O-Pee-Chee never gets old for me

I really like the OPC hockey sets, whether they are from the 70's/80's (the originals) or the modern era Upper Deck releases (from 06/07 to present).   They're a challenge to put together and with the exception of a few designs, most of the OPC sets are pleasing to look at.

This year's release is one that I like.  It's the same kind of back that you see every year, it has the same kind of cardboard look and feel that you get from the older sets

While the look and feel is great, the small print and the tons of extra space are a shame.  Would love to see Upper Deck harken back to the 70's OPC/Topps sets and put some biographical information in all that lost space.   Or, how about the old style cartoons like you'd find on cards like this Bernie Parent 76-77 OPC?

Love how the French text on the cartoon uses "Bernard"

The front of the cards are a different story.  I love this years design.

Position: Check  Name:  easy to read.  Team logo: doesn't take over the card.  Design:  minimal.  Don't need a bunch of flowery bells and whistles to sell me on a set that is 600 cards in size.  I want something that's pleasing to the eyes and hits all the categories.   This year's OPC set does it for me.

Retro parallels are back, 2 per rack pack

While I would love to chase these down, I still have a ton from last year's set to grab.  I'll probably just go after the Leafs in the retro style and call it a day...

SPs?  100 of them again this year, similar in pattern to last year

Rookies?  Gotta have them.  501-550 are all the Marquee Rookies, although right now there are no really huge names among the 50.  Next up, 31 team checklists, which I wholeheartedly approve of, as the Legends cards were getting kind of tired, and a lot of people tended to over price them on the secondary market.   The League Leaders and Season Highlight cards make up the final 19 cards of the 600 card set, and are also a solid addition, because what collector doesn't like an extra card of their favorite stars, right?

Something new this year is the "caramel minis"

There are 40 of these in the set, and they're not so much mini like the A&G minis, but they're just thinner, about half the width of a normal 2.5" card.  I like the look of these as well, it's always good to get something a little different.

Finally, what would a modern set be without colored parallels, right?

Blue is new this year, replacing last year's silver which was kind of so-so.   There are gold glossy parallels, the retros which I showed above and red bordered cards also. 

I'm going to have to try and get a few more packs in the next few weeks as they tend to disappear quite quickly when the base Upper Deck set gets released in November.  This will be a set that I'll chase again this year, because O-Pee-Chee really does never get old for me.

Thanks for reading!

Robert

And then there were 5

With so many sets that I have want lists for, it's easy to forget at what point I'm at as far as a specific set is concerned.

When I received my COMC order a few days ago, and pulled these 4 cards out of the box, it hit me like a ton of bricks that I'm actually just 5 cards short of finishing the 76-77 OPC set.   This is one of the first sets I collected as a kid, and over 40 years later finally finishing this up is going to be a big source of pride.

My patience (read cheapness) finally led to getting these cards at a lower price.  The Canadiens team leaders card was just over $2, and the Bernie Parent was at $4.  Much, much better than I had seen over the past few months. 

I miss the days where forward lines spent more than a few weeks together.  The LCB line was a big force during the mid to late 70's, and finding this card for just under $2 was a big score for me. 

Finally, getting this card for less than $10 was a huge win.

I was pretty much resigned to having to pay $20 or more for this card, as I hadn't found any copies that were decent for less than that.   Then one Saturday morning, I hopped on the site, and saw this up for sale for $9.  Had to look at it twice to make sure that it was in as good condition as I hoped.  Then I get it out of the sleeve, and it was in even better shape than I thought.

An absolute steal for that price.  I'll smile each time I look at the set.

Now, I'm down to 5 cards to finish this off.   Ken Dryden, Lanny McDonald, Tiger Williams, and 2 checklists.  I know I'll get the McDonald for around $4-$5.

What the other 4 will cost, who knows?   Probably won't be cheap though...

Thanks for reading!!

