Signature Renditions: Roy and Vachon

Here's the latest addition to my Signature Renditions collection: 

This is just the fourth card in the rarer "Combos" checklist that I've manged to track down. These are numbered to just 15 copies each, and as a result they're usually quite a bit more expensive than the single-autograph versions. They're almost always way out of my price range, although I make an attempt for one every now and then when they seem under-priced. That was the case for this one, which didn't actually come from a box of 2013-14 The Cup but was instead repacked in a box of Leaf's 2014-15 Best of Hockey set. I saw this one listed on eBay in Leaf's Best of Hockey slab for about half the price it normally sells for with no one bidding. So I bid the minimum a few days before the auction ended, and, sure enough, nobody else bid. I have no idea if this was a dumb thing to do, but I ended up using a hammer and a chisel to crack this card out of the Leaf slab after I got it. It was driving me nuts that it wouldn't sit evenly along the rest of my SR cards, all of which are in magnetic one-touch holders. OCD, I know.

As you can see, the card celebrates Patrick Roy becoming the first goalie ever to play in 1,000 career games. The Colorado Avalanche and the NHL arranged for Rogie Vachon -- who was one of Roy's idols as a kid -- to present Roy with a silver stick after the game. Roy apparently lists meeting Vachon as one of the greatest moments of his career, alongside all his Stanley Cups, of course. 

Five random cards, part two

Gonna focus on baseball this time...

Card #1: 1991 Score #568 -- Bob Welch

Acquired: Found it in my old collection

Price: Free!

I can't really explain it, but I love this card. It's so worthless that you probably couldn't give it away today, but the portrait of Bob Welch's split-fingered fastball always been one of my favorite baseball cards in my collection. I don't know enough about the hobby to know whether this kind of pitch-grip closeup is overdone, but it still seems unique to me. It probably helps that my 12-year-old self thought this was a bad-ass picture and that Welch, an otherwise unremarkable pitcher, had just come off a bad-ass season in which he won 27 games and helped lead the Bash Brothers-era Oakland A's to their third consecutive American League pennant.  

Card #2: 2010 Topps #220 -- Randy Johnson

Acquired: Trade

Price: Free (sort of)

First off, this would be a cool card for no other reason than it's a fantastic shot of one of the game's greatest pitchers fielding his position like a six-foot-ten shortstop. But what makes it a really nice piece of history (and what made me seek it out in a Zistle trade) is that it's the regular issue Topps card of Johnson's career. I didn't think to scan the back, but it features the Hall of Famer's full career stats, from 1988 to 2009. There's a whole lot of red italics back there marking every time he lead the league in wins, strikeouts and walks. 

Card #3: 1981 O-Pee-Chee #136 -- Expos Future Stars (Tim Raines rookie card)

Acquired: Found it in my old collection

Price: Free!

I had very little in the way of pre-1987 cards as a kid. And most of what little did I have was in fairly mangled condition. So I was pleasantly surprised to come across this Tim Raines rookie card when going through my old cards. It's in fairly decent shape all things considered. I was always more of a Toronto Blue Jays fan than a Montreal Expos fan, but I still did root for the Expos and collect their cards when I could. And Raines is one of the franchise's all-time greats. Hopefully, Hall of Fame voters will finally get around to recognizing how great he was before he falls off the ballot. 

Card #4: 1994 Score #61 -- Jose Canseco

Acquired: Found it in my old collection

Price: Free!

I'm going to warn you in advance: Jose Canseco is a guy who's probably going to show up an awful lot in these posts. He was my original favorite baseball player, as I was totally suckered in by the " Bash Brothers and his incredible 40-40 season. I even had one or two Jose Canseco posters on my wall at one point. I had moved on from him by the time he was traded to Texas, but I'll never forget this particular game. The Rangers were getting blown out and had (I presume) burned through their bullpen. They needed someone to eat a few innings so they turned to Canseco, who had been a pitcher in high school. Bear in mind that, while he had clearly begun to decline as a player, he was still one of the top power hitters in the league, having hit 26 home runs in 1992 and 44 in 1991. It went even worse than the Rangers could have imagined. Canseco screwed his shoulder up so badly while throwing 33 pitches that day that he ended up having to undergo Tommy John surgery, ending his 1993 season after just 60 games. It's one of the craziest moments in Canseco's crazy, circus-like career. 

Card #5: 2007 Upper Deck Masterpieces #34 -- Troy Tulowitzki (Rookie card)

Acquired: Card show

Price: 25 cents

I was digging through a quarter box when I came across some Masterpieces cards. I thought they were flat-out gorgeous (so much so that I'm in the midst of hand-collating the one hockey Masterpieces set that Upper Deck produced). I couldn't grab every one I found, so I settled for a few select players, including this rookie of the guy who has arguably been the best shortstop in baseball over the last five years or so. Added bonus: Tulo was traded to the Toronto Blue Jays a few months later.

