Recapping Rangers

 Expo post #2, showing off some Kitchener Rangers alumni today.

And what better way to start off than a food issue card? Better yet, it features Canada's national dish, alongside poutine. It is a personal bonus for me as well, since most of the Reinhart content in my collection are Calgary cards. A nice scissor-job as well for the removal from the box.

With this quartet of cards, Paul Coffey wins the day in terms of volume with these. Nice team variety, and nice set variety as well. It also means back-to-back posts where the cityscape of Edmonton has been worked into at least one of the cards.

And that 1990 is a Tiffany Edition as well!

All over the place for the second HOFer in this post as well, SP, Pinnacle and Complete. The Pinnacle is also a Premium Stock parallel, gving the second card in this post with an illusion of the upper class around it.

Here's some cards from this year's releases. Considering he missed all of last season and will miss all of this season, I'm honestly surprised he's turned up in any 23-24 set at all. 

Although I could have looked at my TCDB lists at the time, I elected not to, since it really wasn't worth the effort since I really wasn't buying anything high-end enough to be panicky over dupes. So, here's a card with a swatch.

And here's one with two swatches as the finale.

There you have it! The Rangers were the only team collection, so to speak, that I really loaded up on. So I'll get to everything else team related next time.

2022-23 Metal Universe Box Break

This was one of two boxes I broke at the show this past Friday. I was going to pick up a box of SPX, since it did have Brady Tkachuk on the box - but this was $50 cheaper.

The base design is exactly what expects from this product. Lots of silver in an odd pattern on the background, and a rather bland photo. At least you got a throwback uniform photo here.

The back finds the happy medium between one year of stats, and five years of stats. 

The 7 card packs contain 4 regular base card from 1-100, 1 SPd star from 101-150 and 1 rookie from 151-200. With this make-up, and the latter eventually being available on epack, I might actually go for this set. 

The final card per pack was either an insert or parallel.

Most common among them were the Premium Prospects (3 advertised per box) and the Retro Rookies. I guess getting the top draft pick and an alternate jersey is a successful enough break for me.

Aspects, which give more of a technical version of the 1993 Leaf backgrounds, are easily my favourite of the bunch. I'd say the same about anything that gives that vibe, though.

Some horizontal inserts. Blah.

There's one acetate card per box, coming from various insert sets. Neither is really that exciting, but that's probably the blandness of the card making me think that. 

There's nothing super special about these inserts. No shiny metallic element except for a little silver on the two things on the card that read 'Metal'. But it is fairly rare coming in at 1:75 packs, or 1 every five hobby boxes.

There's no guaranteed hit in the box, so I struck out on the auto. However, this first card is easily better than an autograph of a rookie that only saw the NHL for a handful of games. A coveted Precious Metal Gems card! They're numbered to /100, but even that's broken down a bit with the first 10 being green, and the following 90 being red. It should at least put a significant dent in the cost of the box.

As for the purple, that's a Retro Purple Spectrum FX Parallel. Those are /199. With this and the Vilardi, truly a box fit for a King(s fan).

And the auto I didn't get in the box came from the Expo bonus pack! And Choice is back! For the handful that demanded it!

There you have it!

Exceptions

 Usually when I pick up a Dodgers card at the Expo, it is for a future mailer to Night Owl.

Sorry, but this Jackie Robinson card is such a keeper. It is from the online-only Game Within a Game set, an entirely-drawn set. Given how friendly the image of the handshake with Branch Rickey is for a logoless set, and how iconic it is, I'm really surprised it hasn't made more appearances on cards. I mean, it is there - but you'd figure there would be more.

Might as well show the back as well. And I did pick up some other cards that will make their way to Watertown to make up for this.

And a Tom Seaver, also from GWTG, to keep Jackie company.

There you have it, as I commence several days worth of Expo posts.

What's Left?

 And now, to bring the Michigan Mailers to a close, here's everything that didn't quite fit into any other post,

While I have done a Bills post, this one didn't fit in because it wasn't in the original mailer. In fact, this only showed up a couple days ago via PWE. This actually completes the Josh Allen Spellbound portion of this Elite insert set. I'd landed the first and last letters in a group break, the next two via COMC, but couldn't get my hands on the final one until the PWE showed up! 

Now, do I keep them together in toploaders in a team bag? Or do I do like I did with the Brandon Sutter manu-nameplate autos and shell out for a display frame? Decisions, decisions!

This one puzzled me at first. He's not a 2/14 baby. Maybe it is because he went to the University of Minnesota and got to be an extra in Crow's screenplay. Then I noted the penmanship is pretty legible - PENMANSHIP BINDER! 

Random Expo!

Random bigger Expos!

Random biggest Expo!

Cancon was the most significant number among the miscellaneous portion, buoyed by numbered items from the still-bizarre Moments & Milestones. 

