Sabres, Oilers, Stars and Rangers

 Sometimes when buying lots, there's a bit of random organization t the cards as they come out. Here it seems for the most part to be a couple teams pulled/highlighted from 1991-92 Pro Set Platinum. Platinum was supposed to be a step up in quality and feel a bit more premium, but it was just different - like no stats on the back, but that's okay, I look at it fondly now.

Lots of Sabres, some Oilers and...

Stars (North Stars to be exact) and...

Rangers. I don't mind getting a couple copies of each for trading purposes, but unfortunately, none of these actually helped with my set build. This one is fairly far along - about 87% complete on the 300 card set - but would have been nice to knock off a few. Does mean hope there are more of the set, including those I am missing.

Regardless, the design does allow for the game of "can you recognize the player". Without getting into names, because these are the stars I grew up on, I recognized well more than half myself. Funny because I don't know if I could do that now if you gave me middling players from teams outside Toronto.

Raining Leafs

We can start with some raining Jays as Mike from Not Another Baseball Card Blog send a few early Jays my way.

As it turns out, most of these cards are new to me as I was able to trade over time, much more easily, to get the Topps cards from 1977, but O Pee Chee versions like this have been harder to find. Appreciate the cards as always Mike!

Well, great news for my collection today as we get to add a bunch of Leaf cards. Nothing new unfortunately, but that's okay, the numbers work as we get to see some old friends with 1990-91 Pro Set and all of it's error filled glory!

A binder page of Leaf cards for me today - yay! It's the second series highlighted here, and Todd Gill is probably my favourite Leaf of the bunch. Not sure I noticed how yellowed the Hannan card looks. I think it must be all of them as I am surprised if it were just these two, but I haven't looked too closely before. When I put these away in the collection, I'll see if they all look the same.

As I do have most of the error cards from the set, the set completed otherwise, and of course plenty of Leafs, the rest of the cards today are up for trade, and being the second series for the year, a little lower on star power, though there is still some to be found.

I probably shouldn't be as happy to see this set in lots as I am but I do really like the colour and layout, and with the errors, it makes it more quirky and collectible to me.

2021 Panini Prizm

 The 2026 Lot provides another bunch of shiny cards which happen to be Panini. These ones though, of the football variety. I look at these posts as a fun way to share some cards which are up for trade to anyone out there and interested.

The card design is very much like other Prizm designs for other sports at the time - not a complaint, just statement of fact. I don't mind the front, but they look better in hand as the scans are a bit dark.

I don't mind the smattering of stars from past years like Bledsoe showing up in these sets since it gives me someone I actually recognize compared to many of the current day stars as I just don't follow the NFL like I use to. Actually, a nice Thurman card here as well.

The backs are as expected with the low Panini bar of minimal stats and repeat pictures. Really wish they would do better on these in general.

Bettis - nice and Michael Vick.....no comment.....other than to say, that's 36 football cards up for trade!

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....

A Card Show and English and French!

A few months ago, there was a free card show at the Burlington Mall, and it must have gone well enough, it was back again yesterday. I went, hoping the same vendors would be there, and maybe more. I was curious to see if the number of vendors increased, or were a measure of success and whether it would become a regular thing. Well, I'd say there was about 15% more vendors, so it may be a somewhat regular recurring thing, and there were plenty of people when it opened at 10am. The downside, the sports cards were even less than what they were last time. Instead of 90% Pokemon, I'd say it was now 95% Pokemon and One Piece - no Magic and just a few sports card related offerings. Of the 4 or so sports card tables, three were a mix of Pokemon and sports cards, and the sports cards were all "higher end" singles, and I was not looking to spend $20-$2,000 on a card today. I did find a "cheaper" box at one table and flipped through with the criteria, Leaf cards pre-1975 and $2 or less a card.

That said, this is what I walked away with at $2 per card...

The Quinn is beat up but it's his rookie card, it's Pat Quinn, and it's from 1969-70, so give the card a break. The condition on the rest are quite good save some soft corners which are to be expected, but that was about all I found for $2 a card. I could have found more for $5 a card, but when I open those gates, I'd be afraid the money would just start flying. Besides, I'd rather work some trades on TCDB and move some of my own cards for trade, to better homes. Still, a nice enough experience, and if it's every few months, I'd probably go to check it out each time, in case there is something worthwhile to pick up. No unopened sports product though, plenty enough for Pokemon if you wanted to spend the money though.

Separately, on to the 2026 Lot...

1991-92 Pro Set was everywhere when I was collecting as a kid - I mean, I think I even busted a box of the stuff from each series. It's one I am sure I had a completed set for at some point. Buying sports cards lots even now, plenty of these "junk wax" sets that show up, and I don't expect much difference here, so some 1911-92 Pro Set is part for the course.

These are typical fare for the set, some stars and All-Stars, but it's not just English as we have some of the French variety to share as well...

Much easier to tell with the backs. I always take a quick peek at the heading on the stats in order to tell which version we are dealing with. A quick way for me as it stands out more than reading the write up, but of course that would work as well.

Could have been better with less Montreal representation, but I guess being the French version, that does feel more appropriate.

Well, these cards don't help me on my keepers out of the lot, but do keep hockey well ahead on representation in this lot...very Canadian....