The Best Surprise Card I've Ever Received?

It's been hectic in my neck of the woods these past couple of weeks, with little time for scanning, sorting or posting. I managed to find a couple of free hours this morning which will probably be the last I have to myself until at least this weekend, so it's time for a very necessary thank you post detailing a package that arrived shortly after I returned from vacation.

While I was away my buddy Dave H from Wax Stain Rookie dropped me a line and let me know there were some cards headed my way from the Great White North.  Dave's one of those bloggers who have become part of my "inner circle" of trading, we exchange a few packages a year and I've generally always got a stack of cards building up on my desk for him (which I do now as a matter of fact!).  He's sent me some amazing cards in the past, including things like an original 1951-52 Parkhurst card, but I think this time he's outdone himself!

Staring me in the face when I opened the package was this Jarome Iginla insert from 2008-09 Upper Deck, commemorating a hat trick he scored against the Minnesota Wild.  Unfortunately Jarome was one of the Bruins who just couldn't get it going against the Canadiens in this year's playoff series.  Will be interesting to see where his career goes next...

A good way to make a trade envelope a success is to somehow track down a Hartford Whalers card that I don't already have.  It's getting harder and harder to do, but Dave managed to hit on one of the two Whalers cards he sent in the form of this Certified Throwback Threads Ray Ferraro insert (numbered to 500).  Even better, when I scanned and cataloged this one it became my 1,200th unique Whalers card!

Inside the bubble mailer were five separate inserts from the 1991-92 Parkhurst set...

...pretty cool to get an Alex Delvecchio card from the person with the best Delvechhio collection I know of...

Very cool inserts, I've got to make an effort to track down the rest of them now that I'm more than halfway to a set.

Oh, the pain...

...the pain!  I appreciate a couple of new Bruins cards, but the wounds are still too fresh to write anything up about them.  Thankfully posting about this awesome package is helping to ease the pain.  For example:

I've wanted this pre-rookie (I think?) of Paul Kariya from the '91-92 UD Czech World Juniors for quite a while now.  I commented about wanting one when Dave sent me a different card from the set in his last package, and lo and behold here it is just a month or two later!  I even had it sitting in my cart on Sportlots, guess I can safely remove that now.

These weren't even all the cards Dave sent, I'm saving a few others for future posts I have planned.  There was one card, however, that completely blew my mind.

Without actually going back to check I'd have to say this is one of the best cards I've ever received without having any idea it was coming.

It fills a long-standing, fairly major, gap in my hockey card collection.

You can imagine my surprise when out of the envelope fell this...

Whoa!!!  Yes, that is a Sidney Crosby rookie card, my first ever Crosby RC.  Yes, I know he had a disappointing playoff run, as did many of my favorite players (cough cough, David Krejci, cough cough) but there are few who could argue that he's not one of the most talented players in the history of the game.  Really the only thing that's been able to slow Sidney down is injury.  This year he managed to stay healthy and appear in 80 games.  The result?  The only 100+ point scorer in the league, and the winner of the scoring race by a giant 17 points!!!

With the Stanley Cup Championship, Olympic Gold, all the hardware and highlight reel goals, it's easy to forget that Sid is still just 26 years of age.  If he can manage to stay on the ice he'll go down as one of the best offensive players to ever lace up a pair of skates, so having his rookie card is as significant for my collection as any other player.

What an absolute beauty, a week or so later and I'm still stunned by the generosity that exists in this great hobby of ours.  Dave, I can't thank you enough, and I plan to send you a nice package to show my appreciation.  I've got a couple of things in mind including one or two cards I picked out for you on Sportlots and COMC.  Thank you for adding this awesome cornerstone to my hockey card collection!!!

Grab Bag - Tasty Knuckler & More

Not much time for cards today.  I'm expecting a trade package and some great eBay wins in the mail, maybe over the weekend, but in the meantime here's a quick post featuring five cards plucked from the dollar box at the local hobby shop many months ago, and finally scanned during a cleanup of my card desk recently.  In some cases I think I got a deal, others I probably overpaid...

