Retail Repack Adventures #13

There is one Target in my area that for some reason always, and I mean always, carries a plethora of hockey cards. I'm not sure why this one particular Target is like that but I'm not going to complain. It's also the only place where I see these hockey repack boxes. These are just like the baseball boxes, a brick of 100 cards and a random pack. The pack I'll save for a rainy day but everything else in here is fair game. I've never opened one of these with hockey cards so I'm pretty excited.

Well, you can't start much hotter than this. A discount Connor McDavid rookie card from the 2015-16 Upper Deck Star Rookies set. While in no way shape or form was I expecting the McDavid rookie card, I'll settle for this.

Speaking of 2015-16 cards, these Upper Deck cards were scattered throughout the box. I guess they're the equivalent to the 2014 Topps cards in the baseball packs. These four are the best of the batch.

I'll admit, these cards scanned like utter crap. I tried everything I could to clean them up and contemplated taking them off of here completely but I wanted to keep them so I could show the variety. Since the names on the cards are unreadable, I'll let you know who we've got here ... Dan Brown of the Chicago Wolves, David Ling of the Saint John Flames, and Matt Johnson of the Phoenix Roadrunners. In person, the cards themselves are pretty cool minor league hockey additions to my collection.

Here's a few cards from the mid-90s of stuff that's all over the map. I think my favorite of this batch is the Doug Weight card in the middle.

As is the case with any sort of repack, it was littered with cards from the early 90s. I bought a set of 1990 Score at a card show once for three bucks, then I decided to break it as the only thing I really wanted from it was the Brodeur rookie card. I don't have too many Fleer Ultra hockey cards either and the design translates really well from baseball to hockey.

These are interesting. For the 1991-92 season, a company called 7th Inning Sketch made cards for the leagues and teams under the Canadian Hockey League umbrella. I've never seen these cards before, nor did I have any idea that they even existed. None of the four shown here ever made it to the NHL unfortunately.

No repack is complete without cards from the late 80s as well. I feel like hockey cards from this time get a bad rap and get lumped in with everything else in the "junk wax" stuff and get forgotten about completely. It's probably because hockey cards, although mass produced, weren't as readily available in most areas as, say, Topps baseball cards or NBA Hoops cards. These cards above are part of the 1989-90 O-Pee-Chee set and have a really clean, nice look to them. I might have to track some more of these down.

Speaking of Topps, here's some cards from the early 90s, the 1990-91 series on the left and the 1991-92 set on the right. If you notice, the 1990-91 set looks nothing like it's baseball counterpart whereas the 91-92 one does. I think I prefer the 1990 design as it's a bit more colorful, but still it's Topps hockey cards from the early 90s and they are fun regardless.

The 1991 Score set was well represented too with these former WHA players. Aside from these two plus Gretzky and Messier during this period, I can't think of any other WHA players that were still hanging around.  These cards also gave me an idea for a series of blog posts comparing designs of baseball of hockey cards from this time. That should be fun.

Chris Chelios never was on my list of favorite players or people I collect but since there were two Chelios cards in the box, I guess it could be considered a Chelios "hot box". I know a few Blackhawks collectors so these may get passed along, not sure yet.

And here are a few newer Upper Deck cards to wrap things up, including a really nice Milan Hedjuk card. 

So that's a hockey repack. There were a lot of cards of players I didn't know but overall this was a nice change from the baseball repack bricks. For $4.99 I got a nice mix of cards, especially ones from the 80s and 90s that I don't have in my hockey collection, and about 10 minutes of fun. That's really all you can ask for from one of these. I've got another one of these around the house that I'll be busting into soon.

The Remainder of the Football Shoebox

Today is Super Bowl Sunday. I myself will be watching but I really don't have a dog in the fight so I'll be watching out of mere interest more than anything else. Anyway, I wanted to have a post today to mark the occasion and seeing as I had some things in the draft folder from this past summer, I though this would be as good a time as any to go through them. So, if you're really into the game and feel like watching the 187 and a half hours of pre-game hootenanny, then feel free to do so. However, if you're like me and could care less about all the pre-game talking heads, then feel free to read about these forgotten cards.

