Thursday, March 26, 2009

Budget Card Store Run - 1991 Pinnacle Pack #1

The other day when I went out in search of a pack of Upper Deck Champs, the first place I checked was a card shop I normally avoid. The owner is just not as friendly as other shop owners in the area and he's one of those guys who apparently has yet to hear about eBay and thinks his cards are worth way more than they actually are, and refuses to budge on price. He does have the largest shop in the area though, so I figured he'd have some Champs, but I was wrong. I couldn't leave empty handed but didn't want to spend much cash as I knew it wasn't my last stop of the day. I decided to spend just the $8 in cash I had in my front pocket. I dropped $1 on a pack of 100 penny sleeves, and picked up 2 packs of 1991-92 Pinnacle hockey for $1 a piece. Did I overpay? Probably, but I loved these cards as a kid and have never found the ones I collected back then. Here's the first pack:

#107 - Derek King - New York Islanders

#102 - Shayne Corson - Montreal Canadiens - Well, he spells his name wrong in this Shane's humble opinion, but he's definitely sporting a serious early-90's hockey mullet.

#110 - Zarley Zalapski - Hartford Whalers - Pulling a Whaler out of the pack pretty much made it worth the dollar. When I was growing up in CT I knew a woman who named her cat Zarley as an homage to Mr. Zalapski. His name conjurs up mixed feelings with Whalers fans though, as he came to Hartford in one of the worst trades in NHL history, when the Whalers sent both captain Ron Francis and Ulf Samuelsson to Pittsburgh...
#154 - Keith Brown - Chicago Blackhawks

#157 - Sergei Fedorov - Detroit Red Wings - I would've been ecstatic to get this card back in the day. It was hard not to be a Red Wings fan as a kid in the early to mid-90's, and Sergei was one of my favorite players. Bonus points for what I believe is an "Original 6" Red Wings jersey depicted on this card. I actually like the backs of these cards almost as much as the fronts:

Only one year of stats shown, which is usually a minus. In this case I don't mind, as I love the cropped player photo against the black background and the short write-up on each player. I think the team logo looks good too.
#152 - Ulf Dahlen - Minnesota North Stars
#290 - Patrik Sundstrom - New Jersey Devils
#285 - Joe Reekie - New York Islanders
#288 - Randy Carlyle - Winnipeg Jets - The second team in this pack that is no longer an NHL franchise. I would love to see the NHL move one of the teams from the Southern US (like the Coyotes or Panthers) back up to Winnipeg.
#351 - Chris Winnes - Boston Bruins - Winnes was a local New England guy, who was highly touted but ended up playing just over 30 total games in the NHL. He basically became a career minor-league hockey player.
#336 - Kimbi Daniels - Philadelphia Flyers

#410 - Rick Zombo - Sideline - Pretty cheesy subset in which we get a preview into what each player's hobbies are outside of hockey. Does anyone care that Rick Zombo paints? I can't even tell what the hell that is. I'm sure Zombo is a great artist, I'm just not sure why this belongs in a Pinnacle hockey card set...
Well a good start so far to an $8 card shop run. Grand total so far: $2.00 ($1 for the Pinnacle pack, $1 for the penny sleeves).

4 comments:

  1. This brings back memories of trying to get the Neely Pinnacle "B" card.

    ReplyDelete
  2. This set is awesome. I spent so much money putting this set together pack by back, only to sell it a few years later at the flea market with a bunch of my other hand collated sets. The sad thing is... I probably sold the set for $5 to $10.

    And speaking of the Pinnacle "B" cards... I remember trading my Lemieux card for a couple more packs. I don't think I'd really grasped the concept of insert cards yet.

    Thanks for the flashback! Great memories.

    ReplyDelete
  3. btw... thanks to your article, it got me wondering how much this stuff goes for these days. If you're interested in purchasing boxes, I found some cheap on these sites:

    pghsportswholesale: american ($13/box), canadian ($8/box)

    thecardkid.com: canadian ($6.48/box)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Oh man, I am pretty tempted to pick up a hobby box of the US version!

    ReplyDelete