The Russian 3

Back in 1992 the NHL was an explosive and exciting league and offensive numbers were high and no one was aware of the decline that was eventually to follow. Selanne and Mogilny tied for the most goals in the league with 76 and 14 players in total would score 50 goals that season. Mario Lemieux had an amazing 69 goals in 60 games. If Mario played the full 84 games he may have scored 96 but fact of the matter is streaks and slumps happen but I do believe he might have scored 90 that year.

What was equally exciting was the promise of all the young stars in the league and in particular Fedorov, Mogilny and Bure. Fedorov was coming into his own setting a career high in goals (34) and points (87) while just playing 73 games. Mogilny as previously mentioned scored a career high 76 goals and 127 points. Meanwhile, Bure scored his first of consecutive 60 goal seasons and he would flirt with that total a few more times in his short career.

Having lived through this golden age of hockey I have always been interested and enamored with these three superstars and hope all three make the Hall of Fame some day. As a result I was pleased to land all three in autograph form. What is another cool tie is all three have their rookie cards in Upper Decks 1990-91 release where Bure and Fedorov were listed as Young Guns. However, Mogilny had already played an NHL season with the Sabres so he didn't get the same cardboard treatment but nevertheless is a rookie in the set. Seeing these cards as a kid and wanting to pull them out of every pack I believe only adds to my nostalgia with these three players. So here are their autos, please enjoy!

2015 Leaf Signature Series MVPs Sergei Fedorov Auto

Unlicensed products can really be amazing or really awful. What Dr. Price and ITG accomplished in their over 10 years of making products like Heroes and Prospects and others must be acknowledged. I believe ITG was a fantastic company that did quite a bit with very little and pushed other companies to step up their game and use their licensing to it's fullest. Since the buy out, Leaf has tried to continue the trend but to be honest with you I really can't comment on the product as I don't really own many pieces or have tried purchasing any packs or boxes. I do own a couple singles with the being one of them and I like the card and feel that it's a good product. Given collector's hesitation towards this product, secondary market prices are low and this card was had for a very good price (about half book value).

95-96 Be A Player Global Training Alexander Mogilny Auto

The second auto of my trio is a card from the mid-90's. If I have one regret it wasn't loading up on boxes of this stuff once upon a time. With that however, who would have known that little from this era would have been very desirable. Even over time lots of the auto stuff has diminished to very affordable prices too and this potential HOF on card auto was a very affordable 10 dollars.


99-00 Upper Deck Retro Inkredible Pavel Bure

Despite Mogilny's 76 goal season and 473 career goals in less than a 1000 games, most would probably name Pavel Bure as the best goal scorer in the bunch. Personally I do consider him and Alex equals in those regards but with that being said, Bure was the most explosive of the three. Hard to say what may have happened if he didn't have all those injuries (how many times have we said that about a player) but two 60 goal seasons and a couple near misses showed everyone what he was capable of accomplishing. I love this card and the large and prominent auto. Florida isn't how I'd like to remember him but nevertheless this was a pleasure to add to the collection.

Do you have any memories of these three lighting it up? Would you have a preference of one over another on your team? If I could pick one it would be Sergei because he was the most complete but if I had just one game to play, Bure in his prime would be pretty awesome too. Thankfully the Devils did have Mogilny and we do have a Cup to show for his efforts! Thanks for stopping by!

A pile from the 3 for 5 bin! A little bit of everything for everyone.

Right now the 3 for 5 bin in my LCS is pretty lean thanks to me picking through all the good stuff. Rather than drag this out over 9 posts and bore everyone to death I figured I'd just lump them together. Enjoy the fruits of my 15 dollars!

2003-04 Private Stock Reserve Pavel Bure Jersey /750

Hall of Famer! Yes pleasure, I was willing to overlook the blue shirt.

2013-14 Upper Deck Canvas Valeri Nichushkin Young Gun

Love this guy's potential and love the photo. Seeing a shooting Star isn't too uncommon during a Dallas game but a flying Star is pretty awesome on cardboard.

2005-06 Trilogy Rookie Premiere Corey Crawford Rookie /999

This without a doubt is the coolest card of the bunch. Underrated beyond belief this keeper is and no respect at my LCS as this mint condition rookie was just sitting in the cheap seats. The crud at the top of the card was on the top loader. I promise to move it to a better top loader and give Corey 100% respect.

2006-07 Black Diamond Gemography Brad Winchester

I have far too many of his cards in my collection. Where is he now you ask? Retired. So perhaps he is on a beach somewhere spending his hard earned money. Though, he could also be waking up in a shady no-tell motel after a night of partying and drowning his sorrows.



2006-07 Black Diamond Gemography Jim Slater

I also have too many of Jim's cards in my collection. Jim left the NHL this season to play for Geneve in the Swiss league where he is playing with Tom Pyatt and Matt D'Agostini. Currently he has 25 points in 26 games which is pretty solid. These are his best numbers since he left college in 2005.