Five random cards

Like just about everyone else in the hobby, I frequently pick up cards that don't fall in any of player, team or set focuses but are ones I just really like. So this is a post to show off a few of those.

Card #1: 2013-14 Upper Deck #117 -- Jonathan Toews

Acquired: Local card shop common box

Price: 50 cents

This is the card that made me want to do this post. It's one of my absolute favorites in my collection, even though I'm not a particularly big fan of Toews, the Blackhawks or 13-14 Upper Deck. There are lots and lots of pieces of cardboard that feature the Stanley Cup. But I don't think I've ever seen one at this angle, where you staring directly into the bowl. I can't be sure, but it sure looks like this photo was snapped at the exact moment Toews took the Cup from Bettman. 

Card #2: 1995-96 Score #70 -- Ron Tugnutt

Acquired: Repack

Price: $3.99 (for the 100-card repack)

Ron Tugnutt is one of those guys I always rooted for as a kid. He played an some abysmal Quebec Nordiques teams and always seemed to have games where he'd make like 50 saves and still lose. He's one of those guys whose cards I tend to pull whenever I came across them. This one was especially surprising, because I use to really dislike mid-1990's Score cards. But it turns out, some of them are really nice. For another example, check out the Petr Nedved card from the same set.

Card #3: 1995-96 Upper Deck #539 -- Hnat Domenichelli (Electric Ice parallel)

Acquired: Sportlots

Price: 18 cents

Since the inaugural Upper Deck release, I have been a sucker for the annual World Junior Championships subset. I'm slowly picking away at most of the base set cards from the early and mid-1990's. Though Hnat (note: great hockey player name!) never became more than a fringe NHL'er, this is one of my favorites for the sheer joy it captures on cardboard.

Card: 2013 Upper Deck Goodwin Champions #42 -- Mats Sundin

Acquired: Local card shop

Price: $7.99 (For a discount blaster)

I picked up a blaster of 2013 Goodwin about six months ago just to have something to open. I didn't think much of the product and I've traded or given away everything from it -- except this one card, which I inexplicably love. I think it's the old-world buildings behind him, which I assume is the old inner city in Quebec City, one of the most beautiful spots in North America. There's an autographed parallel of this that I'd love to pick up someday. 

Card #5: 1991-92 Pro Set #CC1 -- NHL Entry Draft

Acquired: Card show dime box

Price: 10 cents

I've always really enjoyed the NHL draft, both reading about prospects leading up to it and the actual event itself, which is a hive of activity as teams trade players and make picks. I suspect it has something to do with the fact that an imagined future, where every prospect develops as projected and your team becomes the NHL's next great dynasty, is sometimes more appealing than the realities of the present. This card depicts the floor of the old Memorial Auditorium in Buffalo during the 1991 Entry Draft. It was an especially momentous draft -- the one where the Nordiques picked Eric Lindros first overall against his wishes. Lindros, who refused to don the team's sweater that day, sat out of the NHL before he was traded a year later to the Philadelphia Flyers in one of the biggest trades in sports history.

Rolling the Sportlots dice

There aren't many sites that are less user-friendly than Sportlots. The design is mid-90's quality, it can be slow to load and frequently resets and you must constantly search among various sellers all of whom charge different prices and have often wildly different shipping rates. But, of course, the cards are cheap. Commons can be had for as little as 18 cents apiece. The only site I know that's cheaper is JustCommons.com, but all they stock is baseball.

There's one major catch, though: You almost never know the condition of the card you buying. While there are pictures posted of some cards, they are relatively few and far between -- and usually only for more expensive cards that you're more likely to buy on COMC anyway. When the seller says a card is near mint or excellent, you have no choice but to trust him or her....So with that said, here's how I did on my most recent roll of the Sportlots dice.  

This was the card that drew me in. I've been slowly working on the 1979-80 Topps set and this was the biggest card -- well, other than The Card -- I still needed. I've been checking eBay and COMC constantly, but everyone seemed to be trying to get $5 plus for it. But Sportlots seller cmkeese had a NM copy listed for just $1.99. So I gambled. And I did....OK. The front is definitely NM, in my opinion. It's slightly off-center, but the corners and the image are both sharp. It's a really nice copy of, in my opinion.

If I had one complaint, it's the back, which has a much worse centering issue. The cartoon is basically cut off....If someone was really grading this card, you'd probably say it was more Excellent than Near Mint. But it's a minor quibble. And I still would have paid $2 for this card had I seen this image. I think.

Having committed to the Dryden, I ended up picking up nine more cards, which got me to the limit for $1.75 shipping. Included were six more from 79-80 Topps, all of which were also (fairly) listed as NM. The Lanny McDonald was a great deal -- just 23 cents, when other sellers were looking for 75 cents ore more. The other five were all between 18 cents and 22 cents. 

The last three were all modern baseball cards. That includes two rookie cards of now-Toronto Blue Jay (and current leading candidate for AL MVP) Josh Donaldson. The last is from 2014 Topps Stadium Club, a set I would like to complete some day. At 18 cents each, these were no-brainers to me. It helps that, in my admittedly limited Sportlots experience, you're taking less of a gamble on the condition of newer cards than with vintage.

