Happy Trails Paul Kariya

Well it looks like Paul has decided to call it a career. It is probably good that Paul is able to walk away from the game without any further concussions. However, it will leave many fans wondering "what could have been?" had he not had so many injury ridden seasons.

Paul was also a victim of bad timing as he missed out on winning a Cup despite trying to chase after one in Colorado, only to have the Ducks eventually win a Cup without his presence.

Drafted 4th overall in 1993 Paul began his career with much promise

Here is his 92-93 UD Rookie card. It is the ONLY rookie card of Paul.

Paul put up some pretty decent career numbers where he averaged exactly a point a game.

402 goals, 587 assists and 989 points in 989 games.

His finest year was in 95-96 when he had 50 goals, 58 assists and 108 points.

The closest he came to winning a cup was in 2003 when the Ducks lost out in game 7 of the Stanley Cup final to my very own New Jersey Devils.

Now the debate begins, does he have what it takes to make the Hall of Fame? I don't think he will on the first several ballots. Players like Adam Oates should make it in before Paul does, but I won't rule out a chance of him making it in on his 10th+ ballot.

Here is a 07-08 UD jersey card I pulled from a pack.

No doubt he was talented, but head shots did shorten his career and hopefully the NHL takes care of this before players like Crosby are the next Kariya!

Hall of Fame Inductees

Congrats to Joe Nieuwendyk, Doug Gilmour, Mark Howe and Ed Belfour for their inductions into the Hockey Hall of Fame. No major surprises on who made the list, but I am surprised to see Pat Burns was neglected from the list once again!

Ed Belfour was the only one to make it on their first first ballot and based on his career numbers it certainly is no surprise.

Even though I am a Devils fan, I am also a fan of hockey in general and I grew up idolizing Belfour and even would wear a Blackhawks jersey while playing goal in street hockey.

I have a few Belfour cards in my collection, no autos however. This card is from the 05-06 UD Ice set and the swatch is neat as it is a little shiny. Likely from the arm pit part of the jersey.

1911-1912 C55 Reprint Set

A while back I purchased a reprint set off eBay of the C56 hockey card set from 1910. Last weekend I was able to purchase the other tobacco reprint set that is on the market of the C55 set. Don't let the numbers fool you, C56 came out before C55. Oddly enough, the next set was the C57 set. Makes no sense to me, but then again this was over 100 years ago.

The set was reprinted in 1991 and the book was made by Windhill Publishing.

As you can see, you originally could purchase this book/reprint set for $19.95

In the book there are stories and bios of all the players from the 1911-12 set and a recount of what happened that hockey season. I purchased the book and reprint set for a total of 15 bucks.

Here the back of the book

It turns out that the book/set was limited to 50 000 copies. Which means if you want one, I am sure there are some out there to be purchased. Oddly enough, even though I only paid 15 for mine, I have seen these go for 50 bucks on eBay!

This set is larger than the C56 set having 45 cards instead of 36. The C56 set had rookies of Cyclone Taylor and Art Ross. Meanwhile, the C55 set had rookies of Joe Malone, George Vezina, and Joe Hall. The value of the C55 cards are much higher than the C56 likely due to number of existing copies and the fact that the C55 are a nicer looking card.

Joe Malone RC - Reprint

Joe once scored 7 goals in an NHL game but what some people don't know he is also scored 9 goals in a playoff game in 1913. He was the first pro player to score an Ovechtrick! His 44 goals in a 20 game season stood as the NHL record until 1944-45 when Maurice Richard scored 50 goals in 50 games.

Here is what the back side of the cards looked like.

Looks like Art Ross was a busy player travelling across three provinces in 4 years. Joe Hall did win a Cup with the Kenora Thistles in 1907.

Georges Vezina RC - Reprint

Georges Vezina is by far the most valuable card in the actual C55 set with a Beckett Value of $6000. From my experience, you would be getting a pretty poor conditioned Vezina for that amount and any one in decent shape will be well over $10 000. The most expensive Vezina sold for $100 000 which was graded an 8 by SGC.

This is a beautiful set and a MUST in my opinion for any hockey card collector. Without a doubt it was worth the 15 bucks I paid, and to be honest. I would likely have paid more to have it! I don't think there is any BV to this set. If there is, I would be curious to know but really I wouldn't sell mine for anything!

PS

My scanner made the tops of the cards look like they were mis-cut. I assure you they centering is nice on the cards and looks like the examples given on the cover of the book!

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!