Those larger cards also applied to mask binder cards. Fortunately, these, like all the other oversized cards, came with an appropriate binder page.

To bring the mailer(s) to an end, I'll show off the best item in mailer - some literature.

OK, the content might not be the most verbose.

But what a picture the inside makes!

A few years back, UD stopped including printing plates for their flagship base cards in the product, and moved them into The Cup, their super-mega-high-end release. And doing them in the format of a booklet that combines all 4 of the plates in a single booklet. It is definitely one of their best idea in recent memory. 

Sure, Erik Gudbranson only spent a few dozen games with the Senators, but what a way to commemorate them! 

Thanks for all these goodies, and I'll certainly be on the lookout later today at the Expo for some goodies to send your way!

There you have it! 

2023 Adventures in Repacks - Part 31: Repacks in the News

 This might be the first time I've seen a Presstine repack on the news!

Hopefully, the last as well.

Here's one that wasn't used by some Predator that got Caught.

Your contents! Will there be a card worthy of that snapholder?

And that's a really solid start with the Hall of Famer pack (clockwise from top left, as I do with these). Even better - no junk wax era stuff. That's a pleasant surprise as well. My only complaint is that the chroming of the background on the Ripken makes it hard to see the countdown on the warehouse behind Cal. 

A Blue Jay! Woo-hoo! I love the collation making it so two future teammates with the Rockies are combined in here. I didn't realize that Burks was a 300HR man, but he more than passed it with 352 over his career. Significant time with the Rockies probably helped quite a bit, though.

Another team hit in the 2000s pack with that Mets card! I would complain that Nomo card is a 1998, thus defeating the name of this, but it is a pretty great photo, so I'll overlook that. And everything else is from the named decade.

Finally the Premium pack. Tyrell Jenkins doesn't continue the great penmanship from the facsimile signature on his actual autos. Boo. 11-12 Just Spotlights seems to be such an obscure set,  it doesn't even exist at tcdb. Singleton would probably have been a good pull when that set was first released. And the big one here is that JB Bukauskas is the big one here, limited to just 50 copies. Still in the league, too!

There you have it!

Mets via Michigan

 

The most recent giant mailer from Dennis @ Too Many Verlanders is going to draw to a close, but I still have a whole bunch of Mets to get to.

There's a Super start to this post - a pair of cards out of 1980 Topps Super. Fortunately, their facsimile signatures are super-legible, so I don't need to turn them over to know these are Craig Swan and Lee Mazzilli cards.

Here's some more items beyond the standard 2*3. 

Time for the more normal-sized cards, of which there were plenty, and lots of variety. I've broken very little Big League, so as far as I knew that Nimmo was a regular base card and not the blue parallel it was. 

They might not be their vintage cards, but it is still nice for guys like Snider and Agee to make appearances in this mailer. 

More oddballs. With how star-loaded that team was in 1986, it is easy to forget that Ray Knight was the MVP that year for the World Series.

A few parallels as the vertical portion of the non-hits draws to a close. 

But here's a handful of horizontal cards, and now I've got a complete Collector's Choice Generation X rookie set.

Numbered cards.

Relic #1. For those that balk at one-colour relics, try a bat one! 

And here's number 2! Since this has the authentication sticker on it, I can check out which game it came from.

And he never played in that game.

But 2/14 baby Tyler Clippard did!

All that is left is the miscellaneous stuff that really didn't fit into the previous categories. And a PWE that arrived yesterday! 

Gridiron Retail

 

A couple hanger/value packs from Wally World, picked up separately. The Elite has been around for longer, so I'm starting with it.

Here's the opener. Out of pretty much any Panini retail product I've opened lately, this might have the most veteran base cards I've seen. 27 out of that 100 card portion of the set. But if you're building that, these packs are perfect for you.

But that did get me a couple Bills cards. 

And that provided an opportunity to pull base cards of both Bosas in the same pack.

And if you're going to get a lot of non-rookie base cards, there's bound to be some stars, from either the offensive side or the defensive side among them.

In fact, the only rookie, and the only insert I'd see was among the pink parallels. If I'm only getting one insert in a pack, make it a parallel!

 

And what I didn't get from the Elite was made up for in Mosaic, with almost half of the cards being either an insert or a parallel. 

First card out indicates there will be some interesting content for the base set among retired player content.

2nd card out is a Bills HOFer! WOO-HOO!

The rest of the base. Stroud rookie? Not bad at all.

Here's the first of the parallels - the basic Mosaic version.

And a green parallel.

And your promised Pink Camo parallels. I'd guess that at least at the start of the season, Fields would be the biggest name among all these shiny cards, but still, shiny is shiny.

And here's some inserts. I thought it might be the parallel design making it look off on the Touchdown Masters card. Nope. Even the base version of these inserts look like sentient bobbleheads.

But there you have it!