2016 Adventures in Repacks: Part 38.1 - Long time, no see

I hadn't seen a Fairfield repack on this side of the border since Target left, so why not grab one when I see it at Walmart?

The four packs were:

2008 Victory
2009 UD S1
2010 UD S1
2010 O-Pee-Chee

And those will be what I start with. Interesting that there isn't too much variety in terms of featured players on the packages. I'll do these in that order.

With 2008 Victory, having put the base set together, I was hoping for an insert I could use to finish the set. No luck there.

2009 UD got me an insert, and even better that it hits one of my PCs as a Kitchener Rangers alumnus. Steve Mason also fits, but I'm certain I've acquired at least a half dozen copies of that specific from repacks.

2010 UD. Can't complain about an insert of Yzerman. Vernon Fiddler is probably the player that most defines "I only know of him through cards.", considering he's been in the league since 02-03 and couldn't say anything about him other than "Yes, he is a hockey player."

And O-Pee-Chee is probably the most interesting pack of the bunch, despite one of their most border-intensive designs. A Sens card. A mask binder card and a short-printed Legends card. A nice way to wrap things up.

Tomorrow, the bonus and the 50.

Bills! Bills! Bills! (and some baseball)

As the Bills continue their trek to a magnificant 0-4 September, I'm going to highlight some Bills that showed up recently in a return envelope from Night Owl Cards. I just sent him a starter kit for a birthday collection, and might see myself hunting for Duncan Keith and Claude Lemieux at the Expo.

To start, here's my favourite photo in the group. It might be from the junk wax era, but that's a beautiful shot of a snow-covered field at Rich Stadium.

One of the best things about the junk wax era was the large sets meant that players in positions that would rarely get cards nowadays, such as the special teams players.

Or Offensive Linemen.

The big winner in terms of volume was Darryl Talley. Even though none of these are of his Spiderman look, he's still fun to add cards of to the binder.

Runner-up was Cornelius Bennett with these 2.

This Jim Kelly was a dupe in my 2/14 collection, but not my Bills collection. Overlap can be a good thing.

Action Packed! This is back to back posts featuring cards with an element of depth to their design.

And to end the trade post, here's the baseball portion. Small, but I love that Bunt insert of Noah.

Group Break Raptors

Time to show off some goodies from the Raptors in a recent mojobreak group break.

A box of 12-13 Elite landed me one card, and that's this one of Ed Davis. Ed was sent out of Toronto in the trade that brought Rudy Gay to town.

Speaking of which, here's Rudy!

There were a few boxes of Clear Vision in the mixer, and I think this is the complete base set of the team. The player and dark background portion of the card is slightly raised for an interesting effect.

It wouldn't be a break including 2015 products without landing at least one Delon Wright. This is the Spotlight Silver parallel, numbered to /49. At least I'll have two first rounders to chase in the 2016 releases, Jakob Poeltl and Pascal Siakam.

He's probably the all-time face of the franchise now, and here's a nice red swatch from him.

And the big card, and my second DeMarre Carroll auto pulled through mojobreak, both of which are done on black backgrounds. One with silver ink and this one with gold. No complaints here with this card as the big pull for me from a cheap mixer.

Not A 2*3 Package - Part 2 of 2

The rest of the package contained cards for my pre-2005 mask binder. Approximately 50 cards for that binder means way too many to show off without getting too scan heavy. So, some of my favourites get highlighted instead.

I'll open with a card of Sebastien Charpentier, who'll I'll confess never having heard of prior to getting this card. He sports a very patriotic mask, appropriate when playing in Washington. But, I like this for one other thing. The Capitol in the middle of the mask is a throwback to the Don Beaupre classic. Whether intentional or not, it is still a nice nod to the franchise's history in net.

Staying in Washington, here's a familiar face in my collection. Olaf Kolzig is rocking the Godzilla mask, but that's not why he's here. It is the fact he's listed as Olie Kolzig. A quick search through COMC images makes it seem that this was a one-time thing for Donrusss.

The only other player I hadn't heard of before getting the card - J.F. Damphousse. I figured that was enough to let me at least highlight his card.

