Stacks of Wax 2! Electric Boogaloo!

Another pile of credit from COMC turns into credit from Blowout, and as before Stripes helps with the unpacking!

Box #1: 2015 Topps Football Jumbo - It is one of my favourite set builds of the year! Nice to do some damage to it via COMC/Blowout credit.
Box #2: 2014 Topps Heritage High Number Baseball Complete Set - I thought I'd pass on this, since I didn't want to pay full price for this when it dropped. But getting it less than half of that seems like a nice way to wrap up one of my favourite designs.

Now we get into the random other boxes portion of this to round things out. Last time, I went for a base heavy Panini Basketball from 12-13 and an insert only Panini Innovation. This time, I opted for something in the middle.

Box #3: 2012/13 Panini Crusade Basketball Hobby Box - I like the Crusade cards, and figured I'd go for this as opposed to the next year, which had more Crusades, but fewer hits. And I've already got a bunch of Raptors from that year anyhow. So, more chase cards in the older product.
Box #4: 2014 Panini Crown Royale Football - Die-cut base cards? Why not?

And finally, individual packs:

1 pack of 2015 Topps Chrome Jumbo - Just because I knew this particular type of pack wouldn't be on the shelves at the LCS.
1 pack of 12-13 Marquee. I was just under $250, and if I reached that level I could save $10, so I added one hobby pack to get that level, so the pack ended up being free, with a few more dollars off the cost before shipping.

So, not as much in terms of pack busting this time, since there are only 10 packs in the jumbo box, but the total volume of cards should be around the same but I'm really looking forward to digging in.

Preparing for a Drop

I'm expecting a second COMC credit becomes Blowout Cards credit box over the next few days. So, this seems as good a time as any to finish off the baseball portion of the trade w/ Greg at P,TSIA.

Unfortunately, this is a dupe in my Delgado collection. Fortunately, this is still a need in my Blue Jays collection! But, even if that wasn't a need there, I'd still find a nice home for it as a Delgado super collector. After all, I'm now only 167 away from completing the set.

And some misc. Delgados for that binder.

The Mets portion of this wasn't the biggest. But, with a state parallel, a Stadium Club and a David Wright that I'm stunned I didn't have, this was still filled with goodness.

From a Wright I was sure I had, to a 2/14 card I was sure I had. Also a need, and I now have 20 Takashi Saito cards in that collection.

And one more (maybe future) Met. He put up decent numbers in 2013, but didn't pitch in 2014 and received a 50 game special in 2015. But, this is still a Mets card for binder purposes.

Two Expos in a mailer is better than no Expos in a mailer!

This is only a small portion of the CanCon portion of the envelope. But, it expanded nicely, primarily with these parallels.

And a pinstripe-y Justin Morneau.

And lets wrap this up with some more parallel fun. Shiny Blue Jays cards! And colour! And Ace!

And there wraps up another trade post. Thanks for all these and the original goodies. I'll still keep my eyes peeled for Ducks goodies at the Expo in a few months!

2015 Adventures in Repacks: Part 32 - An easy decision

Sometimes, deciding which 15 for $1 repack to get is an easy decision. Like this time.

2014 Fleer Showcase Wayne Gretzky - Such as one of the visible cards being a Gretzky. It doesn't matter what year/set the release is - they're always nice to add to a collection.
1993 UD Paul Ranheim
1990 Score Gary Nylund

2001 UD Challenge for the Cup Roberto Luongo -  Luongo is one of the guys who has been in the league for years, but it doesn't seem like it is.
1993 Parkhurst Tom Pederson

1993 Score Pavel Bure - Great photo from the junk wax era.
1993 UD Jeff Daniels
1989 OPC Benoit Hogue
1992 Topps Doug Brown

1995 Pinnacle Pat Verbeek - Is there such a thing as too much blue on a card?

1991 Future Trends 1972 Hockey Canada French Stan Mikita -  That's a mouthful of a set - but at least the card is interesting.

2002 MVP Miroslav Satan - It is a tragedy that he never played for New Jersey.
1991 Platinum Ron Tugnutt
1990 Bowman Allan Bester

2008 Ultra Daniel Paille - And the last of the visible cards.

A nice Gretzky, and a great photo on the Bure. A couple other decent cards fror the misc. collection make this a worthy repack.

Namesakes

Sure, he's no relation to Jacques. Tyler never even played a minute of NHL action. But darned if I don't love his salute to one of the first mask wearers on his helmet. Although I really need the Carey Price version that is spending way too much time on my Top 10 wantlist.

Pack Sampler - 2 Packs of 2015 Chrome

2 packs of Chrome that were obviously sent to Southwestern Ontario instead of the Bronx by mistake.

Pack #1:

Things started off nicely, with my first Chrome card of 2015 being a Blue Jays card. If my usual formula of judging how much I'll like the set by the first card I see, I should enjoy Chrome.

And then it goes all Yankees on me. This scans terribly, but this is an auto. It is an initial graph with a squiggle between the letters. If my initials were B.M., I'd definitely add a squiggle between the letters as well if I were only going to sign my initials.

