Slowly We Close In

 Another 2023-24 Upper Deck Allure bunch of cards from the 2026 Lot, and we do in fact get one card closer to the pure base set completion...

Alex started with Colorado who drafted him, but was traded to Montreal and has played for the Habs the last couple seasons. Not a high profile name, so gives me hope the last few needs are simply ones that haven't shown up in the set yet. A couple that have shown up before, and happy to have them show up again...

Not going to complain about Leaf dupes one bit! Have picked up a few of each now from the lot, very nice, very nice.

The rest of the slightly curvered traders for anyone interested...

Sure, the rookies may have all been taken out from what we have seen so far, but if stars like Auston and McDavid are showing up in numbers, I am not too worried about missing any base cards...just time will hopefully tell - would be nice to finish this set off as a first accomplishment from the lot.

Yes I Still Need These

 Okay, so I may not really need to collect the bilingual Canadian version of 1991-92 Score hockey cards, but I am. I mean, I have the full English set already, so it's not that different, but I keep seeing the cards, and I had a decent start on it, so why not?

Well, the 2026 Lot provided another 28 or so cards from the set to add to my growing base set. There were just as many dupes which are scanned at the end in case anyone is interest, but we start very Flames heavy. Just noticed - in no way a complaint.

It's for these base sets that I keep Bruins, otherwise, I don't usually bother scanning them and stick them aside for local collector Jeff. I do of course count them in my tallies when dupes of course.

It's a very 90s design, and may not be flashy, but get the point across just fine. Oh, and this was one of those sets highlighting that small expansion thing that was going on...

Remember - yay Sharks....they were everywhere!

Some even in my dupes!

A small bump to the percentage, just hope we can hang there around 20-25% - means the lot is definitely worthwhile!

Flying In With Themes

 A trade recap today as FlyingWhales at TCDB sent some hockey and wrestling cards my way in a nice little PWE trade, so let's get to it!

Well, the Allure Auston was a need at the time I entered into the trade, but of course I have copies from the 2025 Lot which have come up. Not an issue at all since I do keep and want duplicate Leafs anyway, so all good. The Metal cards are all new and remain that way, as do the 2024-25 Upper Deck - great Leaf additions all around.

These couple are cards that help toward the 2024-25 Timmies "master" set. I am not looking for all the long odd related inserts, but would love to complete the album at some point.

The rest - wrestling cards, and if you like to see different designs all within the same base set, say thank you to Panini Chronicles and specifically the 2023 set...

I've mentioned Panini isn't my favourite of brands, and this is part of why. I like some of the designs enough, but I don't think we need all of them together to make a single base set.

Of the ones above, honestly, I like the first design best - even if they use the same picture twice on the front, not to mention, once on the back as well.

The Voices of the Ring aren't bad either, and as a subset, I can get a bit more behind it. All in though, love getting more wrestling cards that are new to me, so big thanks for the great trade!

More NFL

 Into the 2026 Lot today, and we get a run of 2023 Donruss Football from Panini.

Playing the game of "who do I know of", I have heard of Joe Burrows at least. Not surprising it's QBs that are heard about, they generally, but not always, get the attention/spotlight.

I didn't hit upon any of them here, but there are variations of a number of the base cards where the name is the full name rather than what they may go by - for example Joseph instead of Joe. Not a big, amazing variation, but it does mean people picky about collecting all such things, have another small variation to have to watch for and collect. I'd do it for my Jays, and it can be annoying when the variation is minor like this. At least give me different photos on the card too.

Definitely still not sold on that colour choice by Seattle for the uniforms - at least you would be able to find them in a crowd.

I Don't Usually Do This...

 So I worked through all of my Magic card traders and went through the 401 games buylist, looking to get rid of as many cards as I could, many of them being for 7 cents a card trade in value. Well, I was able to cobble together about $300 of trade value - below is what I spent just less than half of the money on. I went for mostly older cards that were more expensive than I would usually buy, but being able to turn about 1,500 cards of "junk" as far as my collecting goes, into cards I care about and collect (and in a lot less space) - a great transaction. Besides, selling those cards as bulk for what they were, I would have been lucky to get even $100 cash.

We start with Draco, which is the last of 5 artifact cards in the Planeshift set. There is an alternate art copy for one, but I treat that as a variation and won't count it for the base set artifacts themselves, so that one is happily complete here. A few years later than the set first came out in 2001, but better late than never!

