Rainy Monday Miscellany

It's a short three-day work week for me with the Thanksgiving holiday, and it's pouring rain and thundering outside on this Monday.  Since I'm having trouble getting the juices flowing on anything too productive or creative, let's take a look at a random smattering of cardboard that's been kicking around my "To Be Posted" folder for way too long...

The blacked out cap on this '68 Joe Morgan All-Star card kind of drives me nuts.  But, given that I found it in really great shape and for less than a dollar at a local antiques store, I decided to scoop it up regardless.

From the same seller in that same store came this 1993-94 Donruss Mario Lemieux Ice Kings insert.  While very short-lived, and not as well-known or appreciated as their Diamond Kings counterparts in the world of baseball, I nonetheless think this is an interesting insert set.  I had four of the ten cards previously, and happily scooped up Mario Lemieux here for just 50 cents, getting me to the halfway point with this small insert set.

Best part is, the store also had two other cards from the set, which just so happened to feature two of my absolute favorite players from my youth, for just 25 cents each.  Pavel Bure's long, flowing locks...

...and Eric Lindros' semi-mullet bring me to 70% complete!  Really happy that I was able to grab three needs from this set for just a dollar.  Whenever COMC gets around to actually shipping within a decent time frame again (hah!), I'll have to see if I can hunt down the final three for cheap coin and put this one to bed.

Back when I first got into soccer cards years ago, I picked up a complete set of these 1939 Wills Footballers cards.  They were surprisingly cheap, and I thought it was awesome to have an entire set of pre-war soccer cards.  I chose this example at random to show, even though I'm not familiar with Peter Doherty, just because I know Manchester City is a team that people with only a vague familiarity with professional soccer are likely to have heard of at least.

Here's a look at the back, pretty standard fare for these tobacco-sized minis of the time.  Cool set, and did not break the bank for it at all.  Too lazy to look it up to confirm, but I want to say I paid less than $30 for the 50-card release.

Here's one that I picked up years back, finally scanned and added to my collection proper on TCDB.com only today.  When I grabbed this Vladimir Tarasenko Young Guns rookie, he was one of the hottest scorers in the NHL, a pure sniper.  I've always enjoyed Russian hockey players, I think because I came of age during the Stastny/Fedorov/Bure era when those guys first burst onto the NHL scene.

When healthy, he's a lock to net between 30 and 40 goals a year, and to produce that same number of assists.  Tarasenko missed the majority of this past season due to injury, though.

Depending on how the 28-year-old rebounds from injury, he could still become a borderline HOFer with another good stretch of six years or so, like the one he enjoyed to start his career.  Time will tell, but I'm happy to have this rookie card in my collection while we see how things turn out for Vlad...

I picked up two packs of the Topps 206 set that was distributed via online-only release earlier this year.  I actually showed the first pack off here, which was banged up pretty badly when I received it.  Thankfully the cards were in fine shape, although as time wore on I found I was not all that impressed with them.

Turns out I like my T206 cards to be 100+ years old, with obscure players on them that I get to go research.  I'm not even going to post my second pack, and have already sent most of the cards from it away to other collectors.  I did keep this Xander Bogaerts that I was lucky enough to pull for my player PC of him...

...and it's a Piedmont back parallel.  I think these are the most common back parallel, but I don't care to go confirm that at the moment.  Either way, I will never turn down a new Xander card.

If you stop by the blog with any frequency, you've seen me show off some 2017 Donruss Optic parallels recently.  Well, here are a few others for a shiny binder project I'm working on.  I picked up three of Jackie Bradley Jr's Holo parallel...

...and three of his Pink parallel as well.  I plan to have an entire page dedicated to this card, three copies each of three different shiny Jackies, in the binder.  These came courtesy of Sportlots, and I believe they were 25 cents each if memory serves.

Also grabbed five, yes FIVE, copies of Xander Bogaerts' Holo parallel in the same order.  For a site-minimum 18 cents each, I figured I might even end up doing an entire page of just this card.

A while back, I became somewhat obsessed with the 2013 Topps Archives Gallery of Heroes stained glass baseball inserts.  I need to get back on that train here on the blog, as I do have a few others to show off, but in the meantime I stumbled across this fantastic Peyton Manning from 2000 Topps Gallery football and could not resist.

Just as with the baseball inserts, these are acetate, and look exactly like a stained glass window when backlit.  Truly awesome cards, and they can be had for pretty cheap coin, too.  I paid $2.99 with free shipping to grab this one off of eBay back in June.  While I'm not a football collector, I could see myself leisurely pursuing this 10-card set.  I wish Topps would give us an insert this innovative in a 2021 baseball release.

Here's the back, where you can obviously tell this is an acetate card.  Interesting that the football release added a die-cut element, as the upper right corner (or upper left back here) is cut away.

Well, I think I've rambled on enough for one day, and the To Be Posted folder is looking much tidier as well, so we'll call it here for today.  Thanks as always for stopping by, and I'll be back with a more structured post soon!