Introducing Quad Wars!

I, like anyone else, enjoys opening a box of cards and having fun opening packs. It's usually very hard to make the boxes last though as once you open one pack, you tend to blast through the whole box. Fun to do, but kinda goes by quickly.

So I wanted to think of a way to make it last a bit more fun. In a normal week, I'll take a day to go through each of the four stacks of packs and see which ends up ahead and figure out something to do on the Friday - okay, this is a bit of a work in process.

So what are we doing this week for the first go around? Well, something a bit quirky as the Ultimate Trading Card Company didn't last long, didn't do much, and if you look at their 90 card 1991 set - had horrible photography. That said, with this set based on the original 6 teams, I find the set overall, much nicer.

Box Top:

Box Bottom:

It appears there is only the single type of box bottom, so this would be a complete set of the four cards.

Pack:

So what is the set? 1991-92 Ultimate Original Six is made up of a 100 card base set to begin with. Before opening any packs here, I have 24 cards from the set already. Here are couple examples:

Front:

Back:

Very basic lay out for the card fronts, as well as the back, but hitting everything that a card needs to with a clear name on the front, stats on the back with a nice newspaper like blurb.

So the interesting thing about this particular box is, on opening it, there were only three of the four stacks of packs. Not sure how it happened, but since it was about $5 - not overly concerned, assuming I end up with the 100 base set - which we should see over the next few days I hope.

There appear to be a couple Bobby Hull chase insert hologram/autograph cards. Doubt those will come up, but you never know.

Since we only have three stacks, looks like 8 packs tomorrow, 9 on Wednesday and 9 on Thursday with, as I say, the hopes of a complete base set and some extra Leaf cards. Which of the three...quad stacks will be best? We will see!

Small Unboxing

So I was at Wal-mart with a bit of an interest pique when I saw these boxes, but I have ignored picking one up for a while. Couldn't resist last time I went though, and here we are!


Pretty obvious what we are going to get here - three packs of cards and a single McDavid card added in for kicks.

Since this was $8 plus tax, I expect that the three packs will likely be of the Victory or late 00s O Pee Chee packs as these seem to be fairly cheap dollar packs, but hopefully I am wrong.

What we have is this...

Ok - I may not be an expert here, but I see something more than promised here.  You will notice that the McDavid card is also in a penny and hard sleeve - some nice add ons - oh and this 1996-97 Got um coin pack. As the 1996-97 Got Um is a coin only (and paper checklist) it is not something I plan on collecting, so rather than open, will have this passed on to someone who wants it.

As for the packs, none of these are "new" for my collection of unopened packs, so rather than put off opening them, let's take a look at them all now as well!

2012-13 Score Pack #1

Decent enough pack with 5 needs and a new insert (the one per pack gold).

2012-13 Score Pack #2

Same as the first with 5 new for me, and a new gold parallel. The season highlight subset could be a bit better. I am torn as I like the consistency with the base design, but that also doesn't make it at "special".

2012-13 Upper Deck

Lastly, two needs, two dupes and a new insert. Not sure I like considering MVP as an insert - I don't like the inconsistency of sets being inserts, stand alones, high end or low end - just be the same thing!

Okay all around, nothing too exciting, but fun to open nonetheless.

Pack Attack - Dollarama 15

Yup, another of these. I have a couple more to look at, but unless they get a bit better, I will probably just leave it to the $2 surprise bags as the 15 cards for $1 just haven't been quite as good as I hoped lately.

So the good news is that we do have more than half the cards being keepers, with a couple semi-inserts. First the non-insert keepers...

To be honest, I got the pack because of Filip being on the front - great young player who has done well for himself thus far I'd say. Otherwise, would be nice if the 1990 were O Pee Chee instead of Topps since my O Pee Chee set is much further along that the Topps version.


These are the inserts, and considering I now have 6 of the 20 cards in this set - I gather I might get half way to the set soon if the last couple packs I picked up end up having similar cards.

As for the duplicates, all the usual suspects show up here...


OK overall, nothing spectacular to write home about, but still enjoy the opening and looking over the cards, like opening any new pack with the unknown inside!

2011-12 UD Leafs ad Value Village Finds - Part 5 of 5

ANother quick Listia win arrived today...

All of these were needs, so a definite win for the collection. Best card has to be the Reimer for the nice picture, including the visible effort on his face.

As for the VV pick ups, this was definitely the most varied pack out of Value Village. That being said, I am not going to share all of the cards because I already sent a few off to someone else on the blogosphere. As for how diverse, there were a few cards which were racing, car and Spanish football...yeah, diverse, and outside my collecting realm.

Still, some baseball and hockey variety to show off still.

Wasn't that long ago I just finished getting the 1992 Donruss McDonalds 6 card Blue Jays set - but here we have a full second set. Of these, the Peter Ing is new for my collection, but thrilled to get the rest anyway!


A decent number of early 90s inserts also. We have a few Holograms which scan quite well, out of Upper Deck, same as the Brett Hull hockey heroes inserts, and one Euro Stars also. Tack in a single Score Young Superstars set.


A couple error/variation cards also...and some keepers which were...



A small collection of Sandy Alomar cards seem to suggest they came from someone who collected them at some point.

Last, but not least....another complete set of cards from McDonalds...



I had about half of these beforehand, but thrilled to simply finish the set off as a whole. The 1992 Donruss design is fine, but the added MVP logo and gold lettering does add a bit something more to the cards from this set.

