Getting a little Magic

So I picked up another 100 random Magic cards at the dollar store since I have had some decent luck in the past, and as it worked out, I think this one was even better!

Since I collect artifact cards, I'll go through those first. I think previously I would end up getting 5-7 in the 100 cards...

A common with a decent ability of giving a creature trample (damage over the blocking creature's toughness would go through to the target player....see - I remember some things about the game!).


Another common card with a very specific use to target artifact creatures.


An uncmomon - there was a similar artifact card for each colour.


An uncommon - 2 cost for a 2/2 creatures isn't too bad.


A common with a decent ability to give back a few life if it dies ....could be game saving.


A common - pretty sure this is a reprint, updated from an earlier set where it was used, and I am pretty sure I have one, but will have to look in my collection.


An uncommon - I know I have a number of these from earlier sets - but nice to get a newer art version.


A common, with a name that is a handful!


Common, but since I had none and you can play with four in a deck, so I collect for of each artifact if I so happen to get that many. Since I had none before this, I now have three!

So yeah, a number of artifacts,and all keepers.

Also, just to give a sense, here are the oldest cards that were included...

Ice Age, Mirage and Visions - sets from my heyday in playing. In the long scheme of things, now overly strong sets, but definitely have their cards of value and use.

There were also a few foil cards (nothing of any real value which isn't surprising, but nice to see these still.

Personally, I preferred when the foil design had a little something different to it, like the shooting star on the Goblin Firebug.

SO there you have it, a great little pack...might just get an itch for another sooner than later...

Another 15 from Dollarama

First - just because I picked it up for $0.98 at Toys R Us burried in their disney card packs section...

Too bad there was just the one, but now it's in my unopened pack collection.

Second, a couple quick pick ups off Listia with a couple Magic cards that I didn't have yet...


Well, another day and another quick 15 cards for a buck picked up at a Dollarama near, well, me.


These are the dupes from the pack. I appreciate the unique design of the Parkhurst subset - early 90s, this was a simple but effective design, though the flag and Red Wing uniform kind of clash for Nicklas.

As for the keepers:

Good variety, and I like the 2004 Parkhurst Original 6 sets - I still need to get more from the Leaf set though...


No matter where I seem to get these packs, this seems to be a staple of them, and yet, I haven't yet got a dupe, so no complaining (yet).

As for the Leaf content - I only was the James card, but got three!

Really like the James card though, first of the set I picked up, and getting three Leafs out of 15 cards - never going to complain about that - a great pack indeed!

Quad Wars - 1990-91 Upper Deck Hockey - Bottom Right

Last day for this box, and right off the bat, I'll just say, completion for the set as a whole is about 67%. Again, this gets into the position of being on my back burner for contemplating completion, but isn't a "need to do" yet. Glad to be that far on the set as a whole considering it was a low number box, but I had 4-5 good runs of 9 numbers in a row which were duplicates from the same box which is disappointing on this last stack.

 Even more disappointing....

Yes, just one Leaf....


and yes, just one error card....


Not great for 9 packs. I did obviously add more cards I needed, a sampling of which are...


Gives me a chance to show a few more stars and more Collector Choice cards.

Overall thoughts on the box - it is a sold set, though the numbering of cards is very clear in patterning from pack to pack. What I mean is say, the first card in each pack were in order from say, 111, then the next card was in reverse order from say 355, and the next card in number order from card 71, etc. In large part, could have figured out what was coming next. I also have to say, at least this set got inserts right - the insert was in addition to the cards in the pack, not a replacement of one or two cards,

I gather this was really possible due to the holographic cards being very thin stickers, but just wanted to make the point nonetheless.

Sp yes, not going to aggressively try and complete the set yet, but would be happy to trade for any cards out there I am missing to slowly move it forward, just let me know.

