14-15 Upper Deck Series 1 Group F Eric Lindros Game Jersey

Usually white swatches are lame and unexciting. Not this one though, this one is filthy!

14-15 Upper Deck Eric Lindros Game Jersey

This looks like a pretty solid puck mark that the Big E took to the big torso. Say what you want about jersey cards, I still enjoy them and when you can land them for a $1.50 like I did in the spring for this one, it's all fantastic. Not all my past pick ups are jaw droppers but I couldn't resist a bargain when I saw it so the Big E joined my big collection.

11-12 Upper Deck The Cup Brett Connolly Rookie Gear Booklet /25

There are some cards you just don't appreciate until they are in your hands and I believe this one falls in that category. I really haven't been looking for this card at all but when searching for Brett Connolly patches I noticed a dealer selling several BC The Cup Rookies and inserts and there were two of these booklets for sale. Sadly they ALL ended within a second of one another so I had to make my choice and go hard for it. In the end, I am pleased with the outcome and landed a whale!


11-12 Upper Deck The Cup Brett Connolly Rookie Gear Booklet /25

Here is the outside of the booklet. 25/25 and all the promises of swatches inside....

Here is the inside!!

I want to go on the record by saying I am not a huge fan of booklet cards and am almost angry each time I have to shell out 10 bucks for a one touch to hold the card but this is one massive exception. The left side is neat with a huge signature which is a good thing for Brett because his auto is pretty simplistic (even more so since he started in the NHL) and it's size brings out more details. The right side is pure gold. Patches, jerseys and straps are already in my collection but, seeing all three together is pretty cool and the patch features a few breaks and even some silver. But the best part and the reason why I went for this one instead of the other booklet is the laundry tag. I believe it speaks for itself and it is telling me Mr. Connolly is either a size 50 or 52. Like himself, this jersey was made in Canada. Just awesome.

So the big question is do I chase all his rookies now that I have come this far....perhaps I should. But I will just need to figure out what is exactly out there before I tackle that type of mission but in the meantime, my collection grows still!

14-15 Upper Deck The Cup Damon Severson Auto Patch Rookie /249

With the Devils performing far beyond most's expectations to this point in the season, we have lots to be thankful for. While our struggles of recent years have been blamed on Lou, the truth is Lou did leave behind many wonderful working parts and our defense is definitely something Lou should be proud of and with the right coach they are firing on all cylinders. Damon Severson is one young defenseman I hope to see more and more of as the years go by and I have added to my Severson collection and I would say he joins Brett Connolly, Adam Henrique and Ryan Ellis as a member of my PC.

As far as rookies go, they never get any more desirable than The Cup. A nice swatch with three colours and a centralized autograph. The truth is this isn't my favourite Severson card in my collection but it is definitely among the top 5. I look forward in the coming weeks to share all my Seversons as well as many other additions and successes.

"We Have a Trade to Announce".....

Whenever I make a trade I wish I could hire Bettman to make an announcement for me:



I have agree to trade a box of 15-16 UD Series 1 which could possibly contain one of the hottest rookie cards since 05-06 in exchange for what I consider the best card from the 1990's, the Holy Grail if you will.....

Very excited to make this trade with Walt T. I decided to post the trade here so everyone can witness/moderate our trade. Walt isn't apart of any forums etc so rather than go through that painful process we will make our trade public here so he gets piece of mind and so do I. He has agreed to ship first and once it arrives I will post its arrival here and then ship his box to him and both of us will use tracking. Anyway, pleased to be back blogging and very pleased to share this awesome trade in my opinion and I hope he hits a McDavid.

13-14 Artifacts Emerald Brett Connolly Team Canada /8

After a very long and much needed break to begin getting things taken care of I feel that I might be ready to come back and continue sharing my adventures and sharing in those of others. Thank you very much to all those who wrote me and have stayed in contact a variety of different ways including sending along PWEs (yes I am looking in your direction Jeff, thank you very very much).

I plan on easing myself back into this possibly with a post every few days but the truth is I probably will post whenever I feel like it and that will be possibly more frequent! I have loads of new additions and fun things to have shared that have happened to me in the collecting side of things over the past few months.

To kick things off, why not go with 2 of my three collecting loves. Brett Connolly and Team Canada. If only the Devils would make a play for this kid and offer Boston a young defenseman!

