Remembering #21

It's now six years since Sean Taylor passed, you may see a few tributes to him posted around and I urge people to go out and check some of his highlights on youtube. He was an incredible football player who had Hall of Fame talent and would have only been 30 years old this year. Still the only time that I have shed a tear over pro sports. I will never forgot that week leading up to the Bills game in which Gregg Williams and the Redskins defense started the game with 10 players, leaving Taylor's safety spot empty.

Green is the Colour...

2013 Grey Cup Champions!

Johnny Bucyk: Bruins Stanley Cup Auto

A retro Bruins Stanley Cup autograph, of Bruins great and Hall of Famer Johnny Bucyk. The holder of most Bruins career records until Ray Bourque, Bucyk is still the franchise leader in goals with 545, and second in games (1,436) and points (1,339). A member of the 1970 and 1972 Stanley Cup teams, he also had his name engraved on the Cup in 2011 as a member of the Bruins front office staff.

These 2012-13 Panini Classics cards are among the best looking retro style sets I have seen, especially the card backs. Along with a legible and stylish on card auto, this ranks pretty high up in my auto collection.

Acetate Appreciation: 2007 UD Elements

A very weird and confusing set released by Upper Deck in 2007, the cards were released with 3 mini-boxes per box, 5 packs per mini box, 3 cards per pack, with what was advertised as "3 unique Technology Cards" with Relic and Auto cards mixed in as well.

Box 1 contained cards 1-42 and 127-168 on "Foil Board" (Think Chrome Refractors)
Box 2 contained cards 43-84 and 169-210 on "Lt Fx" (Think Fleer Metal)
Box 3 contained cards 85-126 and 211-252) on "PETG" (Think thicker than average acetate)

The first 126 cards were of veteran players, with one card per "Technology" and cards 127-252 being all rookies limited to 550, meaning each player has 3 different cards in the set. The PETG (or Polyethylene terephthalate glycol-modified) are clear plastic cards that fit into the "acetate" part of my collection. The "Technology" is pretty much wasted on these as only the top portion of the card is clear, and the back containing a bio and stats shows though to the card front. The photos used on the PETG cards look to all be posed studio shots, making my dislike for these cards even greater.

Massive Mailday, 2011 GQ Style

One of my top collecting goals was to finish the 2011 Gypsy Queen set, after sitting at around half done for a long time, a lot came up on the bay and I ended up getting it. Most of the base set with a pile of inserts, combining this lot with what I already had finished the regular set and left me 3 cards shy of the short prints. If anyone is still working on this set I now have a pile of doubles for trade and if anyone has Danny Valencia, Kila Ka-Aihue or Konrad Schmidt to help finish the set I would love to set up a trade.

Updated 2011 Trade/ Want List

Trip to the LCS (Bowman Chrome, Topps Chrome, Topps Prime)

A trip to the local card shop for some supplies led to a few packs, as I don't want to be a guy that goes in, buys some supplies and leaves without really supporting the shop. Starting with the best pack of the bunch, the options are mostly limited to Hockey so after picking out a few baseball packs, I grabbed a pack of Topps Prime Football. For $10.00 a pack I was taking a gamble, and while not getting a huge hit, it was the best purchase of the day. A Quad Relic, numbered to 99, of Stepfan Taylor, a rookie for the Cardinals who has a total of 53 yards in 9 games played. At 4 hits per 10 packs I did ok on this, even though I have never heard of this kid.

Hocky Trade Bait

Cleaning out the card room and some things have to go, some might end up on ebay or on COMC, but here is the first shot, I will try and add descriptions when i have more time, let me know if you want more info on a card if anyone is interested in trading.

1997-98 Donruss Limited #28 Ed Belfour / Andy Moog
1983-84 OPC #160 Bernie Nicholls (RC)

1995-96 Collector's Choice Player's Club Platinum #45 Pavel Bure

1995-96 Summit Artist's Proofs #10 Joe Murphy

1995-96 Pinnacle Clear Shots #6 Doug Gilmour

The Dan Cloutier is an Electric Ice Parallel

The shiny one is 1991-92 Upper Deck Award Winner Holograms AW5 Ray Bourque

1992 Classic LP's # LP8 Curtis Bowen (Ottawa 67's / Detriot Red Wings)

1995 Classic Silver Parallel #79 Chad Quenneville (Providence College)

1995 Classic Gold Parallel#38 Dwayne Hay (Guelph Storm / Washington Capitals)

1993 Classic Top Ten #DP1 Alexandre Daigle (Victoriaville Tigres / Ottawa Senators)

1995 Classic Autographs #2 Greg Bullock (UMass-Lowell)

1994 Classic Four Sport Gold Parallel #117 Radek Bonk (Las Vegas Thunder / Ottawa Senators)

1992 Classic LP's # LP2 Alexi Yashin (CCCP / Ottawa Senators)

1995 Classic Gold Parallel #34 Christian Dube (Sherbrooke Falcons / New York Rangers)

1995 Signature Rookies Signatures #65 Andrew Taylor (Kitchener Rangers)

1995 Classic Autographs Kent Fearns (Colorado College / Hartford Whalers)

Acetate Appreciation: 1996 Collector's Choice - Crash the Game Exchange

Collector's Choice was a product released by Upper Deck in the mid 1990's. One of the selling points of this line was the "Crash the Game" redemption/contest inserts. The cards featured players with specific dates and if the player hit a home run during that time the card was a winner and could be redeemed for a different card of the same player. In 1996 the inserts were a shiny/foily kind of thing, and the redemptions were acetate.

The design is very similar the Thunder Boomers inserts from 1998 Thunder with a wood grain border and the player photo in a broken out section. Of the 30 players in the set 27 of them have redmeptions, Tim Salmon, Larry Walker and Joe Carter didn't hit home runs on any of their redemption dates. The cards are kind of flimsy and fairly simple, but a pretty nice design for early acetate cards.

Buckstore Trade

A trade I thought I had posted, but realized I had totally forgot about until Sportscards From the Dollar Store posted his side of the trade here. He wanted the Chrome Familia auto I pulled and I wanted the Nolan Arenado refractor he pulled and thus a trade was born. He sent along Garrett Atkins relic numbered to 15 along with some random cards.

Zistle Trade #14

A quick little trade, some 2013 Topps inserts in exchange for some Series 2 from my wantlist, including a Tyler Chatwood to finish off the Rockies and a catcher card for Hector Sanchez.