Cards from Canada

This past weekend's Signature Sundays post was brought to you by my longtime hobby buddy Douglas, who blogs at Sportscards from the Dollar Store.  As I indicated in that post though, the pair of autographs I featured there were far from the only cards I received in my latest mailer from Canada.

Let's take a look at some of the other highlights, shall we?

There was a decent little stack of Boston Bruins cards to be found in the package.  While I've adopted the B's as my favorite team after the departure of my beloved Hartford Whalers, and watch every game faithfully, I've scaled back my collecting of Bruins cards some in my overall collection purge that's been ongoing over the past year or so.

With that being said though, I picked out my top five keepers here to show in this post, starting with this fantastic Bobby Orr from one of my favorite sets of the 2000s.  I'll certainly be hanging onto this one, as I do with any and all cards I don't already have from this attractive release.  I'm actually pretty astounded that I didn't have a copy of this Orr already, but indeed I did not!

Packaged alongside the Orr was the great Cam Neely from the same set, also a need.

I don't get a lot of modern hockey cards these days, but I'll never turn down a new David Krejci.  I certainly won't turn down a new David Krejci with a photo as compelling as this one!  He was my favorite player in the league for many years, and I even player-collected him somewhat seriously for a year or two.  Most of those cards are gone now, sold and converted into cards that better fit my collecting tastes these days, but this is a good one.

The most exciting young player on the team now is David Pastrnak, who is still just 23 and has already amassed 8 goals this season, just 7 games in.  I'll be hanging onto this SP Authentic single for sure.

Last card on the Bruins front, my first card depicting Rick Nash's 11-game, career-capping stint with the Bruins back in 2017-18.  I wasn't even sure anyone had produced a card of Rick in B's garb, so I was pretty happy to find this one included in the mailer.

Next up, the beast of a set known as 2013-14 Score.  The base set contained 650 cards, but then Panini released another 100 rookie/update cards in their Rookie Anthology release later that year.

Douglas has a penchant for busting cases of Rookie Anthology, in fact I suspect it might be his favorite hockey product of all-time to open.

As a result, he has provided a steady supply of cards to help me complete the high-number portion of the set over the years.

In this package he knocked another 7 needs off my shrinking list as far as those final 100 cards go.  Also, remember David Clarkson?!?!

Vincent Lecavalier was the lone horizontal card in this bunch.

With these in hand I'm missing just 2 cards from the 650-card base set (though I may have them laying around here somewhere, things are a bit cluttered at the moment), 5 of the update cards, and 4 of the update rookie cards.  At that point I could finally put this one to bed, which would feel pretty amazing.

I'd like to say I'll just head over to COMC and bang out the missing cards now, but they don't crop up as often as you'd think, at least not at reasonable prices.  I must not be the only one working on this set years after its initial release.

The final card on the hockey card front as far as this mailer goes is this striking Brendan Shanahan from 2018-19 Chronology.  This is actually a base card, but being a high-end set it's numbered to /222.  This came from the same group break as the great Ray Ferraro autograph I showed last Sunday.  This is the only Whaler on the checklist, instant team set!

As if the two autographs from Sunday and all those great hockey cards weren't enough, Douglas also included some other Red Sox cards in the mailer...

My very first card of any sort from 2019 Donruss Optic, a Mookie Betts Highlights.  As unlicensed Donruss goes this isn't too bad an image, I have to say.

Next up, a couple more cards of Red Sox prospect and subject of last Sunday's autograph post, Nick Decker.  From 2018 Panini Elite Extra Edition we have his base card (#'d /999)...

...and this crazy loud die-cut card!  Two serial-numbered cards and an autograph, now I really have to keep tabs on how this guy does (hopefully) progressing through the minors!

Douglas also hit me up with a nice trio of Sox from 2019 Heritage High Numbers; pitchers Nathan Eovaldi...

...Matt Barnes...

 ...and Ryan Brasier.  Enough bullpen arms there to get you from the 6th or 7th through the end of the game!

One straggler need towards my 2019 Topps Big League team set, which is getting there.

This one is really cool; a die-cut W.A.R. insert from Panini's 2019 Revival of the formerly Donruss 'Leather & Lumber' set.  I really like the design here, and in fact I think I recall possibly commenting on this exact card, or one very similar, on Douglas' blog a ways back.  Awesome stuff.

We'll close it out with the remaining 'hit' of the mailer, a Michael Chavis Dual Silhouettes Red relic, serial-numbered to /49.  Michael's future is somewhat of a mystery, at least to me.  Appearing in under 100 games for Boston in his first season this past year, he put up some good power numbers.  The stats seemed to come more in the earlier portion of the season though, before injury caused him to miss some time.  I'm very curious to see how he fits into the plans for the team for the 2020 season.

Well, we've at last reached the end of another great package of cards from Canada.  Thank you so much Douglas for this amazing and thoughtful array.  I know I'm certainly in your debt at this point as far as cardboard goes, and I'll try to find something to return fire with soon here.

To everyone else, thanks as always for stopping by.  Visit again tomorrow if you're curious to see my haul from last Monday's card show!