Corey Perry - Card of the week

I decided that I am going to steal a good idea that other bloggers are doing and I am going to try and share a new card each week that is either news relevant or something cool from my collection. This past week there has been lots of headline worthy news and the draft hasn't even happened yet. Rather than focus on the blood and destruction that has just happened in Philly, I am going to focus on the new league MVP.

When I got back into collecting but before I learned about pack searching, I used to think I had a chance at pulling a good rookie from a pack of 05-06 UD Ice. I probably bought close to 30 packs of the stuff. I had pulled only 2 rookies from all those packs. One was one of the best AHL players in the last decade (Keith Aucoin) and the other is David Gove (I like his first name).

What I did pull that was cool, was 8 or 9 game used cards including Mr. Corey Perry.

05-06 UD ICE Cool Threads

Like I mentioned before, even though it is an insert and isn't officially listed as a rookie I do consider this a rookie card for my collection. The photo is from when he wore 61 and it appears to be during a home game against the Kings. After his first season, he switched to the number 10 which is what he is still wearing. I don't own many Perry cards from this year (just this one and his Parkhurst rookie) but it is enough for me.

I am actually a big fan of the Cool Threads and Fresh Ice inserts. It was back when UD used good size swatches and the pictures on them are good and well thought out.

Back side

The only complaint is there seems to be LOTS of wasted space on the back. Wish they put stats on the backs of these things or had a nice blurb about Corey's awesome junior career or something!

How I received it: Pulled from a pack

Beckett Value: 4-10 bucks

I think these cards are a great deal based on the BV of them. There are other memorabilia cards kicking around out there that aren't as nice and priced at twice the value. For example, a Corey Perry 05-06 UD Rookie Threads lists for 30 and the swatch is half the size.

Now the draft....Been waiting for this ever since we tanked in December. At first I was hoping for a last place finish and a chance to get the first overall pick and land Sean Couturier. However, it looks like he is no longer the favourite to go first overall and we might be able to land him with the 4th overall pick. There has been a fair bit of shuffling in the Top 5 and I think much of that has to do with how close the skill level is between these guys so as a fan, I don't think we can lose either way. If I got my chance to step up to the podium, I would likely stick with Couturier. If we were to go in another direction, I see the Devils targeting Landeskog as his style is much inline with how the Devils like to play. Are you excited for the draft? Or is it something that is hyped a little too much by media like TSN who are just filling in time between Stanley Cup and July 1st?

Panini All Goalies Break and Review

When Panini announced that they were releasing a box set called All Goalies I was intrigued. When I found out it was 19.99 and would consist of 100 cards, 5 insert cards and 1 memorabilia card I was excited. (However, I had to pay 22.50 which based on what I have seen online is still a great deal, thanks Jon at Elsewhere Gaming and Hobbies)

The price point is excellent, when you factor in one memorabilia card and the fact that there are over 20 rookies in this box I needed to have it!

Would I be disappointed? Here it is:

The box is compact and pretty cool looking. My complaint is the cards aren't well protected inside so if your box looks like it has survived a drop or two chances are the cards didn't!

Everything was safe in my box.

Base cards:

The design is nice and clean. Cards are the same stock thickness as the Score cards were with the gloss that the Donruss cards had. Not bad for 20 bucks.

The back side of the cards

The write ups on the back contain no career stats information but each seem to have a small blurb and in some cases it looks like the writers tried adding in humour. Read Jordan Pearce's for an example. (a little corny, but someone will laugh)

The OTHER Brodeur

The last 10 cards or so in the set focus on legends from the past. These include Belfour (as a Hawk!!!), King Richard Brodeur, Jim Craig and Tom Barrasso to name a few.

Inserts

Each box includes 5 "Up Close" inserts. The cards are of heavier stock and have more gloss on them. They also include a closeup shot on the front. They box just has 5 sequentially numbered cards so it looks like you could get a whole set of Up Close if you bought a case. That is both good and bad in my books. I got rookie Desjardins, James Reimer and a few other Tampa Goalies.

Jersey Card

When I looked at the checklist, there are 18 memorabilia cards and 6 of them were pretty cool. This one, not so cool. Raycroft isn't a bad goalie, he just isn't very good either. Never lived up to his rookie year and now I own my own piece of him. Still for 20 bucks, I can't complain!

What I like:

Cheap

Cool idea and you get the WHOLE set

Nice design and the layout of the cards are nice including photos on the back

Inserts and memorabilia cards are nice touch to make each box unique

What I don't like:

Didn't randomize insert cards enough

1 in 3 chances of scoring a decent goalie memorabilia card

Box could be a little more protective.

