You've Got Mail #49: Sportscards From the Dollar Store

Having a connection north of the border is nice. You get sent things like hockey cards and ketchup flavored potato chips that are nearly impossible to find. Speaking of friends of the north, Douglas of Sportscards From the Dollar Store sprung a package on me filled with some Columbus Blue Jackets and a few other cards (but sadly no ketchup chips) after I left a comment about a Marion Gaborik card on his blog.

Here's the aforementioned Gaborik card, along with a Brandon Saad and a very foil-y Sergei Bobrovsky. Saad was a huge pickup for the Jackets in a trade with Chicago before the 2015-16 season. While the Jackets stunk up the joint at the beginning of last season, Saad gives them a pretty solid name to build around. 

Every time I see Rick Nash, I still think it's weird to see him in a Rangers uniform. I still think of him as a Blue Jacket as he was one of their first homegrown talents. Thanks to Douglas, not only has my Nash collection expanded with these cards, I've also added him to my hockey PC list. Also, side note, I wish Panini still made hockey cards as anything from the Contenders line is just aces in my book.

Besides Rick Nash, there was a nice selection of former Blue Jackets stars included as well. I'd forgotten that R.J. Umberger had suited up for them but I definitely remembered Ryan Johansen and Sergei Federov. 

Blue Jackets cards weren't the only thing Douglas included. There were these Reds and Bengals cards which helped pad out the package a bit. I wasn't planning on buying any 2016 Stadium Club this year but the cards I've gotten from other fellow traders, along with the Billy Hamilton card included, I've finally decided to give in and try to find a cheap box or perhaps a blaster around Christmas time. With that, another great trade package comes to an end.

Forgotten Hockey Cards

Along with the Pokemon cards that my wife and I sold off the other day, the same binder included her old hockey card collection from the early 2000's. I'm going to mix these in with my hockey card collection but here's a look at the best of what we found:

This is probably the coolest thing we found in the binder, a 2002-03 Phoenix Coyotes pocket schedule. My wife moved to the states from England right around this time so finding something from her early days in the states was pretty neat.

Here's a good batch of SP Authentic cards from the same time frame. Roenick and Zetterberg are probably some of the best ones from the batch of these.

I'm not too familiar with the players on these hologram cards but I will say they are pretty cool. While we didn't come across any "hits", these more than make up for that as we "oohed" and "aahed" over them for several seconds.

There was also a mixture of random singles, like the Bowman cards above and these Rookie Update cards, which I'm guessing have to be part of the Upper Deck flagship set from that year? There's some decent players here too with Vincent Lecavalier, Peter Bondra, Jose Theodore, and is that Marian Gaborik I see in a Minnesota Wild uniform?

Came across a bunch of Upper Deck MVP singles as well ... and yes, Patrick Elias is still playing for the Devils.

I'm not sure what year Topps stopped producing hockey cards but it couldn't have been long after this. I'm not sure what possessed them to do prune colored borders on their cards though.

Let's finish this off with some more Upper Deck products. The wood bordered cards are from a series/brand called Beehive. I'm guessing that was a throwback to some sort of old time hockey cards, like Gypsy Queen and Allen & Ginter are for baseball. The bottom has cards from two lines still going today, Upper Deck ICE and Black Diamond, even though both are definitely out of my price range for packs and boxes.

Going through the binder and checking out all these old hockey cards when we discovered them was pretty fun. Now to organize them and get them in the hockey binder.