Time for a Pacific entry, and typical of their sets, it has an interesting look to it. The only way this card would be more Pacific would be if the net portion of the card used a a die-cut effect.

Since you really don't get that nice of a look at the mask on the Pacific card, here's a look on an MVP insert.

Here's another MVP insert, and boy is it red. If they were going for a retro thing with this, the look itself it isn't bad, but I probably wouldn't have it as a glossy card.

Alex Auld with the classic motif of having the creature devouring the head of the goaltender.

And yes, Fleer's 1995 issues were just as obnoxious outside of their baseball releases.

Finally, some shiny cards, and yet another chance to highlight another of my favourites, with Lalime's salute to Marvin the Martian.

Not A 2*3 Package - Part 1 of 2

Back to the mailbag for Part 1 of a package that showed up from Jeff @ 2*3 Heroes. This will be the variety post, as a variety of PCs will be hit with the cards in this post.

First up, my Mets collection. I'd been waiting for this card for a bit, ever since being able to hunt down a Patrick Kane autograph at the Expo. It might have come sooner, but Canada Post was being questionable, and I put a moratorium on mailings. That said, this one was worth the wait. Who can't love an on-card autograph of a guy on the same team he cheered for growing up?

How did I not already have that Wright/Strawberry card? That said, my favourite here is the Gallery card, since that also hits my love for drawn cards.

As we move into the hockey, here's two new cards for my 2/14 collection. The Hejduk is another one I was certain I had, but my zistle list told me otherwise. Marian Gaborik is lurking in the upper right corner of this card. Considering I have football team leader cards where 1/4 of the card is dedicated to a 2/14 baby, why shouldn't this qualify?

Just one card, but still welcome in my Kitchener Rangers alum collection. Even though this technically wouldn't be an alumni card.

Staying with the Rangers, this time the New York version, here's a /100 gold parallel from 13-14 Rookie Anthology, a set I've busted a lot of, but it really does pack a punch for the value.

More mask cards. The Miller, complete with all the classic Canucks colours, might be my favourite card from last season. But Portfolio really did have a lot of strong contenders for that. Still, the simple paint job works perfectly on the mask to go with the uniform, and you do have to check the card twice to make sure it isn't a Kirk McLean.

Here's a bunch of Sens cards, all new to my collection.

And a parallel and a hit. The Sens picked up 4 jersey cards among the checklist in this set, and now I'm only an Erik Karlsson away from completing that.

And there's part of the envelope. The majority of it in terms of volume was for my pre-2005 masks binder photo, and I'll hit the highlights from that in my next recap post.

Pick 6: Basketball

Today, I reach into my COMC to-be-posted box and pull out the first 6 basketball cards in there. And these were the 6 in question:

And I start with David Wesley in a ball pit with the team mascot, reading Mother Goose. There is nothing I could write that could enhance that in any way.

You know you've posted an interesting card when the next card is Gary Payton wearing a Supersonics-coloured Dr. Seuess hat, and it barely registers. This is the only base card in this grouping of 6.

I love defunct team logos making appearance on current cards. So, here's a card featuring the one-and-done Washington Caps.

Staying with the defunct/relocated team theme so far (I guess the version of the Hornets on the Wesley counts), here's a relic I've always wanted to add to my collection - a teal Vancouver Grizzlies swatch. And it features easily the best player in the team's short history - Shareef Abdur-Rahim.

I wanted a hit of Biyombo to commemorate his short time in Toronto. He didn't have any Toronto autos, so this Bobcats/Hornets one has to do.

To wrap up this group of 6 up, a penmanship collection auto of Bo Outlaw. Nice that he was able to get both a legible version of his name and his number on the sticker.

And there you go!

Stars?

I pulled this card recently in a repack. When I got it, I briefly recapped the careers of the 4 players on the front. But, this is a checklist. What happened to all these Russian stars?

And here's the list:

Alexei Yashin - #2 overall draft pick in 1992 by the Senators. He played in 850 games, but that wasn't the best draft class.

Darius Kasparaitis - 863 games in the NHL. He was a 1st round pick for the Islanders in 1992, 3 behind Yashin, and would also see significant time with the Penguins and Rangers.

