1993-94 Donruss Hockey Box Break

You may recall that back in October, my family and I ventured up to Akron for a weekend. While everyone went out to the mall, my uncle and I went out to the local card shops to kill some time before lunch. He's not really a mall person and neither am I and our excursion took us to first to Medina then over to Cuyahoga Falls to a place called All-Pro Sports Cards. I spotted this lonely box of 1993-94 Donruss hockey in a pile of junk wax boxes that were hidden behind a cardboard cutout of Harrison Ford as Hans Solo. Being a sucker for cheap wax, I gladly dropped a ten spot on the counter and brought it back home. Let's see what treasures, if any, this 22-year old box will offer.

Baseball fans may recognize the design, it's exactly like the 1994 Donruss design. I always like the way the team logos were presented on the cards, with a 3D-ish look to it. The photos are full bleed but the one issue I have is, like most sets from the 90s, there is foil to be had. Unlike some of the sets from 1995 (looking at you Leaf baseball), there isn't really enough of that to distract me but it can definitely make it a pain to read player names. Also, because of said foil, when I opened the packs, most of the cards were stuck together. I was able to detach them though without any major damage.

In the group above, you'll find a bunch of stars from the era (Messier, Gretzky, etc.) but I really like the Joe Sakic card of him as a member of the Nordiques. They would not be long for the world as the 1994-95 season would be their last in Quebec.

Everyone likes some goalies and there are five of the top goalies of the time. I was pretty happy to get both a Martin Brodeur and a Patrick Roy card from the box since they are my top two goalie PCs. The bottom two cards of Grant Fuhr and Ron Hextall are interesting to me as I don't recall them being on either team. 

Here's where the basic stuff ends and the fun stuff begins. Since the 1993-94 season was the first season for both the Panthers and the Ducks, their inaugural opening nights were commemorated in the base set with these cards. 

There are four types of insert cards to be found ... Special Print, Ice Kings, Rated Rookies, and Elite. Judging by the odds I found, it's reasonable to expect one Elite card per box. I'll start with the special print cards, which are nothing more than the base cards with fancy writing on the bottom and a giant foil stamp on the right. Also, each card says "special print 1 of 20,000" on the top so you don't know if you've got card 1 or card 15,542.

Next up, the Ice Kings. I really like these as they are done exactly like the Diamond Kings cards. This must be a Gretzky hot box as not only have I pulled the base card of him, I pulled the special print and an Ice Kings insert.

The Rated Rookies insert. To be honest, I've never heard of either of these guys but thanks to Hockey Reference, I was able to drum up some basic info on them. Mironov hung around the league for 10 years playing with Winnipeg in his rookie year before he was traded off to Edmonton. He also spent time with the Rangers and the Blackhawks. Daigle hung around for 12 years, the first 5 of which was spent with Ottawa. After that, he bounced around to the Flyers, Lightning, Rangers, Penguins, and finished up with the Wild during the 2005-06 season.

I guess this could be considered my "hit" of the box, a really sparkly Elite Series Eric Lindros card. I'm not exactly the biggest Lindros collector but I'm all for cool cards like this so it will definitely find a place in the hockey binder. 

For ten dollars, I was more than satisfied with this. I got a good batch of cards to add to my hockey collection, some good inserts, and about 30 minutes of fun. I'll be on the lookout for some more bargain hockey stuff on the discount racks, just as long as it's not Pro Set.

A Halloween Road Trip

Last weekend, the family and I, along with my mom, took a road trip up to Akron to visit my aunt and uncle. My aunt planned a full day for us with shopping, cookie baking, pumpkin carving, and a bunch of other fall/Halloween fun. Once we arrived and unloaded everything, we all split off and decided to meet back up for lunch in a few hours. My wife took my son off with my mom and my aunt as they headed out to the mall. As for my uncle and me, he offered to take me to the local card shops in Medina and Cuyahoga Falls. So after everyone left for the mall, we headed over to Medina.

I've mentioned the Medina card shop before way back in one of my early posts but the place isn't very organized. They've got old packs mixed in the same box as new packs and charge the same price for said old packs as they would for new packs. The owner claimed it was because he was "short on counter space" as he gazed about the shop with little to no eye contact being made as we chatted. I looked at some singles but there wasn't much in the way of digging to be had so I settled on the above packs, two packs of 2016 Update and two packs of 2015-16 SP Authentic, which I'll crack open in a future article.

Our second stop of two was over 30 minutes away in Cuyahoga Falls, which is a little town off the beaten path. There, after winding through some residential areas and along the edge of the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, we found All-Pro Sports Cards in a tiny shopping center. The place was the complete 180 of the shop in Medina. Everything was laid out neatly and organized, had college football going on the TV, and was very clean. The one downside was that they didn't sell stuff by the pack. I asked why and was told that the majority of their sales are based on boxes, with only base products (like Series 1 and 2) being packed out. I looked around and my uncle and I talked about a 1909-11 T206 Frank Schulte card we saw in the case. Making a final lap around the shop, it was then I discovered a giant pile of junk wax stuff hiding behind a Harrison Ford standee. The prices were a little steep but then I saw the box of 1993-94 Donruss Hockey pictured above. I asked how much, and the owner thought and said "eh, ten bucks". Sold! I paid for the box, and my uncle and I headed off to meet up with everyone else for lunch at a local pizza place back towards the house.

After lunch, we all got back to the house and sugar cookie baking commenced in the kitchen. As you can see in the picture above, my aunt and my son had their aprons were ready to get their baking on. My mom and my wife helped as well. I'm not one for baking things so I let everyone else have at it while my uncle and I abstained and watched TV.

Here's the final product of the sugar cookies. I must say, they were just as good as I remember them being. After the cookies, we all took a quick rest before the pumpkin carving.

For the jack-o-lantern, we all picked out a design from online, just something simple, and my uncle went to work on it with a knife and power tools, all while narrating what he was doing. After the initial carving was done, it was spray painted gold so it wouldn't rot before Halloween. Here's the finished product.

An Indians jack-o-lantern! As much as I want to root for the Cubs in the World Series, I really can't since the Indians are involved and they're one of my favorite teams.

For dinner, we picked up burgers and fries from the local drive-in chain, Swensons. Let me tell you, if you've never had Swensons and you find yourself in the Akron area, get it! I got their trademark burger, the Galley Boy, and it was one of the best burgers I've ever had. The thing that makes it unique it that it's got two different special sauces on it, one with a barbecue sauce base and another with a tarter sauce base. You wouldn't think that would work but it does. The fries were so-so but with a little salt they livened up a bit.

After dinner, we all settled in an had planned on watching scary movies all night but we decided to flip back and forth between the Ohio State game and the Cubs/Dodgers game. Everyone except my uncle and I fell asleep but we stayed up long enough to say we saw the Cubs win the pennant. The next morning, there was a small, quick breakfast of eggs and toast and the family and I hit the road soon thereafter for the three hour drive back home.