Here's one of the cases of having overpaid.  There just wasn't much to be had on this particular day and I wanted something new, so I actually paid $1 for a lousy Wal-Mart blue parallel from 2011 Topps Update.  What was I thinking?  I don't even like the endless All-Star cards in the Update sets of recent years.  This was clearly a case of team-collector temporary insanity.

This '67 Topps Bob Miller was much more in line with my usual dollar box selections.  Nearly any card from the 1967 set in good shape for a buck is going to come home with me.  I am not delusional enough to think that I'll ever have the funds or time to take a crack at this set, but I have now managed to accumulate 32 different cards over the years.

I was on the fence about forking over a buck for this '82-83 O-Pee-Chee Mike Gartner, but it's a card I need for my set and he's definitely one of the more under-rated, consistent scorers of his era.  I still can't believe I haven't completed this set after all these years, I guess I'm too easily distracted.  I've got just enough cards that I'm on the fence about just buying it complete and saving the hassle, especially since I'm still missing some of the bigger cards like Gretzky, Fuhr RC, etc....

There was no way I was leaving this awkward Tim Wakefield card behind, especially since it's shiny and serial numbered on the back.  What a strange painting.

Last but not least, a serial-numbered Ted Williams.  As a kid collector of the early '90s, the Baseball Heroes design sort of has a nostalgic grip on me.  There was nothing like pulling a Williams or Nolan Ryan Heroes insert from an Upper Deck pack back in the day, so of course the team collector in me had to grab this one.

So there you have it, five cards for five bucks.  This definitely wasn't my best ever grouping of dollar box cards, but I guess when you consider that some folks spend that on a latte at Starbucks it doesn't seem so bad...

Suckered In - A 2-Pack Special Featuring Ales Hemsky

The other day I had a weak moment and walked out of Target with this:

10 packs of hockey cards for $11.99.  Some halfway decent stuff, at least based on the two visible packs.  So far I've been pleasantly surprised as the first pack, a 2012-13 O-Pee-Chee rack pack, yielded a new David Krejci card, as well as Crosby and quite a few other big name players and some good trade bait.  Today I've got the next two packs for you...

First up is 2007-08 Fleer Ultra.  I was bummed to see this at first because I thought I had already completed the set, but was happy to find that it was '08-09 I had knocked off (they all look the same, anyway).  That made me feel better, until I realized there was a measly five cards in this pack.  Let's see 'em all...

Out of the gate we have Ales Hemsky on what is your classic Fleer Ultra hockey card for the time period; bland design that includes player's last name written in a cursive type font, and a closely cropped warm-up photo that gives you no feel at all for what's going on around the player.

Another pet peeve of mine, player depicted with one team but listed with another.  Look, I'm not questioning the decision not to mess around with airbrushing.  What I am questioning is why Joni Pitkanen just had to be included in a 200-card short set checklist when there were hundreds of better players in the NHL at the time who weren't just traded and thus wearing the wrong sweater.  I think this pack is starting to make me grumpy.

Hey, here we go!  A nice Gold Medallion parallel of a Boston fan favorite, Marc Savard.  It's a shame how it ended for Marc, who was still putting up point-per-game type numbers before the two concussions.  My wife has been subjected to a lot of hockey living in a household with me for the past 10 years or so, and she's a great sport about it.  In fact, she's really become quite a fan.  But the one thing she has a problem with is the fighting, egregious illegal checks and sometimes over-the-top displays of machismo.  When Matt Cooke pulled his typical crap yet again earlier this playoff year, she asked me if he was the same guy who had ended Savard's career.  When I told her that it was, she asked me why the league wouldn't ban him instead of just suspending him and then letting him come back and possibly hurt someone else.  Didn't really have a good answer for her.

My parallel was a Bruin, and now a Crosby insert, this pack has officially been salvaged after a terrible start.  According to the wrapper these 'Difference Makers' fall 1:12 packs.  I pulled a Crosby in the first pack from this value box, too!  I know it means virtually nothing, but the book value on this card is $6 which is half of what I paid for these ten packs combined.

We finish off with Michael Nylander.  For this hockey fan, Nylander might be the sleeper card of the pack.  Why is that?  Well, let's look at the back:

If you look closely at the first and second lines of stats you'll see the Hartford Whalers!  Pretty cool that even in 2007 you could still pull a card from a pack and find evidence of the long-gone Whalers franchise.

