I had titles aplenty

It's funny how the mind works sometimes.  I try to come up with catchy or creative titles for my blog posts, something that may catch the eye or make people think for a moment. 

Today, I received a simple PWE from Zach over at the Underdog Card Collector blog with a handful of Blue Jays goodness.  Five cards that I enjoyed looking at, and for some strange reason the contents had my mind stirring with post titles immediately.

First, there was the jersey card that made me think of the title "I drive a VW bus", but then everyone might have thought that I'm a hippie stoner trapped in the 60's...

I believe that this is the first Leaf jersey card that I own of a Blue Jay player, and the scan doesn't do the shininess of the card justice.   Love it.

The 2nd title I came up with is regarding the 3 Heritage cards that he sent, including a R.A. Dickey SP.  If you saw the post earlier this week, I showed off another R.A. SP card, so I was going to title this post
 "2 Dickey's are better than one", but then people might think I'm a pervert, or worse yet I may swing for the other side (trust me, I don't).

Finally, the fifth card was a great surprise, it's a Blue Jay that I already own the emerald green parallel of.  I'll let you look at the card first..

I believe that this is the slate (help me out here) parallel that you receive when you send wrappers in to Topps??  I immediately thought of the title "a different colored Colby", but I thought better of it because people may perceive me as racially insensitive, which of course is not the case. 

Now, I also had a title that referenced an acronym for Zach's blog.  I could have called the post "I'm down with the UCC (not the OPP)", but then I looked up the lyrics for the song "O.P.P." and thought I better not go down that road as well.

So you can see, I had titles aplenty for this post, but being sure to be careful and not offend anyone, I just made up a generic, bland, non-eye catching title. 

Zach, thank you for the PWE, it was greatly appreciated!!  Or you could say I was down with it....

thanks for reading, Robert

Hollow

I admit it, I got myself all hyped up for the 2013 Heritage set.  After buying 2 rack packs and 4 looseys on the weekend, I wound up feeling a little more hollow about collecting anything from this year, especially Heritage. 

First off, to give you all a chuckle, those who remember when I first opened some Heritage packs back in March may remember that I found duplicates in each of the first three.  Well, no duplicates in the same pack this time, but the red Target parallels I found in a couple of packs have a lot of familiarity to them....

I'm chuckling to myself while writing this post just looking at these two cards.

I am cursed right now it seems.  Oh well, how about I give you a wrap up of how my Blue Jays team set is coming so far from 2013 Heritage.

11 out of 18 so far, here are the 9 base cards I have so far:

I do have 2 of the 3 SPs, thanks to a couple of generous bloggers, first here is R.A. Dickey, courtesy of Pat from Hot Corner Cards

thanks for the PWE Pat!!

Next up is EE, Edwin Encarnacion, with much thanks to Greg at Night Owl Cards...

Thanks for saving this for me Greg!!

I have posted 2 want lists for 2013 Heritage, first up is the base set, which as you may notice only goes up to #425.  I've decided to not try and complete the insanity that is 75 SPs, and limit my set building to numbers 1-425.  Love the set, just not feeling the $$ chase for all the SPs. 

I've also posted a Blue Jay want list for this years Heritage.  Of the 7 cards I need, there is only one SP left, Jose Reyes.  If you have one that you can spare, let me know and I'll do my best to dig up something for you.


I'm going to be hunting for some want lists around the blogs, I have about 75-100 dupes that I'm sure I can find a good home for. 

I am also going to go for the flagship Topps set as well, but there's no hurry to finish that set this year.  Unlike the past 2 years, I've learned that there will always be cards out there for me to chase from the base set, and rushing to get a want list up isn't necessary. 

Thanks for reading, Robert

Sakic Sunday: Purple = American

I'm not sure exactly what prompted our friends at Score to publish three hockey sets back in 1991-92.  For those of you who may not be in the know, if you had the red version of a Score hockey card back then, it was one of two Canadian versions of the card, and if you had the purple version, you had this:

The purple American card backs were written and English, and had an American flag on the bottom.  One Canadian version was written in French and English, and had both flags on the bottom of the reverse. Upon doing a little more research I learned that there is also a Canadian version written in English only, with just the Canadian flag on the reverse.   I couldn't tell you the last time I remembered seeing a purple Score '91-92 card, and was even more surprised when I realized I didn't have it for my Sakic collection until Trevor from Supporting the Minnow sent it my way. 

Now looking over my collection of Sakic's from back then, it appears that the bilingual version is missing from my collection.  Certainly an affordable one to look for...

Allons-y!!

Thanks for reading, Robert

The last time....

Yes, I'm a little excited this morning, so pardon me if this post is wildly Leaf-centric.  But there's a reason for it....

The last time the Leafs made the playoffs, this guy was a rookie playing on a team known as the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim (does anyone out there remember when they were called that?)

The last time the Leafs made the playoffs, this guy was 15 years old and playing for a team called the Interlake Lightning.

The last time the Leafs made the playoffs, this guy had 5 more years to wait before he was signed to his first contract by Toronto.

The last time the Leafs made the playoffs this guy was playing Tier 2 hockey in Sweden for HC Orebro 90

The last time that the Leafs played a playoff game, it was this guys 15th birthday...

And this guy knocked them out of the playoffs on that day...

Damn you Roenick....

For those of you who don't know but are curious, the date of the last Leafs playoff game was May 4, 2004.

Damn, 9 years and 2 lockouts later, they're back in.

Leafs Nation is behind you guys!!  Yes, I'm excited dammit, I haven't had anything to cheer for in the last 9 years.

thanks for reading, Robert

I was too quick on the draw

Last week, for those who actually read the blog and not just look at the pictures (harsh, yes I know), you saw that I was able to pick up a pretty nice Mark Fidrych 1977 Topps RC for a decent price.

Well, I was too quick on the draw, because unbeknownst to me, DBN sent me another one this very week!

Not a dime box find, I'm sure!!

I went from having no Fidrych RCs to having two in less than a week.  Great stuff.

In case you were wondering, DBN is what I'm going to call Nick from the Dime Boxes blog from now on.  We are a society of acronyms, and DBN is a heckuva lot easier to type than Dime Box Nick. 

So it shall be written...so it shall be done...

Mind you, that wasn't the only card in the package.  There were several Blue Jays in there, 3 of which got me closer to completing my Blue Jays team set from 2013 Heritage (that is a project that I will be looking into this weekend for sure).  But there were 2 cards that really hit home for me.

Now the 1992 Donruss Triple Play card on the left is a duplicate for me, but still it's a beautiful card.  The card on the right, a 1992 UD checklist featuring Dave Stieb, is a new one for my collection.  I have always enjoyed the checklist cards that UD produced during the early 90's, and the card that shows the fire in Stieb's eyes is no exception. 

What made the 2 cards extra special is what they feature in them, the Skydome in Toronto with the CN Tower in the background. 

Home. 

The 2 World Series Championships in the early 90's.  The dome selling out regularly for the first few years and parading over 4 million fans in there a couple of times (that I know of anyhow). Now I feel like I have to get up to T.O. for a game this year...

Nick, as always, thank you very much!  The package was great.

Thanks for reading, Robert