Robert

More distractions

Last week I posted about a 9 count of 71-72 OPC that I picked up off of eBay.  Well, I received my COMC shipment today and I managed to double that total from last week!

When you see a seller offering cards from this set in nice shape for less than $1 apiece, you have to jump on them, because they don't come along at that price very often. 

My big check when looking at these cards on COMC is the back.  There are a lot of cards that have a fair bit of paper loss on the back, likely from kids taping the cards to a wall or a piece of Bristol board.  So that's the first thing I look at, and each one of the cards I bought are in really nice shape.

The fronts are all in good shape, no noticeable creases, just the usual rough edges here and there and the odd soft corner.

What's good about this set as well is I've heard a lot of the names.  I know the likes of Hodge, Koroll and Martin.  Plager, Wakely and Stanfield are other names that played well into the 1970's.  This group of 18 also don't suffer from what a lot of the other cards I've showed off, airbrushing.  Each of these guys is in their current team uniform.

I'm closing in on halfway complete, 16 cards short of the 132 card mark.  This set is going to end up much like 68-72 Topps baseball, taking quite a long time to finish.  Marathon, not sprint, right?

Thanks for reading!

Robert

Almost an oops moment

One good thing about all this trading that I've done is that I'm getting more and more organized.  I've now got over 2000 cards on the baseball trade list, and I'm going through boxes of cards whenever I find a moment and adding more.

One card caught my eye recently, it was this one from the '76 Topps set:

I immediately recognized this as the Willie Randolph RC, and while adding other '76s to my trade bait, I checked to see if I had this one for the set.

Nope.  Here I was about to add it for trade fodder, and I still needed it.

This knocks the want list down to 42, and I have 2 on the way.  Still a lot of big names to acquire, but finding this brought a smile to my face....

Oops moment averted.  

Thanks for reading!

Robert

A couple of small ones

I boasted in my last post about how I was into the 90+ trade count for this year.   Jon had sent praise in the comments, and then wondered if he could keep up with that kind of pace. 

He made me think for a couple of minutes about all the trades this year, and how I've actually kept up.  I'm going to do a stats pack probably late in the year about all of them, but the trades for the most part have been reasonably easy (PWE), and have come in spurts.

About the beginning of last week, I lamented to my better half that the trade market had dried up a bit; I'd actually gone roughly 2 weeks without a trade offer coming my way.  Then all of a sudden, the damn broke, and I've been on a hot spell ever since.

I'm showing off 2 more trades today, both of them coming in the mail yesterday.   First off is a quick 2 card mail day from everyone's favorite Royals blogger, Josh (TCDB ID: royals {what else would it be} ).  Josh had seen the many posts I've done showing the '19GQ green parallels, and he had one for me.  

He didn't want Josh Harrison to be alone in the envelope, so he threw in a '68 Topps Dodgers Rookie Stars card to go along with it!   Great stuff.   Hadn't added a '68 in quite a while, so this was great to see.

Next up is 7 cards from Bill (TCDB ID: billwill), that added a few more GQ Greens to the build:

To be honest, this set build was a bit of a lark when I first decided to put it together.   I thought that it would be similar to the MVP hockey silver signature set that took me 2 decades to finish, but that hasn't been the case.

With these in hand, I'm at 134 of the 300 needed, and there's another 10 on the way.  So within the next couple of weeks, I'll be near the 50% mark, very surprising to say the least.  Maybe this will only take me one decade to finish....

A couple of recent Andrew McCutchen cards were also part of the envelope, '19 GQ (maybe the only GQ card I'll own from this year that's not green), and the '18 Topps Fire.   My McCutchen collection is over 160 cards now, and it's one of those collections that I have where I don't pursue cards to add to it, but it doesn't hurt to have them come in trades or just fall into my lap at a card show.

Not all trades have to be big.   Thank you to Josh and Bill for the cards, they are appreciated!!

Thanks for reading!

Robert