Signature Sundays - Three More '89-90 OPCs!

In today's Signature Sundays post, let's take a look at the other three 1989-90 O-Pee-Chee autograph cards that came in my recent lot of six, purchased from a reputable seller on eBay.  If you missed the first trio and want to check them out, you can find those here.

Anyway, this is the first set of sports cards that I ever collected as a young lad, so I've been casually accumulating autographed cards from the set.  Let's dive right into today's trio...

From the Calgary Flames, it's goaltender Rick Wamsley.  What I associate Rick with most is being part of the trade (headed to Calgary) that brought sniper Brett Hull to the Blues.  That's probably not fair to Rick, who had a lengthy NHL career supporting a few different franchises, but it is what it is.

Wamsley sure has a great signature, I'll give him that.

Here's the back, with evidence of that '87-88 trade that sent Wamsley north of the border, and Hull south of it...

Next up, Robert Picard of the Nordiques.  While I'm grateful to land any Nordiques player for this project, Picard is not one that I've got a lot of memories of from childhood.  In fairness to me, he was wrapping up his NHL career just as I became a fan.

Big, loopy signature here, complete with jersey number!

Robert bounced around quite a bit, though in most cases he did last multiple seasons wherever he landed.

The final card is the one that drew me to this seller to begin with, and my absolute favorite of this order...

Oh yeah!  What a great autograph of the "Little Ball of Hate", Pat Verbeek.  Pat was one of my younger brother's favorite players growing up, and he was the kind of guy who you absolutely despised if he wasn't on your team, but absolutely adored if he was.  Very much Brad Marchand before Brad Marchand.

I always liked Verbeek's distinct signature, with jersey number included in the opening 'P' of his first name.  This has always been a very recognizable card as well, due to the atrocious airbrushing used to convert Pat from his Devils gear into Whaler garb.  So happy to have an autographed copy of this childhood favorite!

I wish Verbeek would get the call to the HOF someday.  His 522 career goals are just about the most of anyone not enshrined, and he's right on that line with guys like Pierre Turgeon and Jeremy Roenick.  Maybe someday!

That's a wrap for this week's autograph post.  I'm actually up to 23 different on-card autographs from this set now, if you count my Topps and O-Pee-Chee cards combined.  If you're interested, you can see the entire collection here; it's starting to look quite nice if I do say so myself.

Thanks as always for stopping by!

Turning Back the Clock with Some Tallboy Whalers

The great package of cards that I received from Mark (aka avsbruins65 on TCDB) earlier this summer included a really unique injection of Whalers cards, in the form of these 1993-94 Fleer PowerPlay tallboys!

I remember distinctly when this set came out when I was just a kid collector.  My brothers and I busted quite a few packs of the stuff, but storage was always an issue, as it tends to be with non-standard sized cards like these.  Overall, a clean design that focused on being able to provide collectors with an over-sized photograph.

The backs were well done, and Fleer took advantage of the extra space to cram a good deal of information onto these without making it feel claustrophobic at all.

Even though Hartford had moved onto it's less popular blue sweaters, these are still aesthetically pleasing cards.

Mark actually sent along an entire Series 1 Whalers team set, which is just fantastic.  Prior to receiving these the only base card I had from this set in my entire collection was a Wayne Gretzky.  Great to add all the first series Whalers in one fell swoop here.

The goaltender cards in the set look particularly attractive given that the entire player can fit in scope without much real need for cropping of the photograph.

Michael Nylander, rocking the "I broke my jaw" helmet add-on.  For those who weren't aware, Michael is the father of present-day Maple Leafs star William Nylander.

I won't provide commentary for all of these, but will let you enjoy all the scans anyway...

Zarley Zalapski closes out the base Series 1 Whalers, but since I'm showing these great cards from Mark here's an insert that was already present in my Whalers collection:

I really like the minimal, blue border used for these "2nd Year Stars" inserts.  I wish all the cards in the set had a transparent lower section with the player and set name like this.

With this '93-94 Fleer PowerPlay Series 1 team set complete, I'm now up to 1,846 different Hartford Whalers cards in my ever-expanding team collection!  I still haven't covered all the new Whalers that Mark sent in his package though, so I'll be back soon with even more as I continue on towards 2,000 unique Whalers!

Thanks as always for stopping by!

Rink Collection Complete!

Today I finally get to begin showing off some of the contents of a really spectacular trade package that I received over the summer from Mark, aka 'avsbruins65' on TCDB.  Mark sent so many great cards that I can't show them all off in a single post, so let's start with a batch of '90s Whalers parallels!

Yes, it's 1995-96 Pinnacle Rink Collection!  The short-lived Rink Collection parallels are some of my absolute favorites of the entire decade that was the '90s, and I was totally pumped to find a handful of these in the package for my ever-growing Whalers collection.

Always loved this shot of defenseman Adam Burt taking an awkward puck to the face!