With that, done with the week of Value Village cards and definitely ahead of where I was a week ago.

Some (Sporting) News and Value Village Finds - Part 4 of 5

Another day, another Listia pick up...

Yes - just a base 2004 Topps card, but one I didn't have, and one that has a unique look and becomes only my 22nd different Vernon Wells card. One day I should take a look through and see who leads in unique cards for my collection of Jays.

With that aside - welcome back as we chug along with a week of Value Village grab bags this week. The first three days were all 1990-91 Pro Set hockey - the most error filled set of all time (I believe, but if anyone has another to bring up, please do).

Today, definitely some surprises as well, but let's start with...

Nice to atleast get a few Leafs in the pack, though the majority of today's cards were dupes we don't need to see again here - including a few basketball, but nothing we haven't seen.


Here are a couple error cards and the Vezina is from a High Liner set, so you bet I count this like McDonalds cards (similar to inserts as they are inserted with...well...High Liner products.

As for the keepers...

Interesting group here. A couple more Pro Set 1990-91 which is okay. Though I like that the one offs include one Gretzky from 1992-93 O PeeChee, and one Nolar Ryan, one Ken Griffey Jr. Not a bad threesome! The Collector card is an ad insert from 1992-93 Ultra, but nice enough I'll keep it for now.

Okay...that wasn't it. I did get the following complete set in this package - actually, almost got it two times over. Though by complete set, the checklist mentions 6 post season cards, I guess set inserts, which I didn't get any of here, put still complete...





I miss these All-Star uniforms...

Awesome! Almost makes me sad I got the earlier complete set for $2.99, when I almost got two, plus other cards for the same price! Well worth the buy here though.

Value Village Finds - Part 3 of 5

Thank you for coming back again on this week of tribute to a Value Village find. Today we go through another pack of 1990-91 Pro Set hockey cards. By the end of this post, the set is now over 88% done. Similar to the prior posts, I wont scan the duplicates, but there were about another 60 of them here, so anyone looking to start or complete the set, let me know as I should be able to help.

First up, I have gotten the "set" together and here are the adds including the new error or Leaf cards that will first go into the completed set...





An excellent haul of needs filled with some good goalie pics, a droopy Murphy, and JJ Daignasult before it was just JJ. Nice to be around 80 cards left to go.

There are some error cards above, but also a few dupes now for the error binder...


Then also factor in the Leafs...



With McIntyre in a Leaf uniform, he gets included in the Leaf collection for me.

Tomorrow there will likely still be a bit of the same, but some other cards too...look like McDonalds hockey cards which are always nice...

A Jays Mini and Value Village Finds - Part 2 of 5

First, a piece of mail I got yesterday from a Listia win which I am happy with, even if the bat piece seems to be slightly separated....


I like the border, I like the blue background on the card, but together....meh....Still, really happy to have the card and a good pickup, so not complaining, just the colours don't work for me.

So today we continue what we started yesterday with a couple more packages which were all 1990-91. I misremembered thinking the second series was where I was missing more cards, and was wrong as is evident here. Although I still was able to get a number of error cards to include with that binder outside of the complete set, there were many more dupes I won't go through here.

What I will share are the needs filled, so with no further ado, here we go...




A number of needed team cards. Rather than the team photo, the simple graphic works well enough. Love the facts and team info on the back of these, simple, and should be done more these days. Being a massive set of 705 cards, they threw everything in including coaches, referees as well as the expected all stars and HOFers.


Still a Toronto contingent for the group of cards, again, at this point generally ensuring I have ones for the full set as well as for the team set.



Again, a number of error cards, but the best one to me is getting the Gretzky 2,000 point card. I remember this card and back then thinking it was a big deal with the 2,000 on it. Never did get it back then, but I do now!

So with that done, I know there are some bits of 1990-91 Pro Set in the remaining packs, but not in as great numbers. At this point we are at about 84% complete, so definitely getting close enough to try and finish, or at least add all missing cards to the want list!

Value Village Finds - Part 1 of 5

As I came across a number of packages at Value Village that were worth picking (I think), I figured I'd take a week break from the Santa Lot to be able to get through the packages, or at least most of them. Each of the packages were all of $2.99 CDN plus tax - and in each, over 100 cards I believe, so a few pennies each. Here is a look at the first pack...

Well, I won't be showing everything for each package, but more highlights. This first package was all 1990-91 Pro Set which, with these Value Village purchases, I expect to get somewhere over 75% complete on the set and start looking more seriously at finishing. Well - we will see by the end of the week if that happens or not.

So with that said about pack one - let's take a look at the needs filled, and other highlights.






These are most of the keepers (non-error/variation from the first pack. You can tell I picked it for the trophy and all star cards if nothing else. I figure, not that any cards from the set are hard to get, but if any would be collected ones, it would be these types of cards, so it knocks them off my need list for the set. I did get a number of adds that were error cards, some I needed for the set, some I needed the duplicate to have one for the set and one for the error binder...





There were also a couple Leafs which get added to the Leaf collection since I already have some of each for the set:


There were about 40 cards which I didn't need, but still well worth it for this bunch...and you know what...we might as well go through another! Though rather than scan through the bunch of standard card additions, here are the Leafs since they are my favourite part.




With these updated, I am actually already at 79% set completion, and should still have a bunch to go through the week - yay - the further along we can get, the better!

Not a bad day for about $6 and 250 cards or so...even if some would think them worthless junk era cards - still enjoyable as any other to me!