13-14 Artifacts Emerald Brett Connolly Team Canada /8

While the emerald foil has never been a love of mine, I think it isn't bad on this card. The patch piece is just fantastic. You may not see it that well but there is gold peaking out in the bottom right portion of the watch. Brett's auto features his number 8 from playing in junior and I am guessing UD used up all his 28 signature stickers on the UD Team Canada set.

This card was one I had been watching for quite a while and when the price creeped down to a reasonable number I threw them an even more reasonable BO and it was accepted! If only a couple others could do the same.

Anyway, thanks again to everyone who's kept checking out my blog and at least allowed the old hit count to grow slightly and those who may have discovered my blog in my absence. I hope to keep you all coming back and thank you for your patience!

Dave

a small hiatus

Hi readers and fellow bloggers. I am writing a post not about hockey cards and not about hockey but rather about me. I have been blogging for a number of years now and have managed to string together enough words for 700+ posts. I have met many people and made many friends and even more trades. I have loved every moment of my blogging experience and I never want it to end.

Over the past 5+ years I have seen bloggers come and go, some have taken breaks and others have packed it in. There are a number of OG bloggers who have been there before me and are still going strong and regardless of who they were I have enjoyed something from everyone. It used to make me sad when I would see someone take a break or step away and in many cases I don't know if I truly understood why.

Well this past year since I developed carpal tunnel, had surgery, severe knee contusion, two bouts of bronchitis and two bouts of pneumonia. In addition there are some other life factors and it just seems that I am spread out far too thin to handle everything. I don't write this for any reason other than to share a small piece of my life to by boys when they read this and to my friends to explain that I am not ignoring anyone but rather trying to just get by :)

I will be doing a couple of things, first is I will be back and when I am, I will be posting back at my usual pace. Secondly, despite my hiatus from blogging, I will still be collecting. I always have time to flip through cards and stay in touch with my hobby so I will still be collecting and lurking behind the scenes and comments on all your great posts people.

Before I sign off for my break, I want to thank Jeff from 2x3 Heroes and Shane from Shoebox Legends for two great PWEs. I promise my first posts back will be to share your generosity. In the meantime I will be looking for ways to hit you both back! Thank you guys, you are great. I also want to thank Sal from Puck Junk not only for being an inspiration for getting me into blogging and collecting but also for a package he tried sending and hopefully will be able to get to me now that I sent him my address (sorry about that curve ball buddy).

Sports card collecting isn't just for kids and I hope each and everyone whose out there collecting is still there when I return. Thank you all for the page visits and comments over the years, I am truly humbled by the amount of people who check my site on a daily basis and have an interest in my adventures to the flea markets, swap meets and LCS.

Good night all, and see you back very soon!

Dave Harrison

08-09 OPC Premier Cory Schneider Auto Rookie /299

As we all know, life goes on. Still its tough to see a fixture of an organization leave and in the past couple years the Devils have had two mainstays step aside for the next generation with both Marty and Lou moving on to some degree. The amazing thing, is I just need to say their first name and chances are you know who I am talking about. Well the future is now, or so they say and lets start collecting in that direction



08-09 OPC Premier Cory Schneider Auto Rookie /299

Cory is not new to the organization and I have added a couple of his cards to my collection over the years. I had two autographs to this point, one numbered to 99 and another to 25. But as far as rookie went, I only had one lowly rookie and it was from 08-09 OPC which I pulled from a pack. So I wanted to rectify the situation a while back and I was able to do so by acquiring the above card. 

Nice on card auto with actual game-used event used swatches. What a shame they say game on the front and event on the back. I'm sure many have already gripped about this so I will move on to the nice on card auto and decently low print run of 299. I've said this before and I'll say it again for value, it's hard to beat OPC Premier and Sweet Shot when their Young Gun counterparts are far more plentiful and far less cool in my opinion. 

14-15 Artifacts Gold Spectrum Evgeny Kuznetsov Patch Auto Rookie /3

Let's file this under reasons why you should ALWAYS go to your LCS on a regular basis. I stopped by a while back and just went to chat with the owner about this and that and as we were talking I spotted the below card in the showcase:


14-15 Artifacts Gold Spectrum Evgeny Kuznetsov Patch Auto Rookie /3

I was awestruck. The patches were fantastic, the signature is good and numbered 1/3!! That's pure ebay 1/1 gold! So to top it all off, he's a decent prospect and a rookie I've been looking to possibly add to the collection. The price....less than 2 packs of Artifacts! I know that's a lot of exclamation points but truth be told, they were totally warranted!