You may remember back in the spring, I purchased a giant shoebox full of football cards, mostly from the late 90s and early 00s, at the community yard sales. Chasing down people selling cards has kind of become a yearly tradition for me there and I fully intend on doing it again this year but I digress. I had been going through the box in six-team increments showing some the cards I kept for each team (click here, here, and here to read the previous installments). I fell behind on that and these have been haunting me ever since then. I'd gotten all the way through to the Oilers and finished there with the last part I posted in September, so here's the rest of everything else from the Packers all the way down to the Vikings. There will be lots of words for some teams, not a lot for others. As a matter of fact, this rather lengthy preamble is probably the most wordy portion of the whole piece.

If I had to pick an NFC team to pull for, it'd probably be the Packers. I've always liked their combination of green and yellow and their one of the most historic franchises in the NFL. The dude who collected these prior must've been a Packers fan himself as they had the most cards out of any other team. There's a good batch of everything here from mid-90s to early 00s to an Eddie Lacy card from just a few years back. The McMichael card I kept just because he's been involved with pro wrestling.

You may notice a pattern here, I've only kept cards of players I know, that's definitely the case here with these five Panthers cards, Kerry Collins and Kevin Greene being the most notable.

Ah yes, the Patriots back before Tom Brady. I kept the team card mainly because it's got the old school red Patriots uniform and logo but that's pretty much it. 

Another Kevin Greene card, forgive the horrible scan. Apparently my scanner hates these Wild Card cards. 

Not really a big fan of the Ravens but there are some pretty cool photos here.

Again, another team I don't follow closely, that being the Redskins. I kept the 1995 Fleer card mainly to use for a comparison piece I'm working on.

Ok, finally some cards I can talk about. It's really a shame that kicker cards have all but kicked the bucket recently but any card of Morten Andersen is just aces. While I'm not really an active collector of his cards, if I find one in a 10-cent bin or nickel box, I might just pick it up. Jeff Blake, however, is one player that I do actively collect, Bengals cards or not.

Probably my favorite card of this batch is the Rick Donnelly card from 1990 Topps. It was also the oldest card in the box.

A few Steelers cards and another card of former WCW star Kevin Greene. Did you know he once wrestled current WWE star The Big Show on pay-per-view in 1998?

Finally, the last of the batch in two Vikings cards. I was actually pulling for the Vikings to make it to the Super Bowl this year just so say could say they were the first team to host the Super Bowl.

So there you have it, the remainder of the cards I kept from the five dollar football shoebox. Most of what I didn't keep has already found it's way into the trade box or has been donated to Goodwill. Hope everyone enjoys the game. I know I'll probably be enjoying my homemade super deluxe chili nachos more than the game itself.

You've Got Mail #77: Off the Wall Cards (aka Secret Santa 2017)

Yes, I know it's February and only a few weeks out from Valentine's Day but last Christmas Matt at BWTP organized another wonderful blogger secret Santa extravaganza. In the draw, I ended up having to buy for Matt himself but the person who pulled my name was Shane over at Off the Wall Cards and someone who I've interacted with on Twitter quite a bit. 

Shane's package arrived just a few days before Christmas and was one of those large size USPS priority mail boxes stuffed to the gills with all kinds of stuff that hit pretty much every collection under the sun. I won't show everything because if I did, we'd be here until next Christmas 

There were these 1982 Topps Bengals cards to start with. While I'm not a big collector of modern football cards, I still enjoy getting older cards such as these, especially Bengals cards and these are a great addition to the Bengals collection.

I wanted to take a moment as well and show the back of the team leaders card. It's so cool that it shows the results of all the games from the 1981 season. It makes me want to go back and look up the records on some of these games. You'll see this card again in the future too for a "Multi-Player Mayhem" entry.

1982 Topps wasn't the only thing in the way of Bengals cards that were included. There was also this smattering of random Bengals.

But here's the most interesting item of the Bengals portion, this sticker/pocket schedule. I checked the front and the back for any info on who may have printed it and there's nothing but a quick gander over at COMC turned up the fact this is a 1982 Fleer Teams in Action sticker. The sticker itself is cool but it's really the schedule on the back that does it for me. Kind of makes me want to go back again and look up the results of those games.

