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. 

2/14 B-ball

 There wasn't any football content in the 2/14 portion of the latest arrivals, so I'm going to wrap it up with some action from the diamond and the hardwood.

It is only card for the basketball portion, but with a whopping 5 cards, Kara Lawson is still the queen of the women's portion of the set. I guess I could load up on Kennedy Burke entries from Prizm 2022, but given that Lawson isn't from the parallel era, that really wouldn't be sporting.

These 2 cards vault me back into the title of the Marzano King over at COMC, with 68 different cards of his. I always wonder with these if the guy who ends up as the Queen of Hearts gets joked with by his teammates. 

Scott Scudder also gets a pair of new cards. That old Nashville Sounds logo is pretty great, hitting the minor league sweet spot of goofiness. 

Shininess! This Neon Green Prizm out of Spectra is /30, numbered to lower than the number of cards I have of his, 35. 

The grand finale sees my first hit of Nolan Schanuel in the collection. He's had a perfectly average 2024 so his prices remain fairly reasonable for someone who made such a quick rise to the majors. This one is a Prime Numbers parallel, numbered to a very non-prime number of 60. I always say it, but I'd rather they make one more card and number it to a prime number like 61. It would fit the set better.

But the card is number 61 in the set, so at least I get that.

There you have it!

 

Late, Lamented Insert Sets

 

If for nothing else than the chance of getting a piece of mascot fluff, some fabric from the batter's eye, or part of some random sign at the ballpark, I miss Fragments of the Farm out of Pro Debut.

2/14 Hockey

Opening up the to-be-posted box today, and all the new 2/14 content that will be entering into the hockey binder.

This definitely counts as a "How the sam scratch did I not have this card already?" addition. This is the base card, not even the glossy parallel.  I'm guessing that I saw the card, assumed I already had it, and sent it off to Dennis @ Too Many Verlanders. In case I didn't do that, I got two of these to make sure one of these will count as 'sent it off'.

Also one and done in this post is Brandon Sutter, appearing on the now-missing French variations. Even being pretty common, especially on COMC, I miss them. 

The e-pack exclusive silver parallels really turned up the brightness this season - and I'm all for it.

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Nikolaj Ehlers ties for the lead this time with 5 cards, and he provides 5 new cards. 4 of them, including that really fun Canvas entry, fall into the 'cheap because of e-packs' category. The red parallel in the corner is the only card in this post, other than the opening Nystrom, that wasn't of COMC origin. I think they were from packs in one of the retail boxes in 15-16. Whatever the source, it is a new card from his rookie year.

Colby Barlow's very patriotic entries lift him into a tie with Ehlers. I'll let other people's unsuccessful chases of Bedard in this set help to expand my collection of his. Also, since the green parallels were e-pack exclusives, I can consider that one to be a contender for the 2025 list countdown, since those became first acquirable during the valid timeframe, even if the rest of the set itself wasn't.

My collection. My rules.

There you have it!

Catching up with the Jays

 To put it nicely, this season has been miserable in Toronto. Now, I think people are just hoping for the fire sale not to end up too badly. But at least I can be reminded of better days through cardboard.

I legitimately thought that the use of Rickey Henderson as opposed to Roberto Alomar on the image signified that this was from the point in time after Alomar received his ban from baseball for general creepiness. Nope! That was 2021, but this card was from the previous year. It's like Topps knew something was about to go down.

But he did show up in late 2020 releases like Stadium Club and Archives. So, maybe not.

One pleasant reminder of '93 deserves a second!

I guess the builder of those teams also counts as a pleasant memory, here in super shiny form. I can imagine some collector seeing the shininess when going through the pack and then getting disappointed when it is a card of a GM. Their disappointment is my acquisition!

Maldonado was only around for the first of those teams. But he still counts for a pleasant trip back to those years.

The bat flip was definitely away to express oneself.

If you want a card to remember Zack Collins' part-time season in Toronto, this card, and its associated parallels, are your only opportunity which to so. Even if you need a White Sox swatch to accompany it. 

As for Wynton Bernard, there's no time in Toronto to commemorate, as he never made the big league team. He got his 15 minutes of fame after reaching the majors with the Rockies after a ten year journey through the minor leagues. He'd get cards with the Rockies, including autos, and also some update cards with the Jays. This, is so much more interesting to me, especially with an on-card autograph for a zero game player.

There you have it!

Mailbag Catch-up

 A while back, I got a contact from Wes, aka JayBarkerFan, a blogger of long ago. He had some Raptors and Bills to send my way, and I provided the address. I had a few Braves/Crimson Tide cards set aside, and sent them out. I'd also pulled the encased Spencer Strider in a repack not long after, so that got thrown in too.

Here's what came my way:

Random CFL additions? Not so random - they're both Waterloo Warriors alumni. Both overlapped with my time at the school, and it was nice to see Smith go to the Tiger-Cats during those years. One of the two Bradleys is a red parallel.

Off to the Bills portion, and this entry that hits a couple nice sweet spots of my collection - shiny and incredibly cheesy. And it is also a Josh Allen, and he's pretty much the only reason I'm optimistic this upcoming season won't be incredibly mediocre. 

These football-textured entries are fun little additions to the insert portion of the collection.

HOFers! BRUUUUUCE!

And the rest of the Bills contingent of the package. More Josh Allen, as he's the only one in the post still with the Bills. I already miss Tre'Davious White.

Raptors time! I may have a lot of great cards of the players, autographs, relics and low-numbered brightness. But this card of the mascot (even if it is a dupe) might be my favourite one. Now that I have a second, maybe I should find out if The Raptor does TTM autos.

A small collection of base, inserts and parallels. At least Barnes is still with the team among this group. That Norman Powell couldn't have gone any better with the mix of jersey and parallel colours.

It stunk to lose these guys during the season, but seeing them walk during free agency without any compensation would have been much worse.

When Kyle Lowry retires, he plans to sign a one-day contract to retire as a Raptor. It's 'when', since he recenrly re-upped with Philly for the upcoming season. I'll guess that signing will also include an announcement of #7 being retired. Vince Carter should be the first to get that treatment, but there's still some bitterness over his departure from the team, so I'll guess Kyle goes first.

Speaking of #7, that's what this is numbered to. This Cyber Monday stamped parallel might not have the shininess you'd expect from a low-numbered card, Still, the lowest numbered Jonas card in my collection, despite being a pure gimmick card.

There you have it!