The Great Zo
Verified Trader,
Here's the 20th mail post for the year of 2006. I'm starting to run out of available filenames (I only allotted for 1000) in my server directory, so I'll soon have to create a second. I'll make sure my 1000th picture is a very special one.
Before we get too far ahead, though, let's deal with the present. There's some great stuff in this mail post. Onward!
-------------------------------------------------------
00-01 Titanium Game Gear Patches Phil Housley (/125)
I received this card from Bryan (lucky19). I'm usually opposed to picking up Titanium patch cards, but this one struck me for two reasons. First, the swatch is an incredible four colors, and is very attractive. What was more important to me, though, was that there are only 125 copies printed. That makes it a definite short print among the rest of the 00-01 Titanium set. Thank you for the trade, Bryan!
-------------------------------------------------------
98-99 Crown Royale Limited Series Mike Dunham (/99)
99-00 Aurora Complete Players Paul Kariya (/299)
01-02 Pacific Heads Up Red Doug Weight (/165)
02-03 Pacific Red Bryan McCabe
03-04 Pacific Heads Up Retail Limited Vincent Lecavalier
This lot of 5 cards came from Brian (BrianP) in trade. These are more random parallels I felt like picking up, as I was able to help Brian with some Canucks stuff he wanted. Thanks for the deal!
-------------------------------------------------------
05-06 Upper Deck MVP commons
05-06 Upper Deck MVP Cam Ward RC (SP)
05-06 Upper Deck MVP Tribute to Greatness Wayne Gretzky
05-06 Upper Deck All-Time Greatest Patrick Roy
I received these cards from my friend in Atlanta who, as some of you may remember, has also sent me a few programs from the Thrashers games. These two packs of MVP didn't net any Thrashers cards, so she was happy to share the results with me, as well as...
-------------------------------------------------------
05-06 Atlanta Thrashers Ilya Kovalchuk (x2)
...these two cards which were given away at a Thrashers game! The cards are actually made of metal, and are fairly unique. They remind me most of 96-97 Leaf Preferred. These are likely not to hit the secondary market en masse, so they're probably fairly unique items to own. A big thanks to my friend for hooking me up with these cards!
-------------------------------------------------------
90-91 Topps Igor Larionov RC
90-91 Alberta Lotteries Team Canada Greg Andrusak
1994 Signature Rookies Wade Belak
00-01 Pacific Premiere Date Guy Carbonneau (/40)
00-01 Pacific Premiere Date Derian Hatcher (/40)
01-02 Upper Deck Exclusives Jamie Langenbrunner (/100)
01-02 Upper Deck Exclusives Daniel Alfredsson (/100)
01-02 Upper Deck Exclusives Alexei Kovalev (/100)
...see next picture...
-------------------------------------------------------
02-03 Parkhurst Silver Daniel Briere (/50)
03-04 Upper Deck UD Exclusives Teppo Numminen (/50)
03-04 Black Diamond Green Rico Fata (/100)
04-05 UD Legends Clasics Silver Lorne "Gump" Worsley (/75)
05-06 UD Victory Silver Mike York (/250)
05-06 Upper Deck Sunkist Lanny McDonald
The last two pictures contained cards I received from K.L.B. (Canadian Stars Fan). Most of them are more random parallels for my tradelist, with a few other neat items. I like the Andrusak card especially, since it is Andrusak's first card printed. Why does that matter? Andrusak was a Detroit Viper. Thank you for the trade!
-------------------------------------------------------
05-06 Upper Deck Jerseys Series 2 Sergei Samsonov
I purchased this card from elsewhere and am happy to add it to my Samsonov collection. I may look to upgrade at some point, since the swatch isn't great. However, it's two-color -- that's the most important thing.
You may notice something missing near the bottom of the window... it's the swatch! It doesn't fill the entire window. Thank you, scissor-monkeys at Upper Deck!
-------------------------------------------------------
05-06 Upper Deck UD Masterpiece Yellow Plate Ales Kotalik (1/1)
This one seems a bit out of place, but I picked it up on a (relatively) cheap BIN on ebay as an investment. Sure, I may be able to re-sell it for a bit more money... but if I can trade it towards a 1/1 I need in the future, that will be worth it as well. For now, I won't mind owning another 1/1.
From here on out, I will depict one large lot of cards I received from John Makar, a fellow Detroit Vipers collector. He was able to offer up a ton of things I needed, which filled many large holes in my Vipers collection.
-------------------------------------------------------
94-95 Detroit Vipers Coca Cola Pogs (3 uncut discs)
I previously owned only four individual pogs from this extremely difficult set. The difference between that and finding three uncut discs, the way they were originally handed out, is like the difference between night and day. These have been on my wantlist for as long as I've had one! Finally, I was able to complete the three sets I'm requiring myself to collect from this Vipers set.
-------------------------------------------------------
98-99 Detroit Vipers EBK Sports (3 complete sets)
Again here, I tried to find 3 complete sets on my own. All that work was practically for nothing, as I was able to pick up THREE full sets from John.
