What The Hecht

Sometimes I just go for the low hanging fruit when it comes to titles...

Jochen is a player I can't say I remember much, even though he was in the NHL for 14 years. That time was spent between St. Louis, Edmonton and Buffalo....

Ah, I can see why I wouldn't have recalled him much given the Buffalo and St. Louis time.

I guess it goes to show, canèt remember them all, which makes sense. There are how many different players and ones coming and going each year. Still, would have thought a 14 year careerwould have something stick with me...maybe itès just my mind going.

At least I can say these all do ring a bell and I can speak to. Guess I am not completely losing it!

25 Packs, 175 Cards, 1,036 Points.

Red and Blue

Though I am not a fan of leading with a Montreal card...

even I have to admin the red and blue colouring with the blue foil parallel is pretty nice. With the red border, like this better than the red foil. I can't knock Saku either, never really irritated me as most Montreal players do.

Best of the rest has to go to all around "good guy", at least that is what I always remember the stories and comments being about him, Mike Modano. May not have the Toronto connection that Andreychuk does, but have to give Modano props for a great career and tenure as a well received captain.

24 Packs, 168 Cards, 1,015 Points.

A quickie in pack 23

Always a good way to start a pack for me...

Definitely on my all time Leaf team...hmmm...maybe that's something I should do in the future...

A name that is a mouthful....and....

A decent group of keepers, highlighted by Marleau. With that, a quick pack today!

23 Packs, 161 Cards, 987 Points.

Given that was soooo quick, let's share another PWE trade, this one from multi-trade partner althib at TCDb.

We get a sprinkling of Leaf additions including my first SP Authentic card from 2011-12.

Some Leafs filling early 90 needs including 1991-92 Pro Set French which I am still missing a coupe Leafs from.

We have a few set needs from slowly worked on sets and end with...

This Die Cut parallel set for 2017 Centennial is probably the most pointless set I'd like to complete since I have the base set done, and the only difference here is the cut shape. Dang it though, I really like them. 34 cards down and 66 to go, but big thanks to althib for getting this one to me!

All In One

One of the poster boys for spending their career in one place - just doesn't happen enough these days.  Even with the all star caliber players, there tends to be a point in time when the relationship with a team and a city stretches too thin, and the player either doesn't want to hang it up, or the team just feels the need to move on without them.

I am hoping Crosby gets to have a career like this, all in one place. Too bad it didn't happen for Gretzky, but overall, that may have ended up best for hockey...

A goalie hot pack today, but let's take a look at the prospect...the card shows 9 games in 2002-03 and let's look online....yeah, that was it. Unfortunate, but par for the course as these things usually go.

22 Packs, 154 Cards, 954 Points.

Lastly, let's look at the Jays that Steven from baseballcardstore.ca was nice enough to include with the cards I bought that he sent my way - though even if he didn't would still be recommending the site - ten cents a card, check it out.

A last Molitor Jays sticker from 1996 to startand a great Torys R Us Collector's Edition Rookies set Glenallen Hill highlight the start of the Jays.

The Ovation David Wells is a first Jay from that set, and it's neatly done so that the stitches of the baseball design are raised so give it an extra dimension - literally and figuratively.

We go quickly through the early 2000s and have a great last row here with 2006 Donruss Classics (a set that may not usually work for me, but that I really really like. Then you have a retro Cavan and a Vladdy Bowman - wow!

Speaking of Vladdy, we get a second with a variation Donruss base photo card which looks much better than the "regular" base card. 

We also get two 2020 Topps base cards with more Cavan. Cavan, Bo and Vladdy make it a great time to enjoy the jays. No one can predict the future and how long they will all be Jays, or how high their stars with rise, but getting to see them early in their careers, together, is great.

Last up, and with special attention is a 2012 Topps Heritage Arencibia because he doesn't end up in the Jays binder. It's actually a error card because the back interestingly enough shows a single RBI because that column of stats is just all wrong. I don't know why these things are necessarily so interesting to me, but they do, so to the error binder he goes!

ANother great thank you to baseballcardstore.ca - will be checking in there again in the future!

True Colours

Sometimes parallels and colours, and team colours jive perfectly.

Doesn't go together any better than that does it? Like I have been saying about the blue foil parallel set for the Leafs, these would look great for any Detroit collector. Heck, even the board add is getting in on the scheme of things....and where is my radio...

Brendan is a sold player too, you know, if you enjoy a long careered, hard nose, solid offensive player.

We get Joe Sakic here who played near the same period as Brendan, and may not have been as tough nosed, but was a more finessed player who had more play making ability as shown with his edge on assists over Shanahan.

Overall, another good solid pack as I get close to half way on the set, and are now on the back half of this box.

