Holiday Hits

I love the holiday season...as in a previous post I mentioned my love for the World Junior tourney but I do also love the exchanging of gifts. I am aware it is more blessed to give then receive and I do enjoy giving, but it is also fun receiving. My in-laws know my love for collecting and I really appreciate the support that they have for my hobby by giving hockey card related gifts. This year I received a few blaster boxes and a couple random packs. For the record, I am not a huge fan of blasters because the hit odds are against you with the packs usually being of the retail variety and the odds on those are usually pretty gross. But, some of the local merchants were having large sales on the blaster boxes so I received a few and they didn't cost the gift-giver too much either. Over the next couple posts I will share with you my results.

From my "stocking" I received two repacks of Upper Deck Hockey. One was a pack of 07-08 Series 2 and the other was of 08-09 Series 2. I am fond of Series 2 no matter what year because of the increased Rookie Card odds and frankly 07-08 was my first set to get me back into the hobby so it has a special place in my heart.

The 08-09 pack yielded absolutely nothing! Even the Victory insert was a base card of Curtis Joesph and the best UD base card was Gary Roberts who is now a training guru and is responsible for the amazing growth of Steven Stamkos but not very exciting as a card.

The 07-08 UD was a much better result. No rookies but I did get a Milan Lucic Rookie Materials Jersey Card. I know there are differing opinions on these cards but personally I love them. Sure they are "event-used" but they are released during the rookie season of the player. The production numbers are lower than most of their rc's and they look much better than most base cards.

In all I would say this is a nice surprise which can also be said about Lucic's season this year. After a injury filled 09-10, he is off to an excellent start. After 35 games he is already one goal away from tying his career best of 17 and he is on pace for a personal best of 37 goals and 62 points. Definitely a great holiday hit!

Wanted and For Trade

I am slowly getting this together. I have some of the cards I am currently looking for and that list will keep growing so please check it often. I am also adding a list of cards that I am willing to trade to help your own collections out. This list too will be growing with some being specific cards and others are blanketed amounts because I have 1000's of the particular set. I love making trades and promise to make honest deals!

The list can be found on the side margin or here:

http://waxstainwants.blogspot.com/

Happy Holidays

I would like to wish all my fellow bloggers out there a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. It has been almost a year since I started this blog and I have really enjoyed making posts and reading other people's blogs as well. I especially enjoyed how close the sports card blog community seems and I appreciate the kind words as I got started and I enjoyed the trades I have made with all of you.

Here is a card from the 1991-92 Parkhurst set. It was a NNO insert with a pretty nice message on the back. I know Santa has had his fair share of cards made over the years, but I believe this is my favourite of the bunch. I remember when this set came out. I was so excited and thought the product was nice and fresh. Unfortunately Proset mass produced this like all their products and with the 92-93 Parkhurst they kept a near identical design which kind of ruined the 91-92 product. However, I still like them and feel it was a much better card than the 91-92 UD set.

Front side with Santa inspecting all sorts of quality Proset products

Here is the back with a nice holiday message.

So all the best to each of you and your families and I look forward to more posts after Christmas and I hope you all receive the gifts you are looking for in life!

WJHC Contest

If you are anything like me then the Christmas holidays are more than turkey and family time. They also represent time for one of the best tournaments on the planet. You can keep March Madness, I love the World Junior Hockey Championship. The best young prospects on the planet all playing for the love of their country. What can be better than that? Well the Stanley Cup playoffs I suppose, but for those who want to make the WJHC more interesting...

My buddy Mark at dirtydangle.com has a WJHC contest for all those interested go here:

http://www.dirtydangle.com/2010/12/dirty-dangle-world-junior-hockey-pool.html

Good luck to those who enter.

Drop The Gloves Contest

Check this out!

Real cool contest design that looks like a lot of fun!

http://www.fightstrap.com/2010/12/time-for-a-good-ol-fashioned-contest/comment-page-1/#comment-788

10-11 Score Hockey

I bought 3 boxes of 10-11 Score back in the beginning of Nov. I know this is pretty slow getting to post but life has just been a little to busy so rather than review the product and be like the 75th person to do so, I am just going to share the results.

I really enjoyed opening this product because of the nostalgia and the feel. This set really was designed to be a yearbook of the 09-10 NHL season. There are highlight cards and player cards and even the inserts commemorate different points in the season. In all I really liked this product and the price and quality are excellent and though this will never be an investment set, it was fun to open and I was lucky enough to get a hit in each box.

Here are the front and back sides of the cards. Pretty clean mixing up something old with something new.