These are so appreciated, because I've mainly focused on the inaugural '94-95 Rink Collection parallels to date, and only had one lone Whaler from this '95-96 set prior to receiving Mark's generous package.

Great shot of the Whalers uniforms of the era here, as Robert Kron engages in discussion with the referee.

I've mentioned many times before how Hartford fans were conflicted about Glen Wesley.  He was a despised member of the rival Bruins for many years before donning the Whalers green and blue.

Unfortunately, as we now know, the team was just a couple of seasons from its demise move to Carolina when these cards were issued.

Love this Geoff Sanderson, the blue uniform looks great on these particular parallels.  As is always the case with Dufex or foil cards, these look infinitely better in hand than they do in scans.

Lastly, my favorite card of the bunch, Darren Turcotte posing with (presumably) his son in front of the net.  Pinnacle had some great photographs in their mid-'90s hockey releases, quirky portraits like this one included among them.

What's especially great about the eight cards I showed in this post is that they complete my '95-96 Rink Collection Whalers team set!  I'm really starting to feel like a serious team collector now, with not just team sets completed but team sets in parallel format as well.  With these added to my collection on TCDB I'm now up to 1,836 Whalers cards and counting, good enough for third place on the site as far as largest Hartford Whalers collections go.

Mark, thanks for these great cards, they are very much appreciated!  Everyone else, enjoy the rest of your Tuesday and I'll be back soon with more goodies from Mark's package.  Thanks as always for stopping by!

Weekly Cardboard Recap - Helmar, Knocking of Team Sets, WHA & More

I seem to have gotten into a routine the past couple of Fridays of just posting some goings-on from my little corner of the collecting world from the week prior.  No reason to break that streak today I suppose, let's see what I've been up to hobby-wise...

Another nice new Helmar card here, from their T206 tribute set.  I picked this one up a while back now, but only just got around to processing and adding it to my inventoried collection this past week.  Perhaps not as cool as my first card from this set, but an interesting one in that it's my one and only card of Hugh Bedient.

This guy was a rookie for Boston in 1912 and was absolutely huge.  He won 20 games for the Sox in that first season, and was clutch in the World Series against Christy Mathewson and the Giants as well.  It's crazy that, as far as I know, the guy doesn't have a single mainstream card out there.

I know they're not for everyone, but this is exactly why I love the Helmar art cards.  So many of the subjects in the sets they make just aren't available to be added to your collection elsewhere.  I was more than happy to bring this one home for the opening bid of $9.99.  I mean, check out this back:

Simply awesome!  After landing quite a few Helmar cards last summer and early fall, I've really laid off and it's been many months since I landed one or really even paid close attention to their weekly eBay auctions.  Every time I do though I'm reminded of what great work they do.

On the hockey front, it was another great week for my Whalers collection, as I processed and added a full 30 new cards from the stack that I recently rediscovered.  This lot brought me to over 1,800 total Whalers cards now, within 200 cards of my goal of reaching the 2,000 mark this year.

Most of them were '90s cards, but included in the lot was this '89-90 O-Pee-Chee Sticker.  It's half a Whalers card, anyway.  That's the great Dave Tippett on the right there!

A handful of the cards were from Upper Deck's 1993-94 flagship set.  I ripped a wax box of this many years back, probably at least ten years ago now.  Still haven't decided what I plan to do with that, but in the meantime...

...the ones that I processed this week completed my Whalers team set for this release!  This is a pretty solid design, if less memorable than the first two to three years of Upper Deck hockey.  I feel like the photography was especially crisp for the early '90s.  Maybe it's just me, but the colors seem to absolutely pop off the card when it comes to this set.

These Playoff One on One game cards are something only a team or player collector could love in my opinion.  If it's got a Whalers logo on it though, I'll take it!

The team set completion momentum continued, as this '94-95 Donruss card is the final Whaler I was missing for this release as well.  I think what Donruss went with design-wise here could have actually worked quite well had they not made the entire thing blinding, largely illegible foil.

It just kept getting better as I processed through the stack, as I also completed the 1994-95 Score team set when I scanned and logged this overly busy card celebrating Brian Propp's 1,000th career point.  That's right, the longtime Philadelphia Flyer recorded point number 1,000 while sporting Whaler blue.

1993-94 Pinnacle doesn't do much for me.  It's a clean design I'll say.  Anyway, that's enough Whalers for this post, but again it was a good week.  I have one more small stack probably the same size as this to process, so maybe I'll be featuring the Whalers one more time in a weekly round-up post like this.

Let's see, what else?  Oh, here's another '72-73 O-Pee-Chee high number WHA card.  Mike Amodeo looks pretty much like a spot-on WHA stereotypical guy here.  Love that handlebar 'stache!  I'm approaching one third complete now as far as the 51 WHA cards in this release go, and feeling more and more confident with each addition that I'll complete this someday.