-------------------------------------------------------
98-99 Detroit Vipers Freschetta (3x each of three colored strips)
GREEN:
Kevin Weekes, Bobby Jay, Peter Ciavaglia, Keith Aldridge
YELLOW:
Ian Herbers, John Emmons, Stan Drulia, Andy Bezeau
PURPLE:
Geoff Sarjeant, John Gruden, Brian Felsner, Darren Banks
This may be one of the most exciting parts of the mailpost. The Freschetta strips were very difficult to locate, and I have never owned as many as I would have liked. With these cards, I was finally able to complete the three-set requirement. There is also a "red" strip of four cards, which I have enough copies of. John didn't know it existed, though, so I sent along my extras to him.
What's most important, though, is finding three full "green" sets. I only originally owned ONE copy of each green card, and now I'm up to four! I know of a few people who were looking for the Kevin Weekes card, and I may make one available to a fellow Weekes collector who has helped me out before as well.
-------------------------------------------------------
97-98 Detroit Vipers Season Schedules (3x Brad Shaw) (3x Jeff Reese)
Detroit Vipers 1994 Detroit Free Press cut-out card Petr Sykora
99-00 Detroit Vipers Nils Ekman (x3)
99-00 Detroit Vipers Andy Bezeau (x2)
Another interesting discovery: While I owned a ton of the 97-98 pocket schedules, I never owned any of the Jeff Reese variation. Now I've got a few!
The Sykora "card" was printed in the newspaper, in a kid's section, and intended to be cut out. I have never even seen this item before, and I think it's very interesting to own! John claimed it to be "the first Detroit Vipers card ever" and I definitely am inclined to believe that.
The 99-00 cards are extras for my trade stock, as I had very few left of those two players.
-------------------------------------------------------
97-98 Detroit Vipers Bobby Jay (100%!!!!!)
Finally, here's the most important card! This is the only 97-98 card I had yet to own... and it was very important because it also counts for one of my specific player collections. With the card in hand, my Bobby Jay collection has increased to a perfect 100%. This is certainly an important accomplishment for me, since Jay was one of the nicest guys to me on the team (and coaching staff, where he spent the 00-01 season). I'm glad to have this one finished up.
-------------------------------------------------------
News and notes:
**I am continuing to update the Press Plate tracker. Here's the link: Press Plate Tracker
**My birthday is next Tuesday, the 25th. I may have a few hockey-related items to share here... but we'll leave it at that for now...
**I am ONLY posting this here at Hobby Insider, which is a smaller registration-only community, as I'm not comfortable with this going out everywhere... but I want to share it with my friends here. I received word on Friday that I am being hired into the National Weather Service.
Through a student program, I'll be fulfilling some work requirements before my college graduation in May 2007... and then hired in permanently for, hopefully, the rest of my life! This is huge news and basically the realization of a dream I've had since I was 5. I really respect the NWS organization and will be a forecaster for them (no, I'm not interested in the whole TV deal 
)
It will affect my card collecting a bit, though. From here on out I'm going to TRY (key word: TRY) to slow things down a bit... once summer starts I will be working full time and won't have as much time to sort through gigantic stacks of parallels, etc. The good news is that I'll have a bit more money, and the chances of me attending the Fall Expo have just shot up exponentially...
Just thought I'd share that bit of good news
now back to your regularly scheduled thread closing.......
That'll be it. Thanks everyone!
LINKS:
http://www.beckett.com/userpages/hatzosman6.html - Homepage/Wantlist/Tradelist
http://pipsey.net:8080/~thegreatzo/players/players.html - Player Collection Website
http://pipsey.net:8080/~thegreatzo/vipersrc/vipersrc.html - Vipers Best-RCs Project
Before we get too far ahead, though, let's deal with the present. There's some great stuff in this mail post. Onward!
-------------------------------------------------------
00-01 Titanium Game Gear Patches Phil Housley (/125)
I received this card from Bryan (lucky19). I'm usually opposed to picking up Titanium patch cards, but this one struck me for two reasons. First, the swatch is an incredible four colors, and is very attractive. What was more important to me, though, was that there are only 125 copies printed. That makes it a definite short print among the rest of the 00-01 Titanium set. Thank you for the trade, Bryan!
-------------------------------------------------------
98-99 Crown Royale Limited Series Mike Dunham (/99)
99-00 Aurora Complete Players Paul Kariya (/299)
01-02 Pacific Heads Up Red Doug Weight (/165)
02-03 Pacific Red Bryan McCabe
03-04 Pacific Heads Up Retail Limited Vincent Lecavalier
This lot of 5 cards came from Brian (BrianP) in trade. These are more random parallels I felt like picking up, as I was able to help Brian with some Canucks stuff he wanted. Thanks for the deal!