21 Packs, 147 Cards, 926 Points.

Another good day to end a post with a TCDb PWE recap!

Another new trade partner - ariccio - needed some cards, all Montreal Canadiens - not sure why he would want such things, but happy to get rid of them and since he didn't have much on my want list, I happily added additional Jays dupes since those are much better to have than Canadiens!

The Leafs stickers are new, and I am not a fan of the overly small size on the Sundin, but at least it is bigger than a micro card. The rest of the Jays, from oft seen sets from the energetically produced era of the early 90s.

The rest of the cards, helped make a dent in one of my back burner sets...

Still a good ways to go on 1990 Upper Deck, but now I am at least 10 cards closer!

Tony Gwynn, who was always cool and ahead of the curve looks like his move is something along the lines of having just finished dabbing....yeah dance moves relevant to 9 year olds are something I know about now...

Never noticed how much close up sideways looking there was in this set, heck Rawley and Williams look almost identical.

In The Crease

A new insert set representing today...

Well, I didn't say it was a good representing (zing to you Montreal fans). I kid, Theodore was fine as a goalie, just as this card is fine as an insert. It really should have been a die cut with the crease used. Would have made it 10 times better which would go with the one in every 19 pack odds.

There haven't been too many horizontally posed cards, which I a more than fine with, and when they have been used, the photo used has been solid, but the design doesn't really work to me.

A great way to end though with the second Leetch out of the box, the first being one of the Philadelphia inserts early one, but here we get the nice full stats on the back...which I didn't scan, so use your imagination. :)

20 Packs, 140 Cards, 905 Points.

Why wait any long...let's get to the Leafs and hockey portion of the baseballcardstore.ca order - including a nice extra that was included...

I picked up the extra McD cards since I am slowly working on (or have completed) the related sets. The 2017 Centennial SN card was the awesome extra provided as it's a set Steven knows I really love and he continues to help with me collecting more and more of it.

2008-09 Upper Deck McDonald's is a pretty little set that scans beautifully. I still have a ways to go on this one, but now I am 9 closer!

As you can see, I also figured I would pick up my first, and 2/3rds of the 2016 National Hockey Card Day Canada set. Of course the McDavid cards were not there and a couple others, but I gout Douggie, Wayne, Bobby and some of their friends. It's a really nice design for the cards too.

Now this covers all of the cards that I actually ordered, but I have another post to do as there were some additional cards included to ensure I had some Blue Jays content as well. Stay tuned!

Always Dominating

First, we are finally a couple days into the baseball season. No matter what happens here out, I am glad that they were able to cobble together to put on a season because frankly, if money was a bigger obstacle and had this baseball season not happen - most every fan would be ticked off at the billionaire owners and millionaire players.

Let's be happily positive though - we get an interesting sprint which (hopefully) will not be repeated again next year, or any time soon.

Well, after the nice pull yesterday, today's pack continues with the good pulls, well maybe not quite as good, but still solid.

Another Philadelphia card which makes 3, and at every 10 packs, may be lucky and see another one or maybe even two if I am really lucky, out of this box.

As for this specific card - I mean, it's the dominator. Even at this point, past his heyday in Buffalo, he was still a fierce goalie. Actually, taking a look back at his stats, it's amazing just how high quality a goalie he was during those days in Buffalo, that afterwards, he was still great, but seemed almost like a normal All_Star goalie.

Thankfully back to getting a full pack of needed base cards here, including another of the Top Prospects cards.

Pihlman was able to scratch through for a handful of games over each of the next couple seasons with the Devils, but otherwise spent a decade thereafter in leagues in Europe.

19 Packs, 133 Cards, 856 Points.

Since we are speaking of dominating, why not a website that has been dominating, or at least been making the rounds in the hobby blogs - www.baseballcardsotre.ca. Though we have been sending cards back and forth for a while, I went in and placed an order just to be able to comment on the experience.

Going in with a broad aim (some Bruins, some wrestling and some hockey McD), it was fairly easy to navigate through the searching for these. I am not going to show the Bruins as those are going to someone else and I don't want to spoil them, but will go through the wrestling today and hockey maybe a few days from now...these things take time!

I pulled a bunch of 2008 and 2009 TNA cards because they were available, they were ones I had a start to as far as these sets go, and they were on the older end of what cards were available.

I think those artwork cards by wrestlers are a bit off the wall, but man - I find Eric Young's absolutely hilarious.

2011 WWE Classics is a nice looking roster set, which I don't mind at all. They may be "plain" in just being a pic of the wrestler, but having a set like this each year for a good span let's you see how the roster, and each wrestler, evolves.