Alright, since that was only a five card pack here's another, 2011-12 Upper Deck Victory:

I've actually opened a pack of this before, which I posted on A Pack to Be Named Later.  Let's see what six cards await me this time around:

A very solid defenseman to kick things off.  Between his blazing slapshot and his intimidating presence, I've always thought to myself that Weber looks like one of the least fun people in the NHL to play against.

Alright, a new Lucic card with Patrice Bergeron lurking in the background.  Maybe this is an omen and Milan is going to bury one or two tonight against Montreal.

Here's my insert, a 1:2 packs Game Breakers Alex Ovechkin.  Strange because I pulled Alex's base card in the only other pack I've ever cracked of this stuff.

Two packs, two Ales Hemsky cards.  This is about normal for me, I always seem to pull this guy.

There you have it.  I have to say, three packs into this thing I'm kind of pleasantly surprised.  There's been a Bruin in every pack, and either a Crosby or an Ovechkin in every pack as well.  I thought I'd regret this impulse buy but I'm starting to wonder if I should actually do this more often!

1953 Topps Project - Before Deion Sanders There Was Gene Conley

Here's the next card in my quest to complete a 1953 Topps baseball set, #215 Gene Conley:

On its face, it's not the most exciting card, with sort of a generic painting and nothing happening in the background, but I actually think it's one of the more under-rated cards in the set for a couple of reasons.  At #215 on the checklist, Gene represents one of the final cards in the third printing run for this set (which ends at card #220).  One thing that's cool about the card is that the Braves franchise moved from Boston to Milwaukee in 1953.  While the Braves cards in Series 1 and 2 of the '53 Topps set refer to the team as the Boston Braves, you can see on Conley's card that beginning in Series 3 the team was referred to as the Milwaukee Braves.  I guess that makes this one of the very first Milwaukee Braves cards.

As far as the card's subject, they don't come much more interesting than Gene Conley.  Not only was he at times an exceptional pitcher at the Major League level (four time All-Star in an eleven year career), but at 6'8" he was one hell of a basketball player as well.  Enough so that he carved out a career in the NBA with my hometown team, the Boston Celtics, alongside his baseball career!  By the time this card was printed he'd already played many games with the Celt's in the '52-53 season.  After a few years off dedicated to baseball, during which he won a World Series with Milwaukee in 1957, he'd return to basketball (while still playing baseball as well).

Playing power forward next to some center named Bill Russell, "Long Gene" Conley helped bring three NBA Championships to the city of Boston in the late '50s/early '60s.  He's one of just two athletes to win championships in two of the four major North American sports, pretty impressive!  Conley even came to play for the Red Sox for a few years before retiring from the game(s).

As a Boston sports fan I really should make an effort to track down some more of Conley's cardboard, he's certainly one of the more fascinating Boston sports stars I've ever come across!

Set Progress:  68 of 274 (25%)

Suckered In - 2012-13 O-Pee-Chee Rack Pack

The other day while picking up a few things at Target I was drawn to the card aisle, and for some reason my usual will power when it comes to avoiding retail wax let me down.  The result was this value pack ending up in my checkout basket:

I'm sure you've seen these before, or at least something similar.  10 different hockey packs for $11.99, not a bad deal for just over a buck per pack.  I usually stretch wax packs out quite a bit, so it should take me weeks before I get through all 10 of these.  So far I've only opened the first pack, which was the 2012-13 O-Pee-Chee rack pack visible on the front.

I think this rack pack was probably what drew me to the purchase (it certainly wasn't the other visible pack of Donruss!).  I don't really chase too many modern sets anymore, but I kind of view O-Pee-Chee hockey like I do Topps baseball, meaning I'll gladly accumulate any base cards as well as select inserts.

If nothing else, these rack packs definitely provide some value at 32 cards (originally priced at $4.99), and I'm generally a fan of the retro parallels that are included in the set each year.