Not much to say about this one, just a really cool Pedro that I picked up in a quarter box many years back and just got around to processing now.

In collection news, back in April I'd posted about the first ten athletes that hit the 100-card threshold within my collection.  Since then two more have been added to the list.  The great Mario Lemieux (his '91-92 Upper Deck card here is a real beauty, no?)...

...and the controversial Roger Clemens!  Mario Lemieux hitting the 100-card mark is a result of me seeking out his cards every so often since he's one of my all-time favorite players.  Roger on the other hand hit the mark simply because I'm a Red Sox collector, and he was included in practically every single release with the team during the height of the junk wax era.

Different rationale, same end result.  Welcome to the 100 club, Mario and Roger!

We'll close it out with a new shiny card.  I've become highly intrigued by these 1999 Bowman's Best Refrators since learning about them from a collector on YouTube a few weeks back.  After picking up the Vlad Guerrero 'Performers' subset card for just a few bucks, I was looking for other low-hanging fruit and found Todd Helton here for the same price.

He may not be enshrined in Cooperstown, but he's certainly a member of the Hall of Very Good.  That was enough to get me to bite on this Refractor.  These are really stunning in hand, happy to have one to pair with my Vlad.

That's a wrap for now.  Thanks as always for stopping by, and check back this weekend for more great cardboard.  Until then, stay safe!

Hobby Goings On

Taking it easy today on the posting front with just some random happenings from the past few days as far as my collection is concerned. 

First up, I processed a big lot of these Red & Blue Wave parallels from the 2018 Panini Prizm World Cup set and added them to my collection proper.  The highlight of the lot was the Ronaldo above.  I'm up to 123 of these parallels now after entering in the lot, close to 50% of an entire set.  I've got a slightly smaller lot of Green & Orange Wave parallels to enter next, then I can start evaluating where I'm at with my goal of forming an overall "parallel franken-set" of this 300-card release!

While we're on the topic of really cool parallels, here's one that recently arrived in the mailbox courtesy of eBay.  Upper Deck did "Electric Ice" parallels for a couple of their flagship hockey sets in the mid-'90s.  In the 1995-96 release they took the rarity to another level and also included these "Electric Ice Gold" parallels, which fell just one per box.

I gladly scooped up this Sean Burke for my Whalers collection at under $3 with free shipping.  A team set of these is a tall order based on rarity, but doable.

This was such an awesome set design-wise that I feel compelled to show the back as well.

Speaking of my Whalers collection, while continuing on my ongoing purge I finally tackled a 5-row monster box on the floor next to my desk that I believed to contain duplicates only.  Imagine my surprise when I came across a stack of Whalers cards that I'd seemingly never scanned and inventoried!

The stack was a few dozen cards thick, and as I started comparing them against my inventory on The Trading Card Database, I realized I needed just about every one of them.

When the dust settled I'd added no fewer than forty new Whalers cards to my official collection!  This was the largest single jump for me on that front in quite a while, and motivates me to really try at the goal I threw out at the beginning of the year to accumulate 2,000 Whalers cards by December 31st.

I'm still more than 200 shy of that even after adding these to my tally, but I have quite a bit of that 5-row monster box still to process in my purge.  I have a feeling there could be another stack or two like this one, if I'm lucky.

Obviously I'm not going to show all forty of the new Whalers cards in this post, but selected a few favorites like this '89-90 Scoring Leaders Ron Francis.

This one's pretty cool, from the 1989-90 O-Pee-Chee Stickers set.  First one of these in my formal collection!  Awesome brown pads on Peter Sidorkiewicz there.  I wish I had a second copy of this so I could peel it and stick it to the outside of the shoebox where I keep my Whalers collection.

One of the highlights of the find was definitely this 1979-80 O-Pee-Chee John Garrett.  This plugs a hole in my Whalers team set from the greatest flagship hockey set ever made.  I have the entire Topps set, and it looks like I'm missing only Mark Howe to knock the O-Pee-Chee version out now.  There's a card I'll need to seek out very soon.

I chose this '94-95 Leaf card just because Geoff Sanderson's facial expression is so serious.  Lighten up Geoff, it's a game.

Strong mullet game from Pat Verbeek on his '94-95 Ultra card.

Not a bad grouping there, felt great adding a chunk of Whalers in one fell swoop like that.

Here's another over-sized Helmar Polar Night card.  This one features Charlie Ganzel of the Detroit Wolverines.  I love the stockings, uniform, cap, floating ball, all of it.  Just a really cool and visually attractive card of a guy who'd almost certainly be missing from my collection otherwise.  That pretty much sums up the beauty of Helmar in my opinion; affordable cards of guys whose playing-era cards are astronomically priced, if they exist at all.

Well, that's a wrap for now.  Thanks as always for stopping by, and check back soon for the results of another hard-to-believe eBay flip!