At 10 cents a piece, these cards are absolutely fantastic. That said, there will also a bunch of inserts for that same low price...

I wish there were more of these available, but again, a nice roster set, here being the Wrestlemania Roster for Wrestlemania 33, including Big Red Everything herself Eva Marie.

A few last NXT set inserts including a pre-Adam Rose, Leo Kruger. Feel a bit bad for him as that Adam Rose character really seemed to pigeon hole him into a spot he couldn't get out of. Heck, he got a bunny over more than he got himself over....

A great bunch of wrestling adds, and as I say, I'll go through the Leaf adds in a couple days give or take.

Do check out the site if you are looking for any cards - sports or non-sport, you may just find some cool stuff and a price that can't be beat.

Get Out The Calculator

Definitely not a bad reason to have to when the pack today brought out this mutt...

I mean, come on - Rangers uniform on him, Montreal logo in the background, and the jersey is from his days as a Pen, which at least agrees to the picture on the back. I mean, great, you probably hit on a number of different team collectors here, but very inconsistent.

That said, this isn't the normal everyday jersey card which fall every 18 packs (well 2 per 36 packs as say the box, which really annoys me). This is the gold parallel which, as you can see, is only numbered to 50 (the "regular" ones are generally, but not all, numbered to 850.

Well, since I know their odds, know the number of those cards printed, know the gold parallels printed...some simple math gets the odds on the gold parallel to about one every 279 packs!

The base card needs, which, as you can tell are not the usual six cards because...

we have our first doubles. My guess is this may be due to it being a pack with the jersey, these may be done separately from the rest of the box so there would be dupes here, but only time will tell.

18 Packs, 126 Cards, 828 Points.

International Flavour

Sometimes packs have an unintended theme to theme. Well, maybe unintended isn't correct because I doubt the machines sorting them ever have any intentions to begin with, but either way, when opening a pack sometimes the theme seems to be there.

Iginla will always be known for his 2010 Olympic winning goal fed to him by Crosby - not a bad highlight for an international career. 

Kyle Calder had a stud year at the 1999 Canada Under 20 international tournament.

Surprisingly, the Czech team had much of its success without Jagr in the late 90s and early 2000s, though he did end up with a gold medal at the 2004 world championships.

The parallel today is of a man who could have had a very different international career. Brett was a dual Canada/US citizen, so could have played for either team at the 1986 WOrld Hockey Championships, however, he was overlooked by Team Canada and not invited, though team USA invited him and he ended up having a stellar tournament with 7 goals and 4 assists for the 6th place Americans.

It may not have been the best showing for the team, but their faith in Brett had him play the rest of his international career with the US. It would be interesting to know how tournaments would have turned out if Brett was instead on Team Canada.

Though I don't think this was ever a case of preferring one country over the other (as Brett was driven more simply by the desire of simply playing), he started catching flack from Canadian fans in the later 90s, first being called a traitor at the '96 World Cup of Hockey which was in Canada, then with early elimination from the '98 Olympics for the Americans followed by a denied scandal on hotel room destruction, it was not always a wonderful relationship between Brett over his international play choice, and Canada.

Personally, I do always think of him as American, fairly or not, because of his choice and time spent only on the American side internationally - but I never really think of him as a Red Wing.

17 Packs, 119 Cards, 535 Points.

An Ilyad

So I am not going to go into the whole story about Ilya Kovalchuk and playing in the NHL, retiring to play in Russia and then returning to the NHL after his rights with New Jersey expired by he...see in the keepers here...

really rubbed me the wrong way with how it was handled. If for no other reason that - you don't sign a long term contract with a team unless you intend to play the long term contract with the team.

Sure, things may have changed between first signing the long term deal with New Jersey, and when he wanted out, but don't put yourself in the situation.

Maybe I hold it against him too much, but then again, I always thought he was overrated as a player.

Our red parallel is of someone that wasn't who I always think of as underrated.

Though I remember Bill most for his time in New Jersey in the 90s and the Stanley Cup win there, he played an important part of the 2008-09 Pittsburgh Stanley CUp win.

Though the second half of his career was spent hopping around teams more, he seemed to always fidn a place and a role that he fit into and helped improve the team.

Solid player who was a great addition to the team.

16 Packs, 112 Cards, 514 Points.

That's Better

Given the one in 19 pack odds of these inserts, I am a bit surprised to see two in a row but, here we are...

Personally, not much of a connection to either player, and not a huge Senators fan, but can respect both have impacted their international teams positively.

If nothing else, at least this card has the foil properly printed on it.

The new base cards...

Shane Doan, who IS Phoenix, and Roenick in something other than his always thought of Chicago days. A solid six more base cards.

15 Packs, 105 Cards, 493 Points.