This was the perfect pack to end up in this mix as far as I'm concerned, given that I have only a handful of 2012-13 O-Pee-Chee cards, just a couple of base cards that came from a re-pack and one or two parallels/inserts that I've bought as singles over the years.  As it turns out, I didn't have even one of the 32 cards included in this pack, so I was happy with that.  A few of the cards on the bottom of each section were damaged due to the way it was packaged up, and another base card got sent off in a package to Douglas from Sports Cards from the Dollar store.  I ended up with about 25 cards for my collection when all was said and done.  I won't bore you with scans of every single base card from a set that's now a few years old, but I did pick out a few select favorites.

This pack was chock full of stars that are still playing with the remaining 8 teams in this year's Stanley Cup playoffs.  The design isn't the most exciting, but it's better than some years and at least the word O-Pee-Chee is relatively small on the card fronts in this release.

In retrospect I probably should have dropped this one in the envelope for Douglas as well since he's a goalie mask guy and this is an interesting one.  Douglas, if you don't have this card let me know and I'll put it in your stack for next time.

The highlight of the pack for me was a brand new David Krejci card.  I don't consider myself a player collector really, and abandoned my hardcore Krejci collection long ago, but it's still nice to pick up a new card of the guy who's been my favorite NHL player for a few years running now.  David needs to wake up and pick up his play in the 2014 playoffs though for sure...

I'm rooting hard for the Ducks in the West, mostly because I'm sick and tired of the Blackhawks always winning and secondly because I wouldn't mind seeing Selanne raise the Cup.

Any time I pull a Crosby or Ovechkin I consider it a win since odds are I would never find those guys on the cheap like in a dime or quarter box.

Finally, my inserts.  My retro parallel was Andrew Ladd of the Jets, not really one for my collection so I'd be willing to send this off if anyone wants it.

Same for my other insert, this Stephen Weiss sticker.  Love the concept of the sticker insert, don't really love the Florida Panthers.  Would be happy to trade this away as well.

That's it for today, I'm off to Fenway Park to soak in my first MLB game of the 2014 season!  I'll have some of the other packs posted in the coming weeks when I get the urge to rip...

My First T206 Tobacco Card!

Well, it certainly took me long enough (just over 7 years now since I got back into collecting), but I've finally landed my very first T206 tobacco card!  I don't know why it took me so long, as a lover of all things vintage it's hard to get much cooler than this:

I've had it for a couple of weeks now and I still smile whenever I look at it.  Jake's got great visual appeal, while at the same time displaying the rounded corners, folds and stains that a card of 100+ years should have.  Although it's not proper fielding form by any stretch of the imagination, I love the picture itself with the subject's arms upraised, and BOSTON prominently displayed on the uniform.  Here's a closer look:

This officially becomes (and will likely always be) my oldest Red Sox card, and my oldest baseball card period as a matter of fact.  I can certainly see the appeal of these tobacco releases, there's just something fascinating about a card that's been around for well over a century at this point.

Here's a look at the back, I think they guy operating the printing press may have been a bit "tipsy on the job" the day this one came off the line, as it's quite a bit off-center.  I don't mind in the least especially since the front is fine, and it certainly seems to have made this card more affordable.  I always assumed a genuine, authenticated T206 would set me back a hefty sum, so you can imagine my shock when I landed this one for less than $30!

I will most certainly be picking up some more of these if I can find them at that kind of price in the future...

Signature Sundays - Darryl Strawberry!

In honor of the great trade package I highlighted yesterday from Mark Kaz of This Way to the Clubhouse, I decided to feature a Met this week for my Signature Sundays post.  As a child of the '80s, I was particularly excited to add this week's card to my collection a few months ago:

Say what you want about Darryl Strawberry, I know he had a whole host of personal problems, but I have fond memories of being a Strawberry fan as a kid.  His health issues and personal demons have continued to plague him even after his days in baseball have come to a close, but I still remember that huge, lanky frame and that sweet swing.

I've wanted Darryl's signature on cardboard for quite a while now, and I couldn't think of a finer example than this on-card beauty from 2004 Upper Deck Timeless Teams.  At $12.99 with free shipping I hit Buy-it-Now the moment I saw this card for sale.

One of those rare cases where the card back is also great, what a nice shot of Shea Stadium.  No matter what your view is of Darryl as a person, I think you can agree this is an interesting piece of cardboard at a cheap enough price.  I'm happy to have it!