COMC - From Canvas to Yoda

Nothing seems to illustrate my all-over-the-map, complete inability to focus in this hobby better than my COMC orders do.  To help prove that point, I've got 30 or so cards that have come in my last couple of orders to show you today.  Let's dive in!

Thanks to Upper Deck's e-pack promotion the site is absolutely flooded with hockey cards from this past season at incredibly cheap prices.  I finished off the 2015-16 Canvas Series 1 set earlier this year thanks to these cards, and in a recent order I got a good start on Series 2.

I'm not going to bother showing all of the Canvas I picked up in my last order, but I did pick out three favorites.  These cards really work well with the horizontal layout, as evidenced by these Kane and Howard cards.

Of course I was excited to also land everyone's favorite aging star, Jaromir Jagr!

Every so often I run a one-off search for serial-numbered Red Sox cards and pick off some low hanging fruit.  This Glossy parallel from Fleer Tradition Update is one such example.  Numbered to /200, it set me back all of 62 cents.

Filip Forsberg is a very bright young player for the Nashville Predators, and has paced the team in points for each of the past two seasons.  He's a true offensive talent who has seen his goal total climb from 26 to 33 over the last two years, during which he has not missed a single game.  I fully expect him to score 30+ again this year, and he probably has a shot at 40 with the right complementary players around him.  All of this, and he's still just 22 years old!

One area of my collection I'm trying to wrap up before the end of the year would be the Kellogg's Red Sox cards.

Couldn't miss out on a chance to add two HOFers that I needed from the 1980 release, especially in completely mint shape for less than a dollar each.

From one Fisk card to another, here's my latest conquest in my attempt to gather as many of the Topps Legends parallels as I can.  Already had the Cognac version of this one, nice to add the standard Diamond Anniversary parallel as well.

Since we're on the topic of shiny cards for a moment here, how about a couple of tough to find refractors from 1995-96 Finest hockey?  I mentioned a few posts ago that '90s Finest hockey refractors are always on my radar to some extent, and I was able to land a couple of big stars (both HOFers) here with Sergei Fedorov...

...and Cam Neely.  These are really quite stunning in hand, and if I had an unlimited collecting budget I'd be going for a set.  As it stands right now I just grab one or two from time to time when the price is right, and I'm now up to 16 of them from this particular set.

Why would I ever spend my hard-earned cash on a lowly 1988 Topps card?

Because it's Topps Tiffany!

Snagged the other Red Sox All-Star Rookie from the '88 Tiffany set while I was at it.

Impulse buy here, just because I've always enjoyed the retro feel of the 3D inserts from 2012 Archives (and because this card was around 50 cents if I recall).

It's difficult for me to pass on a nice vintage Seattle Pilots card, and this one featuring Jerry McNertney donning the tools of ignorance just spoke to me for whatever reason.  1970 really is an under-rated Topps set as far as I'm concerned.

I've written a few times here that I think Panini did a great job with this past season's Diamond Kings release.  When I stumbled upon this Gil Hodges Artist's Proof parallel (#'d to /99), into my cart it went!

Vincent Trocheck is another young star on the up-and-coming Florida Panthers whose career I am looking forward to watching unfold.  In his first truly full season last year (76 games played), Vincent surpassed the 25-goal and 50-point marks and displayed some great offensive chemistry.  In my opinion a late season injury that he suffered was at least partly responsible for the team losing the momentum that they did early in the playoffs.

Next we've got a couple of soccer cards, just because.  I've been enjoying Premier League quite a bit again this season, especially with my favorite team (Liverpool) off to a very promising start.  If you like soccer cards, shiny cards, and serial-numbered cards, then I can't recommend the Panini Select set enough.  Both Luis Suarez...

...and Yaya Toure are orange parallels, numbered to /149.  The Toure is a base card, the Suarez an insert.  Yes, even the inserts in this set have colored parallels.  I'd like to accumulate at least 9 cards of each color because a page of these would look pretty great in my soccer binder.

Sticking with the orange theme for just one more card (though it looks closer to red in the scan), here's a nice Big Papi from 2011 Topps Chrome.  Hard to believe he's got just a handful of regular season games left to go here.

This is not some insert or reprint from a modern set, it's a genuine '69 Topps Deckle Edge of Luis Tiant.  Cost me all of 55 cents if you can believe that!  With enough digging you can certainly uncover some real bargains on COMC.

Here's a nice Prism Refractor of (your 2016 AL MVP?) Mookie Betts.  These parallels aren't that expensive, and a set of them would probably look impressive in a binder, but there's no way I'm ever trying that.  I'll still grab all the Red Sox players I can though.

Ah, one of my favorite parallels from the past 5 years or so, the 2014 Bowman Chrome Bubbles Refractors.  At 99 copies each they're just rare enough to feel significant, but just common enough to be affordable.  They scan marvelously, that's for sure.

This one looks kind of lame when coming after that beautiful Bubbles Refractor, but I didn't have a copy and it cost me just two quarters.

Every so often I dabble in some vintage on COMC as well, nothing too high end or expensive but rather cheaper cards that I just find attractive for one reason or another.  I paid around $2 for this '64 Rusty Staub, which is now probably my favorite Colt .45s card!

I don't know the first thing about Bill Faul, but something about the image on this one looked to me like the photograph could have come from the 1920s.  Not entirely sure why, just does.

My single favorite parallel from the time since I've returned to collecting would be the Atomic Refractors from 2011 Topps Chrome.

I just acquired a big ol' lot of these that will get me well on my way to the 220-card set (separate post and want list coming soon), but in the meantime here are four more.

These cards are just beautiful, I wish Topps would have printed as many of them in other years as they did in 2011.

Though it's 5 years old now, putting together this small set is one of my top collecting priorities at the moment.  It's going to be a real challenge, but not impossible.

I love the Wire Photo cards from Parkhurst Champions, but I stupidly picked up two copies of this Wayne Gretzky over time.  If any of my trading friends need/want a copy just let me know and I'll drop my spare in your next PWE.

Yoda seems like a nice exclamation point to put on the randomness that was this post, so here you go!  Unfortunately this is only my second favorite Yoda card, not quite as cool as the Tek one I picked up almost a year ago now.

So there you go, COMC randomness!