Quad Wars - 1990-91 Upper Deck Hockey - Bottom Left

So I am pretty comfortable saying that a holo card insert comes every nine packs, as one more showed up here. Unfortunately, the disappointment is, it is the same Gretzky as last post. This is where the "completely random" comes in to hinder the packs. In this stack, I also had my first pack which contained duplicates of the same card - and it happened twice.

So that just leaves the highlights to be the Leafs:


One add to the error binder...

(okay - second copy, so one is with the "set" and one for the binder).

This just leaves the "what else I needed" highlights....

Nice to get some of the earlier cards in the set because I was missing much of the first 50 cards or so anyway. Nothing spectacular otherwise, but now we are at 60% completion...

Quad Wars - 1990-91 Upper Deck Hockey - Top Right

A second day of the box, and it works out about the same as the first.

I picked up another holographic card, but as I alluded to yesterday, I did have one of the Gretzky's, and here is a duplicate of that one:

Hopefully will be able to pick up two more in the other two stacks to come as they are pretty interesting, even though they scan horribly.

As for Leafs, more as expected...


As for the additional base cards I got, here are the highlights including a number from the award winner subset. I can remember a few sets that had these kind of subsets from the junk wax era such as 1990-91 Score and the O Pee Chee sets of the time.


I like the Super Mario photo too. It is an unusual angle for the card and made him look gigantic and supersized which he was in the sense of being a huge star (though granted, in many ways a small step behind Gretzky).

So, half a box down and we stand at 252 of 400 cards completed on the low number section of the set.

Quad Wars - 1990-91 Upper Deck Hockey - Top Left

Now here is a classic junk wax, but solid set. This was Upper Deck's first foray into hockey after it came through with 1989 baseball cards. Definitely an increase in quality. At 550 cards, a decent size, and the only inserts were a small set of 9 player holograms. Where we stand going in, is about 30% of the set done, and my expectation that with collation being well, likely quite random, that I have no idea what to expect as far as percentage goes when this box is done.

The good news is - 12 cards per pack, 36 packs means 432 cards, so technically I could complete the set if I wind up with no real dupes in the packs, or compared with what I already have - so not likely at all. Now, having taken a closer look before getting into it - the box is the low series (first 400 cards only - the 550 was with the high number release which included cards then from 1-550). So, a better chance to get most of the first 400 cards, and then just have the remaining high number cards left since I do have some of those already.

Well, with that said, since there are 12 cards per pack, instead of going through each pack, I will do a full overview of each stack as a whole.

First - was able to pick up one of the Holographic inserts - these were new technology back in the day...


I already have one of the Gretzky cards (three of the nine are of him) but this was not the one, so now I have two. I am not sure how often these come up.

As for Leafs, did get some content there as well...


Was also able to add in a few uncorrected error cards:


As for the base set itself, up to about 42% complete which is alright given I will only be able to get it in the neighbourhood of 75-80% given it is a low numbered box. As for some examples of the base cards I picked up, here are the highlights...

These are the stars and just scream early 90s given the names. I like the simplicity of the Gretzky pic, and have talked before of liking the collector's choice works from the early 90s Upper Deck - great set of cards.

Listing some Listia

Have some Listia wins to share from the last little while - nothing too spectacular, but let's take a look anyway. Part of why I show these is to also give people an idea of what is there to be had. I only go for items with free shipping to Canada, and only earn points through doing surveys and don't otherwise change my behavior online - so I justify it as getting points and cards for doing nothing more than answering some survey questions.

First single card win:

1990 Topps Greg Myers:

Cost - 6,180 points (roughly equivalent to a quarter)
Why - Whenever I can pick up a Jay or Leaf card for these kind of points, I'll do it, even if I have a copy or two, or more already. Since the points never cost me anything, they are nice adds, and usually don't take away from anything else I am looking at getting there.

I also added a pack to my unopened pack collection:

Cost - 55,555 (roughly $2 equivalent)
Why - I didn't have a chance to get a pack of the 2017 National Baseball Day cards in person, let along one showing a Donaldson on the front, so getting this was almost as good. Best part was, the seller threw in this:

A Mike Trout promo card which was given away, I believe, when you spent over $10 - which I didn't have to do here.

