Irmageddon, part 1

Landfall is imminent now, so I'm just going to rifle off three quick posts for the weekend and then batten down the hatches.

Just have the front shutters to close and lock up, move the BBQ into the garage, and that's it.  36 hours of insanity will begin sometime tomorrow.

I'm going to post most of the rest of the goalie cards I have for my frankenset so far during this weekend hurricane, and then we'll see how things are once Monday rolls around.

#'s 2 8 11 13 16 & 33

Love the Linus Ullmark card, it reminds me of Patrick Lalime's tribute to Marvin the Martian.   I've always been a big fan of the Artifacts release from Upper Deck, and I'm hoping that I can find a few more goalies to put in from them.

#'s  39 42 47 50 52 & 53

Marc Andre Fleury's yellow equipment and the Beezer's Panther mask are the two highlights from this six pack of cards.

Speaking of six packs, the wife and I may be drinking one or two of those this weekend.

Stay safe, Robert

Just a few random Blue Jay cards out of the box

Trying to break up the posts as I'm feeling that I've made the blog a little too hockey focused lately.  As I mentioned, with nothing new coming in lately (or in the near future), I've had to rely on what I have in hand to get some posts out to the blogosphere.

With a couple of boxes of Jays cards on the desk to my left, I decided to go through the unsorted box to see if there were a few cards that struck my fancy.   I did find a few and I'll add just a few random thoughts with each.

This card is phenomenal.  One of the best Blue Jays cards that I own.  Someday I'll have to figure out how to enlarge cards like this and hang them on my wall.  I have so much room, it's like a blank canvas to be used for cards such as this...


There's a bit of hope for my collection as I found these two cards together in the box.  I know that's not going to be true for the several thousand other cards, but it was good to find a pair of framed parallels back to back.

I only wish that the Jays had picked up Reyes earlier in his career...



This is probably the one Blue Jay that I own the most cards of.  I only wonder what would have happened had he played his entire career in Toronto.  A couple of extra years playing DH could have got him to 500 HRs.


Same photo, 2 different products. 

Gotta be tough having a nickname such as Sanchize.  Hopefully next year he can remain healthy and lead the rotation again.  Hard to believe after leading the AL in ERA and HR/9 that he could only gain a contract in the $535K range. 



One of these days, I'm going to collect all the cards I have of players that are like Alomar's above.  I might be able to put together a makeshift deck of cards from Blue Jays and other PC type cards.  Check out the reflection of the SkyDome in Alomar's glasses by the way, makes for a great photo.




Great idea for a baseball set, piggybacking off the success of 90-91 OPC Premier hockey.  Only problem, OPC made the set too Toronto/Montreal focused in my opinion.  1992 Premier was much the same, and they gave up on the concept after that. 

With Irma on the way, I may have time to actually sort some of these this weekend...God willing.

Thanks for reading, Robert

A little obsessed

I normally get home from work between 615-630 in the evening, depending on traffic.  With all the preparations going on down here in S. Florida over hurricane Irma, I decided to turn on the evening news.  CBS and NBC both led off with storm coverage, and it's been interesting to watch what all the different forecasters are predicting for the storm's path.

I've also been obsessed with posting the goalie cards lately, largely because $$ has been tight because of bills and of course, buying supplies for the storm.  No buying means you have to get creative with what you post, and starting to put together this goalie set has helped with that.

So in the meantime, with Irma reaching category 5 status this morning, here's 5 more cards for the goalie frankenset.

It's a little hard to see on the 98-99 Upper Deck card, but Byron Dafoe's mask has his nickname "Lord Byron" on his chin, and the Bruins logo with a growling bear on the side.  There's a rare sighting of a Curtis Joseph mask in the center that doesn't contain his trademark CuJo design.  Bill Ranford's design was never a big thrill for me, so if I ever find a #226 card featuring a goalie, chances are this card may be replaced.  These 3 cards are # 221,222 and 226.

I picked up the Mike McKenna card last month at the card show, largely because it was a gold medallion card from Fleer Ultra.  I believe that the mask he's wearing is from his time with the Norfolk Admirals of the AHL. 
The other card is easily my favorite card of the post (and yes, it's miscut) featuring Robb Stauber with the playing card King on his forehead.  Of course I'd like to find a more centered card of Stauber, but it'll be tough for me to part with it because of my love for playing cards.  These 2 cards are #234 & #248.

There's 5 more cards off of the list.  I'm going to try and get some more posts in by the end of the week, and then we'll see where nature takes us....

thanks for reading, Robert

An education that isn't taught in schools.

I'm hoping to pump out a few short posts this week.   My mind is a bit preoccupied right now, what with the forecasts that Hurricane Irma is going to make landfall potentially in South Florida late this week.

I was fortunate last year, because the only hurricane that came close, Matthew, hit landfall about 50 miles north of where I live, and my wife and I were only hit with 30 MPH winds and very little rainfall.

This time around, I'm more prepared, and have pretty much everything that we need, save for a generator for when the power goes out.  The lesson I learned this year is that you have to be ahead of the crowd, and buy your supplies well in advance.  If you don't, you'll be left scrambling and that really sucked last year when I went through hurricane prep for the first time.

So, with that in mind, I'm going to try and write a few posts this week to keep my mind distracted.  I'm going to keep the goalie set frankenset going by showing 4 more cards today.

The one card that I was kind of excited to have in the set was Louis Domingue, lower left hand corner, as he's had a decent run as the backup in Arizona.  Yes, the numbers aren't great, but he's stood tall and made some highlight reel saves over the past couple of years while backing up Mike Smith.

Best card for me of the 4 is the nice close shot of Jon Casey, from the 90-91 OPC set.  I miss the old North Stars logo, and his mask was simple yet effective.  Grant Fuhr had some good masks over the years, and Felix Potvin's cat mask will probably make the set a time or two.

Cards #253,262,264 and 269 have been added.  Hopefully I can get a few more of these quick posts on the blog this week.

thanks for reading, Robert