This is a GOOD idea Panini. I really hope you don't mess with this formula too much and come back again next season with this product.

I would rate this a 9/10.

After all, I am sure you have spent 20 bucks on things much worse than this!

ITG Decades Box Break - Part 3 of 3

The rest of the box.

Hit 7

Being a Canadian, I am a tiny bit ignorant to the whole 1980 US Olympic team. I know the big names that went on to be NHL'ers and I would say Mark Johnson was my favourite of the lot. Verchota, never heard of him, but looks like he played a season of pro hockey in Europe. This card is up for trade if anyone is looking at getting all 20 Team USA autos.

Hit 8

Here is a Team USA member I did know about. Good defenseman and multiple all-star. LIke this auto and I do plan on keeping it.

Hit 9

Anyone noticing a pattern? A third Team USA auto, though this one is like the Ramsey one and meant to represent his NHL Club. Jim Craig is also in the set with a Team USA auto version as well. Can't say I am big enough fan of Jim Craig to want to keep this card so if you want to trade for it, send me an email.

In all the box was pretty successful. What I lost in autos I seemed to gain in memorabilia cards. I rate my box a 7 out of 10.

In terms of product, I love Decades. If I am spending 100 bucks for a pack, I am glad there aren't any base cards because chances are I will not ever complete the set. So a product in this price range that is all hits makes sense to me!

What I like:

Great design, cool subsets, quality checklist

Great number of hits for the price point

They tell you where the jersey was used

What I don't like:

No Wayne

Not a huge fan of the number of USA and part-time NHL's in the checklist

I hope ITG does another decade next year. 90's would be a fun one!

ITG Decades Box Break - Part 2 of 3

Hope you don't mind camera shots again! Here are hits 4-6.

The pack gets more interesting as we get our first memorabilia hit.

Hit 4

I am definitely a fan of Nifty Middleton. This card is numbered to 130 which isn't too bad for the highest numbered memorabilia insert.

Wayne Gretzky once played on a line with Middleton and Perreault and he marveled at how skilled Middleton was. There appeared to be a little piece of wood or something stuck in the jersey. I left it there....

Hit 5!!!!!

Wow! This may be one of the funnest cards I have ever pulled! These four guys are amazing and this is the Silver Version which is numbered to 30. Love the swatches, love the players, this made the box. According to the back of the card, all swatches are from their NHL clubs except Mario which is from a Team Canada Jersey. That part is what I think makes this the coolest card I own.

Hit 6

This one was a bit of a surprise. I came down from the high of the last card and missed something key on first inspection of this card. I was happy to see Leetch, he is an amazing defensemen. He is in the Hall of Fame and Messier called him the greatest Ranger of all-time. What I missed at first glance is this is a Silver Version which is also numbered to 30. This box is shaping up to be a winner!

ITG Decades Box Break - Part 1 of 3

Well finally I was able to get my box of ITG Decades. I have decided to share the break over three posts much like how the product is broken down into three different kinds of hits. My scanner isn't compatible with my home OS so you will have to suffer with pictures I have taken with my home camera. Any "sheen" is from the top loaders...

Hit 1 - 100 years of collecting

When I opened up my box I see Wendel smiling at me. Is this a good or bad sign. Well he went into his NHL career with LOTS of potential. He had a 46 goal season, but never played more than 66 games in a season.

Hit 2 - Decades Rookies

Now we are talking. Love this guy! This is a solid hit for me.

Hit 3 - Memorable Masks

One of the cooler insert in my opinion. Not a big enough Barrasso fan to want to keep this card so if anyone is interested in trading for it, it is available. The same goes with Wendel Clark. I don't imagine I have the patience to try and build the complete 100 years set.

Check out part 2 tomorrow!

Maxim Noreau is a Devil?

Well with the draft about a week away and focusing my excitement in that direction I almost missed out on a pretty interesting trade. I received the news this morning when it was announced yesterday that the Devils acquired Maxim Noreau from the Minnesota Wild in exchange for minor-league forward David McIntyre.

I love it when that happens. You pick up a card that appears much more relevant to your collection a few days or weeks after you get it. I really hope he is able to be an offensive defenseman at the NHL level. The Devils really have been missing that puck-moving catalyst since the departure of Brian Rafalski and with Andy Greene not quite living up to expectations Noreau is a very cheap gamble. If he ends up being an Enstrom like d-man I think he could have a good long stay with the Devils who need some serious back-end offensive help!