Alexander Yudin - 3 games with the Providence Bruins was a close as he'd get to the NHL.

Sergei Bautin - Spent time with Winnipeg, then played in 1 game each for Detroit and San Jose.The third (and final) player in this subset to be selected in the first round of the 1992 draft.

Igor Korolev - Just under 800 games to his credit in the NHL, was killed in the Yaroslavl Lokomotiv plane crash, where he was an assistant coach.

Sergei Klimovich - One NHL game to his credit, seeing action in 1996-97 with the Blackhawks.

Andrei Nikolishin - Over 600 games of NHL action, mostly with Hartford and Washington.

Vitali Karamnov - Spent time with St. Louis in the early/mid 90's, before returning to Europe.

Alexander Andrievski - Another guy who played 1 game with Chicago. Unlike with Klimovich, he did get a base card out of it from Upper Deck.

Sergei Sorokin - No action over here, but he started and ended his career playing for teams called Torpedo, starting with Gorky, ending with Nizhny Novgorod. Thank you, hockeydb.com!

Yan Kaminsky - Saw time with the Jets and Islanders, before bouncing around the IHL for a few seasons.

Andrei Trefilov - Saw action with the Calgary and Buffalo, and was the Turner Cup MVP in 2000 when his Chicago Wolves won the championship.

Sergei Petrenko - Has a handful cards pictured with Buffalo, where he appeared in 14 games.

Ravil Khaidarov - Another one with no games in North America.

Dmitri Frolov - No action on this side of the Atlantic.

Ravil Yakubov - Played in the AHL with the Flames affiliate.

Dmitri Yushkevich - Played 786 games in the NHL, mostly with Philadelphia and Toronto.

Alexei Kasatonov - Was already 30 years old, and a veteran of the Central Red Army team before coming here to play for New Jersey. Was selected by Anaheim in the expansion draft.

Igor Dorofeyev - Never played in North America. His appearance here, and on the previous year's O-Pee-Chee insert set are his only cards.

Alexander Galchenyuk - Didn't really count as a Russian star for long, since he played for team Belarus after the Soviet Union dissolved. You've probably heard of his son, though. Played for the Milwaukee Admirals on this side of the Atlantic.

Just Two Envelopes

Each containing a card I was hunting for from this past year's hockey releases.

I'd wanted to pick up this card featuring the artery-clogging awesomeness that is poutine, but struck out on my packs and boxes. I'd been waiting for one to pop up somewhere at a reasonable cost with reasonable shipping, and this one finally did.

Poutine gets associated with Ottawa in this as opposed to Montreal, since the latter also got Montreal Smoked Meat Sandwiches as their food.

2/14 baby Nikolaj Ehlers' autographed cards started out high and pretty much stayed there. I finally stopped waiting for a reasonable price and did what anybody who wanted one for under $10 would do in the situation.

Snipe an ebay auction.

And the hat trick photograph from portfolio is probably the most interesting photo of his to receive the sticker auto treatment, so that's a bonus as is how the blue ink pops on the B&W photo.

Better Set Building Through Blasters - Part 2

Since yesterday's promised tomorrow is now today, the other 6 packs in the blaster.

Pack 6:

There's my second red press proof of the break. A pretty blah pack to start the second post of this blaster, but at least the Antonio Gates has a nice photo to make it the most interesting card.

Pack 7:

Another bland pack, but most of these cards were needs for the set. Most interesting card here is probably Kelvin, solely because they had to go into the archives a year back to find a photo for a player that missed all of 2015.

Pack 8:

At least they found another picture of Malcolm Butler for 2016, since his SB interception showed up in base card releases from both companies last year. I don't think I would have opted for a photo where Rivers appears to be a second away from being sacked/stripped of the ball.

Pack 9:

My only insert in this group of packs is Marisa Miller. Looking at the subset, I've actually heard of 5 of the 7 people on the checklist. For someone as pop-culturally clueless as me, that's a good average.

Pack 10:

Kicker card! And a Bills card. At least a card of someone who is still on the team.

Pack 11:

Kicker rookie card! That's the type of oddity you like as the last card of the break.

So, with these cards, my total looks like this:

212/300 Veterans/Legends
42/100 SP'd Rookies