The land is a one and done for Scourge lands that provide colourless mana, so I figured I should pick it up so it's a simple completed set, and since I have the few artifacts as well, I am done with the Scourge set completely - yay!

Though I didn't get to finish them off, I did pick up a bunch of Time Spiral and "Time Shifted" Time Spiral artifact cards because there are some pretty cool cards, and I was missing a whole bunch.

The other area I picked up some cards from were base sets - 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th edition to be exact. Actually in doing so, one card I needed was the Howling Mine below in 6th edition, but they made a note and sent the 5th edition version because they didn't have 6th edition. Normally not a big deal, and from a value perspective, I end up slightly ahead, but wasn't really what I wanted. I left it, but if it had been any more expensive of a card, and I would have brought it up.

Similarly, this was a heavy played card, and I'd almost say it was more than heavily played...

You can see with the older white border cards, why they moved away to the black border on all sets, the wear on the white borders, and related dirt marks are very heavy and noticeable. With black border, you may get white "chips" or dings on the outer border, but you don't really get to see the dirt or other markings on them.

Again, for my purposes, the card is fine, but I could see it being considered more than heavily played, though that can be a wife range in quality.

We end with the most exciting (to me), part of the pick ups. These four Unglued cards (the ones with the cracked egg symbol), are the last four artifact cards I needed to complete the set. It's getting harder to find, and a bit pricier to pull the trigger, on some of the older sets and missing artifact cards I have, so finishing this one which is from 1998, excites me.

The last two cards from Unhinged, don't quite finish off that set, but are bigger cards in the goal to complete it. Gleemax, as silly as the cost looks, can actually be cast because there are infinite mana loops which can be created, so you could get there. As for Mox Lotus, that is the card in the set which does get you the easy way of using Gleemax - now you really just need 15 mana to cast the Mox Lotus. Any time you can pick up a Lotus in Magic, is a good day....heck, or even a Mox....or in this case, both.

I Need A Hero...

 Well, if you needed a hero and went to Loblaw stores last fall, you could get stickers from the 64 sticker Marvel Be A Hero set - one pack for every $25 spent. I had one lying around that I forgot to open at the time, so let's take a look.

In 2024, a similar non-sticker set of "cards" was released and there was a mad rush to collect them, which settled down. I don't think there was nearly the same reaction to this set, but still a nice little set to collect if you like Marvel.

The set up is similar - 4 stickers per "pack", front as shown above and the back below.

Picked this up at No Frills, and I ensured no children under 36 months were harmed in the making of this post.

No surprise Guardians of the Galaxy and X-Men make up all the cards I get.

I did learn something though. No idea what card 46 was until I looked it up. Apparently the Giardians ship is called The Milano and is named after actress Alyssa Milano from Who's The Boss and Charmed (at least that is where I always remember her from).

It also is apparently a Lego set, which I looked up and seems pretty cool if you are into such things, though a bit pricey as the one I saw was about $240 CDN.

I'll stick with checking out the free cards from Loblaw stores, thanks!

Getting Double

 Getting a string of cards in a lot like this one, you end up with duplicates in quick order sometimes, and most of my luck, that's not been a good thing, but today we benefit with seeing double...

You get the front and back shot of this nice Mitch Marner base card, all in one scan! Still sucks he left Toronto, but I digress, appreciate getting a couple more copies of the card - sweet!

We also get an insert, and I'll show both sides here so you can see the spiffy way to tell them, which I fully appreciate...

The design on the front does look different, so you can likely tell something is up with the card, but exactly what to call it - just check the back...

Now, it doesn't need to be this clear with the "Black Rainbow", I'd be more than happy if it were just above or below the 2023-24 Allure Hockey line, that works too. As someone with vision issues, I do absolutely appreciate the little nod, especially when there are 53 different possible parallels.

Unfortunately, in another lot of Allure cards from the 2026 Lot, those are all my highlights, but for those looking for some cards in the set themselves...here's a peek at the rest...

You can tell, scanning the cards this way, their curve did well to push up on the lid, and push some of the cards away from the scanner bed. Not a big deal, and seems to be with many if not all the Allure cards, so expect it's just how they roll with age.

Finally cross the massive 10 card line for Toronto cards coming from the lot....okay, not a high line to cross, but still a mark!

I have space for specific accomplishments, but still waiting for there to be one....