By using the glossy inserts to help complete my set I managed to get 419 of 500 base cards and 49 of the 50 of the SP'ed rookies. So I am pleased that Panini did a great job "shuffling the deck" so to speak.

The hit from box number one was difficult to find because it was a "french back" base card and I only found it after looking at the cards a second time.

If I remember my grade 10 french well enough, the translation is "Don't forget to collect Score Cards". Seems like they could have used a little more creativity in their quote. But apparently these are pretty rare falling about 1 per case.

The hit from box two was this little gem. Of the 50 sp'ed rc's this is one of the better ones. Jared Cowen is a monster and could have the potential to be a poor man's Chara or who knows he might replicate what Tyler Myers has managed to do in Buffalo (that is a little optimistic). But really, a nice hit and not bad for a 28.99 a box. However, I was looking forward to a redemption rc in each box instead, but Panini did replace that with something decent.

The last of my three boxes had one of the SSP rookie cards. Rumours suggest that there are only about 4-5 in each case so I was pleased to get one in my last box. Cam Fowler is off to a great start this season and this is card number 551 in the set. Panini has 9 SSP rc's in the set and I am not sure at the moment if I will bother tracking the other 8 down. Maybe next summer when the market is flooded with different rc's of these guys I might see if any deals can be had!

In all, not bad for $100 with taxes included. I am close to finishing 1-550, I hope to get my missing ones posted along with some other sets I am working on if anyone wants to make some trades. It will be interesting to see what Panini does with this product next season. One thing for sure, I do hope they decide NOT to recreate the 91-92 Score set.

Bill Guerin Retires

Well my favourite player from my childhood has decided that he is done playing professional hockey as has retired as a Pittsburgh Penguin. The retirement ceremony can be see here.

Bill Guerin had an excellent career, the former 5th overall pick of the Devils in 1989 scored 40+ goals twice and had a career high 85 points in 2000-01. His final totals were 429 goals and 856 points in 1263 games and 13 times finished with 20+ goals. In addition to those stats, he also won two Stanley Cups.

The one games I will always remember of Billy was game 4 of the 95 Finals when he scored 3 points to secure the first cup in Devils franchise history.

Bill was an excellent power forward who skated well and had a shot that rivaled some of the best in his prime. As I mentioned in a previous post, Bill was my first and only TTM. As you can see below, he used blue sharpie on his 92-93 Parkhurst RC. The other auto was signed with a black sharpie and was one I has bought a few years later from a sports store in the mall back in 98. I believe I paid 5 bucks and in my opinion it was money well spent. Both autos have his name and number 12. He would switch to #13 after he was traded for Jason Arnott and would keep that number for the rest of his career.

In addition, I also bought a game used lot off ebay a year or so ago and managed to get three g-u cards for 0.99 plus shipping. The blue swatch was from his brief time with the Blues and the other two are different greens both from his days with the Stars.

The Shooting Stars swatch is the nicest of the three in my opinion partly because the play on words and it is the largest of the three swatches.

I am sad to see that he has decided to call it a career, but he did leave relatively on top of his game. His final season he still managed to score 21 goals with the Penguins and though they didn't win the Cup that year and he likely will never make the Hall of Fame, he still left the game with two rings and many other accomplishments such as Olympic Silver Medalist, and World Cup of Hockey Champion.

TTM's

Well I have decided that I am going to give a few of these a try and see if I have any success. I have only ever tried once and it was back in 1994. I send a fan letter to Bill Guerin while he was with NJ and within two months I received my signed card back. At the time I didn't have any US stamps (as they are hard to come by back then because there was no online shopping) so I mailed a US dollar along with it for return postage. I was quite happy to receive the card back and unfortunately there was no written response other than the card but I was just as happy to have the card regardless.

I mailed my first one out on Sunday and it was sent to Stephane Richer. I sent him a fan letter along with three cards. I had a difficult time trying to settle on two, so I sent three hoping for the best. One was his RC and the other two were his 90-91 Score card and his 91-92 Parkhurst (he is in a Devils jersey by then). I will keep you posted on my successes and failures.

I will save the photo of the Guerin auto for my next post as it seems Billy has decided to call it a career today.

Need Help...

As I mentioned in a previous post, I have had a little trouble with my custom cards because of the trouble I have had trying to match the fonts. If anyone out there knows what font I can use to match up with the 90-91 UD it would be greatly appreciated so I could finish the card I have below. Most of you could see that it is a hybrid between the Score RC and the UD first round draft pick subset.

Thanks again - Dave