Hockey Cards from the Dollar Store

With just a day or two left in 2019, and finally caught up on posts thanking folks for inbound trade packages, I checked the mail to find a large bubble mailer from Canada awaiting me.  A quick look at the address and I knew instantly that my longtime hobby friend Douglas of Sportscards from the Dollar Store had struck again!

This was a hefty mailer too, a brick almost, which I really appreciate especially given the insane postage costs to ship between our two countries.  There were too many cards to lump into a single post, so I'm going to break things down into a few smaller posts instead.  First up, the hockey cards!

I'm certain that Douglas has busted more 2013-14 Panini Rookie Anthology than pretty much any other human being on the planet.  If you read his blog then you know that he's been through multiple cases of the stuff by this point.  I've been the beneficiary of many of his Score Update and Score Update Hot Rookies cards from those breaks to help bolster my set.

This time around Douglas threw in an entire 100-card base set of Rookie Anthology!  How awesome is that?  It's not every day that you receive a complete set by surprise in the mail.  Since I'm trying to downsize my collection and be a little more selective about what I hang onto these days I'll probably enjoy these for a while and then pay it forward to another hockey collector.  Very cool.

Somehow, some way, Douglas continues to be a source for Hartford Whalers cards that I don't already have.  Or, in this case, Hartford Whalers cards I never even knew existed!  When this very small sticker fell out of the package, wrapped individually in cellophane, I had no clue what it was or how to go about cataloging it.

Thanks to The Trading Card Database, I discovered that it's a 1988-89 Frito-Lay Sticker!  What an amazing Ron Francis oddball for my team collection.  I'm very surprised I'd never heard of these before.  Looks like there is one other Whaler on the checklist to track down at some point.

The Frito-Lay Francis (that has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?) wasn't the only food-related card to be found, as I also received this awesome 1991-92 Kraft Pat Verbeek.  These could be hand-cut from various Kraft products at the time I believe.  Again, I didn't have a single one of these for my Whalers collection until now.

Rounding out the new Hartford cards is this 1990-91 Upper Deck Daryl Reaugh RC.  What's that, you'd assume a Whalers collector such as myself would already have owned a copy of this?  Well I do, but this is the French version!  Just my second card from the French team set believe it or not.  I should really get on Sportlots at some point and just knock the rest of that out, at probably 18 cents per card.

Three much-appreciated additions to my favorite hockey collection there!  There was more hockey to be found, however, including a few that are absolute keepers going into my collection despite my downsizing.  Those would include...

...a couple of cards of Jake DeBrusk.  He seems streaky and certainly has cold stretches, but I enjoy this kid's game overall and when he's on he can be every bit as dynamic and exciting as the first line forwards that are the darlings of the league.  Douglas threw in this Factory Set Blue parallel of his 2018-19 Upper Deck MVP card...

...and his base card from 2019-20 Upper Deck.  This will show you how little modern product I seem to pick up these days; this is my very first 2019-20 hockey card, period!  I actually had to create the '2019' folder on my hard drive to store the scan.  Kinda sad that it took me until January to do that.  This wasn't the only 2019-20 Upper Deck card I found in the mailer though.

I also received this Teuvo Teravainen, which I've wanted badly since learning of its existence.  The obvious reason why is that the photo is from one of two games last year where the Hurricanes donned the old Hartford Whalers sweaters against the Boston Bruins (once at home, and once on the road in Boston).  I knew about this card but hadn't picked it up yet because it was going for more than a base common should on COMC.

This one had completely slipped past me though!  Had no idea that Dougie Hamilton's card featured him in Whalers gear, but this is great!  It's actually my favorite of the two because you get a great look at the bench full of "Whalers" in the background there.  Based on the way Upper Deck cropped these photos, I'm wondering if they are avoiding showing the logo for legal or other reasons.

These technically don't count as Whalers cards for my collection on TCDB, but I will absolutely cherish them nonetheless.  There's a 50/50 chance I could have been at the game when either of these photos were taken, too!  I think the Dougie Hamilton photo came from Carolina though based on the red trim along the top of the boards there.

Finally, as I mentioned at the outset of the post, I've been the lucky recipient of a whole lot of Rookie Anthology Score cards from Douglas over the years.  This time was no different, as I got a pair from the Score Update portion of the set, headlined by this awesome Bobby Ryan photograph.  It's widely known that Bobby's had a tough life, and has been going through some struggles lately.  I hope he's able to get well and eventually return to the game.

The other Update card was Mason Raymond of the Leafs.  With this pair in the set I now have 32 of the 35 Update cards.  I'm eyeing the final three on COMC, which is pretty incredible given how long I've been at this set.

The very end of the Score master set contains 65 Hot Rookies from Rookie Anthology.  I was at the point where I was missing only four to complete the run.

Well, guess how many Douglas included in this package?

Yep, four!

The Hot Rookies portion of my set is done at last!

After all these years of collecting the 2013-14 Score set, the end is finally in sight.  According to my collection on TCDB I'm missing only those three Update cards, and a single card from the 650-card basic set (the Maple Leafs leaders card, oddly enough).  I'm pretty sure I have that Leafs card around here somewhere, if I can put those final three Update cards to rest I'll complete probably the toughest hockey card set I've done in the past few years!  I wouldn't even be remotely close if it weren't for Douglas and his ongoing generosity.

So, there are some great hockey cards from Canada.  Thanks Douglas for all of these, and as I said this is only the tip of the iceberg as far as this package goes overall.  I'll be back with more soon!