A little bit of help

 Chris from the Collector blog spotted a post of mine a couple of weeks ago asking for a start on the '86 Topps football set.  A day or 2 later, a TCDB trade popped up that netted me some help on a pair of sets.  Let's start with the '86 FB

What I love about this set is not only the design, is that I remember a lot of the names that I've been seeing on cards so far.  The big name on the first scan is of course Danny White of the Cowboys, the QB that took over America's Team when the legend Roger Staubach retired.  You may or may not remember that White also did the punting for the Cowboys for a decade, an interesting side job on a football field.

What I like about the set so far is the team cards.  Love seeing the action photos and then turning over the card and seeing the team leader stats, along with the full results from the '85 schedule.  Different, but still it works for me.  By the way, Gary Anderson had way too great a hair style for a football player in the 80's.  Looks as if he should have been on an episode of Miami Vice.

These 21 cards just about doubled my total; I now have 43 cards out of the 396 card set.  Still a long way to go, and I'd still like to see if I can get another nice chunk of cards to get the build going.  

Not only did Chris hit this set, he hit another one that I've been building for a while.  The 2009-10 O-Pee-Chee hockey set is becoming one of my favorites because a good portion of what I have so far has come via the trade route.

11 more cards to add bringing the total to 330 out of the original 600 card set.  I bought very little of this set when it first came out, so hitting this number is very satisfying because of the help I've received from the card community.  

Last up is a quartet of "random" cards, 1 each from 3 of my player collections, and Terry Ruskowski from the 81-82 OPC set.  Ruskowski is in great shape considering 81-82 is known for rough edges and poor cuts.  The Thome and Sundin cards fit into the "didn't I have that already" category, but thankfully I did not.  

A big thank you to Chris for putting a very nice dent into a couple of set want lists, especially the '86 Topps football which I'm excited about putting together.

Enjoy the hobby!

Robert

Out of the blue--north of the border

On the same day that I received cards from the Night Owl, I also received a pair of PWE's from fellow blogger and TCDB user Joseph.   "Crazie Joe" runs the Crazie Joe's Card Corner blog, and does a good job of posting every day, even after 4 + years on the blogging roll call.  Joe's envelopes hit my hockey wants perfectly, as they always do.

First up is the outliers.  4 cards that didn't match the other 19.  The Joe Sakic card is from 2002-03 UD Vintage, and as I always do, I check the set want list to see if it was needed there.  Nope.  In the Sakic PC it goes.  

Claude Giroux is a SP from the 18-19 set, which is doing quite well as I only need 93 cards to finish.  58 of them are SPs, so it will be a bit of a chore, but it'll get done eventually.

Finally, I was very surprised to see a couple of 81-82 OPC's come out of one of the envelopes.  Love the photo on the Bobby Clarke card, a little nick above the right eye shows the warrior that he was during his career.  One day I'll start to work seriously on this set; I currently just have 11 cards from this release.

The remainder of the cards were from the 07-08 OPC set, something that I've had on the go since it was released 13 years ago.   Still need a lot of cards to finish this set, over 200 to give you an idea of how I've procrastinated in putting this together.  I have a weak spot for the modern OPC sets, even though they do the same thing as Topps Heritage and release the last 100 cards in the set as SPs.

These cards were most welcome, and a total surprise for sure.  Thank you very much Joseph, they are much appreciated!!

Enjoy the hobby and stay safe!

Robert

Nickel box finds at the card show

The monthly card show was last weekend and I was quite lucky to find a dealer that had several nickel boxes of cards, including hockey!

Yep, that's right, several boxes of cards that were priced at just 5 cents.

I found a chair, sat down and started digging.

Over 20 82, 83 and 84 Topps cards.  No slouches either for the most part, mostly names that everyone will know.

Gypsy Queen framed border cards, and a trio of Bowman gold parallels.   Trade fodder for team collectors at a nickel apiece is not bad at all.

Another gold border GQ card, a quartet of Larry Fitzgerald cards and 4 Blue Jays that I didn't have.  The Roberto Alomar fold outs card was something that I had never seen before.  The photo on the inside would have been great for a regular card...

I don't know about other hockey collectors out there, but I have really enjoyed the Upper Deck UD Canvas cards over the past few seasons.  Seeing these in the nickel box was fantastic for me, I took all of them that he had.  Even the dupe of Patrick Maroon in the first scan.

What initially enticed me to sit down was seeing these cards.   I have very few of the 81-82 OPC cards (bottom row), and I was hoping to find a bunch.  Alas, there were only 2 in there.  The 84-85 OPC cards on the top were all that he had as well.  But I did find a bunch of these...

I dug out 72(!) of the 1983-84 OPC cards that I needed, bringing my want list down to a paltry 40 cards to go.   I really  had no thoughts of finishing this set by the end of the year, but now that the set is down to a manageable number of cards, chances are I have this done before 2019 rolls around.  I do need a couple of Gretzky cards as part of the 40, but I know that shopping around will enable me to find the cards at reasonable prices.

I wound up pulling 175 cards out of the nickel boxes, including a dozen Joe Sakic's, 1 Mats Sundin and 1 Felix Potvin card...

Now there may very well be several dupes on the Joe Sakic cards, but I wasn't going to take the chance with the cards only costing a nickel apiece.

All this, was just the first hour at this table.   Next up are the 5 for $1 cards that I dug through for another half hour....

Thanks for reading, Robert