And here's the 2nd Yankees card of the pack break.

And a James McCann wraps up the first pack. Can't complain too much about a pack that yields an on-card auto.

Pack #2:

My only horizontal card of the break.

But I'm just treading water posting these guys...

since here's the second Derek Jeter in two packs. As I said, these should have been delivered to a card shop in the Bronx. The GoG inserts fall one per box. I'm thinking both the Yankee inserts will be part of my next mailing to COMC.

And the last card is a Chrome of one of my favourite photos out of the flagship set.

So, not too much in terms of getting PC cards, but the insert cards should let me recover some of what I spent on them in terms of COMC credit.

Another basketball post. I'm sorry.

I know nobody cares when I do a purely basketball post, based on post views. But, I have to get through this portion of my COMC box at some point, so why not on a Friday evening?

I'm going to start with cards featuring defunct/relocated teams. And to start, here's a card of Scooter McCray. Seriously, I really need more cards in my collection of guys named Scooter. And the auto is definitely in the top half of NBA autographs in terms of legibility.

Much like they did for Ryan Turner of the Rockies and Clemente Nunez of the Marlins, Kevin Pritchard of the Grizzlies got a card based on being the first person signed in the history of the franchise. And much like the two baseball guys, Kevin never played a game with the team, getting cut before the first tip-off.

And to wrap up the defunct teams portion of this trade, here's one I got just for the Kentucky Colonels logo. Although the 'fro is impressive as well.

Here's a new 2/14 card. This is Muresan card #37 for me.

Sure, this appears to be a nice 2-colour jumbo relic of someone who had a pretty good rookie year.

But the real reason I got this card is the back. Any time you can get a CFL reference on a basketball card, it becomes a want for me. And I didn't even make the connection that this Elfrid Payton was the son of that Elfrid Payton was when it was mentioned during a Raptors broadcast.

Speaking of the Raptors, this is a Raptors card:

Sure, it has Jordan on the front, but, as part of a set that was issued for every game Jordan played, this one highlights a Raptors win. And since it was during the Bulls 72-10 season, and the Raptors were a lowly expansion team, this was a pretty memorable Raptors game.

In the sense that I think it is only one of a handful of games from the 90s that get rebroadcast as classics.

The Raptors also did the sleeved jerseys thing last season, but only with their special military-themed uniforms. And they work perfectly with the Dominators design.

And here's a die-cut of Vince Carter to wrap things up.

Flea Market Bills 2!

Another 15 card Bills repack from the flea market. Not as much player variety as the first one, in fact, only 3 players were featured, but I did bat 12 for 15 in terms of needs.

CJ Spiller trailed in this group with 4 cards. And all 4 of them were needs - a surprise on the Bowman. Other than that, there's a beautiful full bleed card from Prime, a rookie insert also from Prime, and a base card from a mid-range set in Momentum.

The Score and the Magic cards were dupes here. But a nice shiny X-Fractor makes up for those two.

And a six pack of Fitzpatrick to end it. A here's proof that the re-used photos aren't exclusive to baseball, although I really do like the Magic look of that image.

15 Bills for a buck. Sounds about right.

Misc. COMC baseball

Time to reach back into my COMC 'to be posted' box to show off some of my latest goodies. Although latest is a relative term. I'm fairly sure there are cards in there that I picked up before Black Friday 2014.

I grabbed this one for my Joe Carter collection, and is my only card of him not in a Major League Baseball uniform. This 2005 card is also his last Topps card, as far as I can tell. You'd think he'd be a shoe-in for any World Series subset.

Just a short-print base card for my set build of GQ. The photos of retired players always look great in GQ format.

And yes, baseball masks qualify for my masks binder. Why wouldn't they?

Your standard cool photo from an Upper Deck set.

Here's a Mets card, and one I only picked up because it reminded me of the bully from Diff'rent Strokes. This Gooch never played a game in the bigs.

This one I grabbed for reasons other than the really great photo on the front. It is all about the choice and timing of the really cool photo on the front. This is from a release coming off McGwire's 70 HR season (and the card is also #70 in the set). So, instead of a swinging for fences, or circling the bases, you got a defensive play. Strange, but that's why I got this card.

And there you have my latest additions to various binders.

Just One Pack...of 2015 Allen & Ginter

Since I knew I wouldn't be able to resist at least one.

A rookie card of Trevor May leads what will likely be my only pack of this product.

Next up, another Twin? Hot pack? Not this time, as this was the last Twin in the pack.

Alright! A Mets card! Nice to get one of those in my only pack of the product. And a veteran like Bartolo Colon looks really good in a Ginterized format.

Here's the non baseball insert. And

So, if I ever find myself in a fight with a tiger, I know what I can use.

The mini!

A short-print!

And a couple appearances of shoulder logos wrap up this pack. Bartolo really saved this pack, and it really confirmed my decision not get more beyond select PC cards, and not bust any more packs outside of retail.