2013-14 Upper Deck Young Guns Jacob Trouba RC

Unless I already have a card in doubles or triplicate I typically love getting Young Guns in the 3 for 5 bin. Jacob is still very early in his career and given d-men usually take a few seasons to hit their stride I am thinking he is going to be an NHL star before long.

2013-14 Upper Deck Young Guns Ryan Murray RC

Hated him at the WJHC in 2012 where he repeatedly turned the puck over. The Blue Jackets have been slow bringing him along and for good reason but I think eventually he could be a decent defenseman and totally worth the $1.67.

2013-14 Upper Deck Young Guns Rasmus Ristolainen

Think Victor Hedman just slightly shorter.

2013-14 Contenders NHL Ink Steve Oleksy Auto

A roller hockey stud and an ice hockey minor-leaguer. Interesting auto here but again, autos for less than 2 bucks are always fun to snap up!

There you go, 9 cards covering all sorts of different players and all welcomed into my ever growing collection. Thanks for stopping by, I have a few fun posts coming up so stay tuned!

1992-93 Pro Set Box Break

Well I was in the city again and back at the gentleman's place who sold me my box of 90-91 Pro Set. He must have every box from the 90's and singles from 1910 up to 2000. I wish I could have spent more time because the 1910 cards and the Ice Kings from the 30's definitely needed more of my personal attention. In addition, there were plenty of different 51 Parkies in there but, they too will have to wait for another time.

I did look around and bought a couple little rookies and picked up a set which was my whole reason for the trip in and I will share with you at a later point. But there was one thing I caught out of the corner of my eye, it was a stack of wax boxes from 1992. Pro Set boxes to be precise. This is the only Pro Set that I never bought a box of and it is likely the shortest produced of the three Pro Set sets. I read online at nhlcollector.com that this production run was only 8000 cases which is a pretty short run for the time period. In fact, it would be a run shorter than some current UD and Panini products on the market. This would have been a good idea, but the vultures were already circling the Pro Set corpse and they were bankrupt before Series 2 could be produced. Really this was the signal of the end of the hockey card boom. It would be a few years before companies like Score/Pinnacle, Donruss and Fleer would make their exits but truly 1993 was the year the bubble burst.

So lets put on a little Informer by Snow or Whoomp! (There it is) by Tag Team and rip this box!

I had two goals, one was to get the complete set of 270 cards and the other was to get an extra Bill Guerin rookie. I owe all his RC's except this one so it would be nice to have an extra.

Each box contained 36 packs with 15 cards. Some packs contained inserts and there was a Kirk MacLean autographed card that was in one out of 8 cases. So I had a 1 in 160 chance of getting one of those too....

Here is the base cards.

I like the design of these. Definitely my favourite of the three Pro Set years.

Here is the backside

A short blurb with complete career stats. Nice layout, simple, clean and pleasant on the eyes.

Rookies

Here is the extra Guerin I pulled. Rookies were designed a little different, clean design on back with a larger write up about them. There were only 10 ACTUAL rookies in the set as players like Niedermayer, Lapointe, Lindros etc were all picked off as juniors in previous UD or Score sets.

CC Insert

Continuing the 1991 tradition, there are CC inserts which feature trophy winners of the previous season. These list for about a buck a piece. Roy is the largest valued at a BV of 10 bucks. I pulled Guy.

Rookie Scoring leaders

I pulled two of these from my box. Bure was the most valuable at a BV of 3 bucks.

Rookie Leader

Amonte was my second rookie leader. Only worth about a buck. Nice hit none the less.

Parkhurst Preview Card???

This hit was a huge surprise. This isn't listed in the standard beckett or is mentioned on the box. I am a HUGE Parkhurst so this was my favourite hit out of the box. It turns out there are 5 cards in the Parkhurst Preview set and looking at the back of the Fuhr card you can see he is 5 of 5. I would like to try and get the other 4 and have the set of them.

Here is the back side.

The cards use a different photo than the actual 92-93 issue which makes these cards even more desirable to me.

After all the packs were opened, I was able have a complete set and then some.

So for 20 bucks I got

1 set BV $15

1 CC card $1

2 Rookie Goal Leaders $4

1 Parkhurst Preview $??

and about 3 hours of fun ripping, sorting and putting them in pages.

This was a fun break. With this set, I now have all the Pro Set sets from 90-93 except for a couple missing singles from 90 Series 1 and the Series One set from 91-92 Pro Set Platinum. I will try and nail down the missing pieces over time but with there being so many on the market, I am in no rush.

In the end the cards are worth much more to me than a Beckett will ever say and if you have a chance to bust of box of these, give it a try, again you could spend 20 bucks in many worse ways than this!