Martin Brodeur Appreciation Night!

Since the Devils are retiring Martin Brodeur's jersey number tonight, I though it would only be right to do a quick post showing at the best Brodeur cards that are in my collection. These are technically my wife's Brodeur cards to begin with but she's been nice enough to let me absorb them into my collection.

These cards have barely been out of the one-touch cases she has them in but for purposes of scanning them, I took them out, scanned them, and put them right back in.

I think my favorite of this group is the autographed jersey card, second only to the Winning Materials card. All of these, except for the Showcase Stitches card are serial numbered as well. I'll be wearing my Brodeur jersey tonight to commemorate but since the game isn't being shown on TV locally (really NBC Sports?) and I don't have the extra cash right now to subscribe to NHL.TV, I guess I'll just be watching the highlights online later.

You've Got Mail #13: This Way to the Clubhouse

Right after the first of the year, as I was showing some of the stuff that came out of the Topps Update holiday boxes, Mark from This Way to the Clubhouse contacted me and was interested in a Mets gold parallel. We exchanged addresses and a few days later a nice envelope full of Reds, Indians, and miscellaneous goodies managed to escape the great blizzard and land in my mailbox.

I'll kick this off with the most recent stuff that was included. These all-star game cards are definitely welcomed and I really need to go through what I have and post a want list for the remainder. 

Mascot cards are always cool! I'm planning on picking up a box of 2016 Opening Day as I've gained a new appreciation for it based on trades I've made since starting up this blog.

This Johnny Bench card is really cool but I'm not sure what set it's from as I couldn't quite but a finger on it. I'm pretty sure that the Perez Lineage card is a duplicate though, but regardless, it's still awesome!

Here's two guys that will hopefully be shining spots of the Reds this year, Billy Hamilton and Brandon Phillips. One of my other goals with the Update set is to put together the remainder of the Reds throwback cards.

A bunch of older Reds. Bret Boone was a really solid second baseman for the Reds teams in the mid-90s, Sean Casey was always fun to watch play and earned a spot in the Reds Hall of Fame a few years ago.

Mark also threw in a nice mess of Indians cards and these were the best of the batch. I was really excited to find the Bob Feller insert card in the mix and Manny Ramirez Indians cards are always great.

Thanks for the great trade package Mark! Hope you enjoyed the return!

Retail Repack Adventures #3

Walgreens did it to me again. It seems like whenever I run in there to pick up a few odds and ends, I'm beckoned to check out the toy aisle and see what repacks they have. They had two new ones this time and yes, I bought both of them. Here's the first of the them ...

Starting this one off with some nice White Sox cards. The Magglio Ordonez card is super nice and I'm pretty sure this is my third or fourth copy of the Fisk card.

Well would you look at that, a relic card! A pretty cool framed relic card from Allen & Ginter of Hong-Chih Kuo. Wait, who? He was an All-Star in 2010 with the Dodgers was out of the majors after the 2011 season with a lifetime record of 13-17 with a 3.73 ERA and 13 saves in 218 games.

Here's a nice mixed bag of stars that were included, plus two of my favorite early 90s sets, 91 Donruss and 93 Upper Deck.

Two guys who in Clemens and Palmerio who would be in the Hall of Fame it they weren't surrounded in the steroid mix.

These are really cool, first is this 1990 Donruss pack (which I'm saving to start up a new blog series with) and this really cool Jimmy Dean sausage Darryl Strawberry card. I'd forgotten that everyone's favorite frozen breakfast sandwich maker had put cards in their packages.

Some more modern cards, including Coco Crisp doing his best Oscar Gamble (and an image that also showed up on 2015 Allen & Ginter cards). I'd forgotten that Tejada had played for the Orioles at all.

Here are the obligatory Reds cards. Wait a minute, that Cozart image looks familiar, it's the same image as his 2015 Allen & Ginter card! So that makes two cards from 2014 base set that were recycled into the 2015 Allen & Ginter set. Oh well, these go into the Reds binder regardless.

Lastly, this pack was loaded with 2012 Topps base set cards. I have a soft spot for this set and these were the first packs I bought when I got back into collecting and I'll add these to my 2012-2013 binder.

I think there's only one thing left to say ... resistance is futile.