buffalo. Specifically, I'll assume he is best known for pummeling a fan that decided through what one would assume was an inhuman amount of drinking, to go after the Buffalo bench.

Total time with Ottawa - 11 Games. The card was only one of two from his time there.

I didn't really have any plans to upgrade any of the cards. I really just used the first card I found of the respective player in my binders/boxes. But, since the original Michalek was the base card, I figured upgrading to the parallel wouldn't hurt.

I really don't want to use hits as cards in this set. So, I was looking a replacement for the David Rundblad "All The Kings Men" relic This did it. David's career in Ottawa was short-lived, as he was shipped out to the desert for Kyle Turris.

Amazingly, I'm not the only blogger today to post a David Rundblad card.

Here's a trio of Young Guns cards. Hnidy was another one of the cards from the 13 for $5 bin. The other two were a dollar each. Hnidy was the most prolific of the lot, having 550 games to his credit, and even picking up a Stanley Cup ring for his last season in Boston (after playing 3 regular season games that season). Despite a decent career, he only had a handful of cards to his credit, with only a couple coming from after his rookie season. Keller only played in 6 total NHL games, and this was his only big league card. But that it is twice as many games as Nikulin played.

And to wrap it up, a hit for $2.00. It will function as a placeholder until I can get a base card of Ivan.

And here's 6 more that I added. Osiecki and Schneider were two others that were similar to Rob Ray in that I couldn't find zistle evidence of the Sens card until one was before my eyes. While Cullen is technically a Minnesota Wild in the card, he's in an Ottawa uniform and that's enough for me. I'll have to do the same with Cory Stillman, as he's in a similar situation, albeit with being listed as a Panther.