A 2017 Topps Heritage card...

Cost - 45,555
Why? I overpaid for a base card, but don't mind because it is an awesome subset card that I didn't have to look elsewhere for. Yeah, I also got this just before I traded for a second one, but still happy with this purchase anyway. I have room for two in my collection!

1992 Donruss Triple Play Alomar

Cost - 3,786
Why?Like the rest that follow, I was sure I had at least one, but for the low cost, I could always use another.

1989 Donruss Moseby

Cost - 3,428
Why? I have a great reason, same as Musselman below...

1989 Donruss Musselman

Cost - 3,484
Why? Um...well....it's a Jay card, do I need more reason....lol...

1989 Donruss Gruber

Cost - 3,353
Why? I actually needed a second one because this is an error card, so one for the error binder, one for the Jays binder.

A Magic card...

Cost - 65,000
Why? It is a mystic rare (fancy way of saying short print...) And since to buy it would be $3-4, getting it in Listia points was an easy enough sell for me. Is the card any good? Well - a 6/5 flying creature for 5 cast is great, even with the crew requirement. I would probably use it in my artifact deck.

So, if you have some spare time and want to work on getting a few cards, I'd recommend Listia. It's been worth my time at least.

Dollarama 80 - A couple more SNs

These are so much fun, I had to get another (or 5-10 of them, I have a bunch stuck aside for whenever). Again, I won't bother scanning the cards that I'm not keeping, but will give you an idea of what these were.The cards cover '86 Topps Traded, '87 Leaf (yeah, go figure, two of the same card in this one pack), '87 Topps, '87 Topps Traded, '88 Donruss, '88 Topps, '88 Score, '89 Fleer Update, '89 Topps Traded, '90 Donruss, '90 Score, '90 Topps, '91 Score, '08 Topps, '12 Topps. SOunds worse than it is - 23 cards, but many different sets.

First up, just the keepers...

We start with the mid-80s including my third '87 Leaf card (woo hoo!). Happiest though, about the 1987 Topps add.


I think I have a good chance to complete the 1989 Topps Traded set just from these Dollarama packs if this continues. There seem to be 3-4 in each repack. Same can be said for 1991 Topps Debut '90 set with one here and...


a few more here.


Late 90s, we always seem to get into sets I haven't seen, or know little about such as Fleer Mystique - never hear of it, and the card is lighter in hand than it is here which seems to scan very dark. As for the Joe Mays - another set I never saw before, Donruss Class of 2001.


More never before sets with 2004 Fleer Hot Prospects and 2005 Upper Deck Sweet Spot. Then into the standard, though not very well represented in my collection Topps base sets from about 2009-2016 really.


While throwing in a couple other Topss sets I like with Gypsy Queen and Allen & Ginter.

As for the collection adds,

For the Jays...

One of these cards doesn't look like the others...but it is still a Jays card as you can see the "traded to Blue Jays" in the top right corner. I don't have many Jays cards that are "traded to" labelled as it can be hard to go through and find these without really knowing, and I have so many to collect that are still Jays, it hasn't become a priority, but I will always count these, and take them even if I have them already, so feel free to trade them my way.

Eckstein was new to the collection, and although I already had the Fleer cards, the Gruber prospect one is one I really like with the great young Gruber photo.

Error...

Small error (pun intended) as his height is noted as 6' 11" (I presume instead of 6; 1").

Parallel/inserts...

The Home Team Advantage 2001 parallel for 2001 Topps seems to be a thing with these packs, so able to pick up another, but better yet, a neat Carlton Fisk card as well.

I had never heard of or seen either of the other two sets. 2004 Donruss Classics - by name is a set I think I would really like, and this is a SN card to 1999.

The Frank Thomas card is, as seen, serial numbered to 825, do even though it is a base card (they are all SN), it is a keeper.

So overall, awesome pack again.