Bengals cards weren't the only thing included. There were these WWF cards from the early 90s as well, including three Ultimate Warrior cards.

Some reprints of cards of defunct teams, from both the Topps 1952 reprint series and 2001 Topps Archives. I wonder if it would be feasible at some point to put together a 1952 Topps set using nothing but the reprints.

Here's something pretty cool, a 1970 Topps poster of Don Mincher, first baseman for the Seattle Pilots. One thing I really find interesting about 1970 Topps is that it features cards for the Pilots but by the time the season started, the Pilots had morphed into the Brewers. One of my collecting goals is to get every Pilots card from both the 1969 and 1970 sets. If you've got Pilots cards to send, feel free to let me know.

Here's a handful of 1984 Topps cards for the set build. This reminds me, I really need to update my want list for that.

I'm not sure if these are TTM autographs or in-person autographs but this is probably my second favorite batch of Indians cards in the package. I think the one I like the most has to be Dave Burba, who was kind of a forgotten about pitcher. He was pretty solid with the Reds in the mid-90s and was part of two major trades the Reds made. He was acquired by the Reds in 1995 as part of a July deal that also netted Mark Portugal and Darren Lewis from the Giants in exchange for Deion Sanders and a few other players. The Reds would then flip Burba to Cleveland on the eve of Opening Day 1998 for a young first baseman named Sean Casey. The rest, as they say, is history.

I always enjoy it when vintage cards are hidden in a trade package and this is no exception. First, there's a well loved 1955 Bowman card of George Strickland, then a 1962 Topps Woody Held, and a smattering of 1959 Topps cards, of which I had none until just now. 

This is a sampling of the 1983 Reds yearbook team set. I really like the card with the aerial shot of Riverfront Stadium and the Coliseum. I look at that picture and realize that 20 years after the fact the stadium would be gone and a new one would be built right between it and the Coliseum. As for how the Reds did in 1983, they finished 6th (aka last) in the NL West with a 71-91 record.

Pretty much this whole post has been about oddballs and stickers so here's more. This time some Star stickers made by Fleer in 1981 featuring the remnants of the Big Red Machine.

Here's more vintage, this time with cards from 1958, 1957, and 1963 respectively and all three of popular Reds players in that era. The Gus Bell card will go well with the Vada Pinson and Joe Nuxhall cards I already have from that set. We also have another well worn 1955 Bowman card, this time of Fred Baczewski, a man whose major league career spanned only three seasons and in 1955, the year this card was produced, pitched 1 inning of one game and amassed an 18.00 ERA.

Moving on to more modern territory, there was a nice selection of Barry Larkin cards, these four I know I didn't have previously. I really should inventory my Reds player collection cards sometime but that's a major project and something I don't have time to do currently.

To go along with the Indians autographs previously shown, here's a nice IP/TTM auto of the newest Reds Hall of Famer Adam Dunn, and it's on his rookie card.

I'm nearing the end of this massive mail day but just wanted to touch on a few more newer cards that were thrown in before I show the major cards. First, there were these minor league cards

And a bunch of newer cards, including a nice Adam Duvall Donruss card from last year. I've said it before and I'll say it again, even though Panini doesn't have an MLB license, I think they do pretty well with what they've got and Donruss has been one of my favorite products to buy the last few years. I think last year and the year before, they really started to hit their stride.

Now the two big ticket items of the package and two cards off my most wanted list. First, a card that been haunting me seeming forever, that being the 1984 Topps #8 Don Mattingly card. I've seen it for sale at numerous places but the price was always a bit more that I wanted to pay. Now a glaring hole in my 1984 Topps set is complete and I can focus on getting the rest of it whittled away.

Here's another card I placed on my most wanted list and quite honestly forgot it was on there, that being this 1969 Tony Perez. This is really a nice early career card of Perez and trying to find a card like this around here isn't cheap since local dealers then to jack up the price of early cards of Big Red Machine.

A big thank you goes out to Shane for his generosity and all the awesome stuff both pictured and not pictured. Some stuff I scanned in but ended up cutting due to space but believe me, there was a lot of stuff and things that'll take me a while to organize. I definitely recommend getting in on the Secret Santa deal, it's a ton of fun.