I also had a second Sportlots order come in, this one from a seller by the username Barriere. The Cesare Maniago was listed as a NM card and cost $1, while the other three were all classified as Excellent and priced at 70 cents, 55 cents and 25 cents, respectively. I actually think the Smith is closer to NM than the Maniago, which has a little mark in the upper right corner and isn't quite centered as well. The Maniago also has a small blemish on the back. But I was still very happy with all of these, especially since the seller priced the cards that were at the lower end of the Excellent spectrum accordingly. 

With this particular seller, I got 25 cards for $3.50 shipping. So after picking out as many cheap 71-72's that I could find, I jumped over to three fantastic examples from 1973-74 Topps, a set that is quickly becoming one of my favorites....That said, these cards represent Sportlots in a nutshell. All three were categorized as NM, even though there is some clear miscoloring going on, with a blue streak showing through the Maniago and the Keon. (Weirdly, the coloring problem appears worse in the Maniago in the scanned images, but it's actually much worse in the Keon in hand.) That said, the seller charged just 45 cents for the Maniago and 75 cents for the Keon (32 cents for the Unger), which is the cheapest I'm likely to ever find these outside of stumbling across them in a dime box or buying a big bulk order of cards on eBay. 

I also picked up a few more 79-80's from Barriere. Brad Park is the big star here, although I love the shot of Dryden's mask in the Stanley Cup Final card. And the Marc Tardif is one of the cooler pictures in the entire set, I think. All of these were listed (fairly, in my opinion) in NM condition.

The last three cards I added to my basket were from 1988-89 Topps. Again, all were fairly listed as NM condition, although I wasn't too worried since these are recent and abundant enough that it isn't hard to find clean copies. The importance here is that these three cards complete my set! I've now the last three Topps sets of the 1980's (1987-88, 1988-89 and 1989-90) all finished off. Of course, those are the three easiest of the vintage hockey sets to complete (I'm using 1989-and-earlier as my definition of vintage.)

Trade: Early Blue Jays and a completed set

After a couple of lengthy hockey-focused posts, this seems like a good time to post the contents of a baseball-heavy trade with Zistle user BucCollector. Out the door the other way were a bunch of Pittsburgh Penguin stars and a handful of doubles I had from 1979-80 Topps hockey, a set that he's also collecting.

As far as the cards I received go, this was the star of the bunch. It's a rookie card of near-Hall of Famer Lou Whitaker. But more importantly (to me), it completes my Toronto Blue Jays team set from 1978 Topps. I've been slowly working on building Blue Jay sets from the '70's and '80's. I've already completed their inaugural year (1977 Topps) and now I'm done with their second year. You're next, 1979. 

 

 

There weren't any 1979 Topps cards in the package, but there were half a dozen from 1980. If Zistle can be believed, these leave just four cards shot of the team set. 

Next up, from 1981 Topps, is a rookie card of Lloyd Moseby, who was part of a fantastic trio of outfielders who patrolled the old Exhibition Stadium for most of the 1980's. Moseby played center, between Jesse Barfield on the right and George Bell on the left.  

Two more from 1981 Topps. Looks like I'm about three cards from the set (five, if you count Traded.)

I can now strike five cards of my wantlist for 1982 Topps. Stieb is the big star here. It's between him and Roy Halladay for title of best pitcher in Blue Jay history. 

Nothing from 1983 or 1984 (which is my second-favorite set of the decade, after 1987). But a pretty good one from 1985 Topps in a rookie card of leftie starter Jimmy Key. 1985 is probably the hole in my vintage Blue Jays collection. 

And here are four from 1986 Topps. The Cecil Fielder card is a rookie. Fielder struggled to find playing time on the Jays, first behind Willie Upshaw and then behind Fred McGriff. The Jays traded him away a couple of years later to the Tigers, where he promptly hit 50 home runs. I remember when this card was suddenly -- and briefly, it turned out -- a hot commodity. 

Wrapping up the '80's portion of the package was a single card from 1988 Topps. This is a set I actually collected some myself as a kid. I found a bunch of them when I was last home and digging through my old cards, though of course most were pretty badly beat up. 

The last Blue Jay in the package was Bob MacDonald, from Topps' inaugural Stadium Club release in 1991. This is another team set I'd like to put together. I may even try and collate the whole set at some point, since this ultimately turned out to be an influential set. 

Finally, there were three hockey cards in the package, all from 1990-91 Upper Deck. The Fetisov is technically a rookie card, I believe, but generally speaking, all three are basic commons. Their significance? They were the last three I needed to complete Upper Deck's inaugural hockey release, which is one of the most important hockey sets of all time. I had found a near set in my old card collection that was about 20 cards or so short. A couple of Zistle trades and a Sportlots order later and it's done. I'll probably have a post soon looking back on the set, which still holds up well a quarter of a century later.