What to do with this card? I know I can sell it and make a handsome profit, I know I could trade it and probably do well there too. But for the meantime, I think I'm just going to enjoy it. I asked the owner how he came across this card and he said that the guy who pulled it buys packs all the time and usually just leaves stuff behind in exchange for more packs. I guess there are collectors like that out there but given the cost of the card, he probably wouldn't have been able to trade it for much which boggles this blogger's mind.

Kuznetsov had his first full NHL season this year and finished up with 11 goals, 26 assists and 37 points in 80 games. He then put another 5 in the net during this past post-season and was electric at times. While his numbers seem small, taking time to adjust to the NHL is expected and of all the top 10 players in rookie scoring, Evgeny had the second fewest average time on ice per game behind Kevin Hayes. But towards the end of the season, Kuznetsov put up a very respectable 13 points in his final 16 games. I believe there will be a bright future in the NHL for this particular Russian and hopefully Ovi will help him blossom into a superstar.

1964-65 Topps Tall Boys #42 - Floyd Smith

The last of my tall boys (for now) is number 42 in the set and number 6 in my collection, Floyd Smith. Floyd played in parts of 13 NHL seasons in a total of 616 regular season games. He scored over 20 goals twice and over 40 points three times which is very respectable for the time period.


1964-65 Topps Tall Boys #42 - Floyd Smith

As far as my tall boys go, this one is one of the better conditioned ones. Crease free with just a little wear and tear on the card.

I don't know if I like the card or feel bad for poor old Floyd. Floyd was a very good player in the AHL and would be a decent NHL player but apparently he is best noted for who he married? The cartoon is a little tragic if you ask me but still a fun sign of the times.

1964-65 Topps Tall Boys #6 - Terry Sawchuk

Let's get back aboard the Tall Boy Train! Since my last post about my fourth one I have added a 6th so here is number 5 and I will share number 6 in my next post. I find this card very interesting for a number of reasons. First of all, it has been loved numerous times probably by numerous people. I suspect this card could have been handled more than a 1970's pay phone. With that being said, it only adds to the character. What I like more about this card is it happens to be an UER but there might be more than meets the eye here too and I am curious to get YOUR take on it.

So when you look this card up in the "bible" it lists the card as an uncorrected error because on the back of the card his name is spelled incorrectly. The correct spelling is on the front of the card "Sawchuk" and on the back they have included a second c spelling it "Sawchuck". How much saw can a saw chuck chuck anyway? Lame? Yeah probably...

But what interests me even more is the front of the card where Terry appears to be wearing a jersey with a number 25 on it. I was perplexed by the situation and did a little research because I always knew Terry to wear 1 or 30. Well it turns out according to Hockey Reference Terry wore other numbers including 29 for the Red Wings in 1968-69 and 24 during the 1964-65 season with the Leafs. I have no idea why he wore 24, Johnny Bower had his number 1 and Terry would switch to 30 the following season so the 24 remains a bit of a mystery to me. However, Terry isn't even wearing 24 in this photo which only adds to my intrigue. So I did a little more digging and it turns out someone else was in the 25 jersey during that season and it was a player named Pete Stemkowski. Pete played about half that season 36 games or so and had 20 points during his "rookie" season that year. So did they put someone's head on someone else's body? No. It turns out Pete was left out of the Tall Boy set and his rookie doesn't appear until the following year. So my best guess is this photo was taken at the start of the season (hence Terry's very tanned neck) and he probably hadn't settled on a jersey and just grabbed the first free one on the pile.

What is also interesting is the following season Topps used the exact same photo and just cropped it so you can't really see the number on the jersey. Enough of my ramblings, on to the cardboard!


1964-65 Topps Tall Boys #6 - Terry Sawchuk

Creases? Sure, but the colour is still sharp and the card has some gloss still!

Not sure why someone wrote 43 on the back of this card but it must have meant something.


Well there you have it, my 5th card from this set. It almost seems like I could actually complete this thing? Well maybe, someday.