-------------------------------------------------------
05-06 Upper Deck MVP commons
05-06 Upper Deck MVP Cam Ward RC (SP)
05-06 Upper Deck MVP Tribute to Greatness Wayne Gretzky
05-06 Upper Deck All-Time Greatest Patrick Roy
I received these cards from my friend in Atlanta who, as some of you may remember, has also sent me a few programs from the Thrashers games. These two packs of MVP didn't net any Thrashers cards, so she was happy to share the results with me, as well as...
-------------------------------------------------------
05-06 Atlanta Thrashers Ilya Kovalchuk (x2)
...these two cards which were given away at a Thrashers game! The cards are actually made of metal, and are fairly unique. They remind me most of 96-97 Leaf Preferred. These are likely not to hit the secondary market en masse, so they're probably fairly unique items to own. A big thanks to my friend for hooking me up with these cards!
-------------------------------------------------------
90-91 Topps Igor Larionov RC
90-91 Alberta Lotteries Team Canada Greg Andrusak
1994 Signature Rookies Wade Belak
00-01 Pacific Premiere Date Guy Carbonneau (/40)
00-01 Pacific Premiere Date Derian Hatcher (/40)
01-02 Upper Deck Exclusives Jamie Langenbrunner (/100)
01-02 Upper Deck Exclusives Daniel Alfredsson (/100)
01-02 Upper Deck Exclusives Alexei Kovalev (/100)
...see next picture...
-------------------------------------------------------
02-03 Parkhurst Silver Daniel Briere (/50)
03-04 Upper Deck UD Exclusives Teppo Numminen (/50)
03-04 Black Diamond Green Rico Fata (/100)
04-05 UD Legends Clasics Silver Lorne "Gump" Worsley (/75)
05-06 UD Victory Silver Mike York (/250)
05-06 Upper Deck Sunkist Lanny McDonald
The last two pictures contained cards I received from K.L.B. (Canadian Stars Fan). Most of them are more random parallels for my tradelist, with a few other neat items. I like the Andrusak card especially, since it is Andrusak's first card printed. Why does that matter? Andrusak was a Detroit Viper. Thank you for the trade!
-------------------------------------------------------
05-06 Upper Deck Jerseys Series 2 Sergei Samsonov
I purchased this card from elsewhere and am happy to add it to my Samsonov collection. I may look to upgrade at some point, since the swatch isn't great. However, it's two-color -- that's the most important thing.
You may notice something missing near the bottom of the window... it's the swatch! It doesn't fill the entire window. Thank you, scissor-monkeys at Upper Deck!
-------------------------------------------------------
05-06 Upper Deck UD Masterpiece Yellow Plate Ales Kotalik (1/1)
This one seems a bit out of place, but I picked it up on a (relatively) cheap BIN on ebay as an investment. Sure, I may be able to re-sell it for a bit more money... but if I can trade it towards a 1/1 I need in the future, that will be worth it as well. For now, I won't mind owning another 1/1.
From here on out, I will depict one large lot of cards I received from John Makar, a fellow Detroit Vipers collector. He was able to offer up a ton of things I needed, which filled many large holes in my Vipers collection.
-------------------------------------------------------
94-95 Detroit Vipers Coca Cola Pogs (3 uncut discs)
I previously owned only four individual pogs from this extremely difficult set. The difference between that and finding three uncut discs, the way they were originally handed out, is like the difference between night and day. These have been on my wantlist for as long as I've had one! Finally, I was able to complete the three sets I'm requiring myself to collect from this Vipers set.
-------------------------------------------------------
98-99 Detroit Vipers EBK Sports (3 complete sets)
Again here, I tried to find 3 complete sets on my own. All that work was practically for nothing, as I was able to pick up THREE full sets from John.
-------------------------------------------------------
98-99 Detroit Vipers Freschetta (3x each of three colored strips)
GREEN:
Kevin Weekes, Bobby Jay, Peter Ciavaglia, Keith Aldridge
YELLOW:
Ian Herbers, John Emmons, Stan Drulia, Andy Bezeau
PURPLE:
Geoff Sarjeant, John Gruden, Brian Felsner, Darren Banks
This may be one of the most exciting parts of the mailpost. The Freschetta strips were very difficult to locate, and I have never owned as many as I would have liked. With these cards, I was finally able to complete the three-set requirement. There is also a "red" strip of four cards, which I have enough copies of. John didn't know it existed, though, so I sent along my extras to him.
What's most important, though, is finding three full "green" sets. I only originally owned ONE copy of each green card, and now I'm up to four! I know of a few people who were looking for the Kevin Weekes card, and I may make one available to a fellow Weekes collector who has helped me out before as well.
-------------------------------------------------------
97-98 Detroit Vipers Season Schedules (3x Brad Shaw) (3x Jeff Reese)
Detroit Vipers 1994 Detroit Free Press cut-out card Petr Sykora
99-00 Detroit Vipers Nils Ekman (x3)
99-00 Detroit Vipers Andy Bezeau (x2)
Another interesting discovery: While I owned a ton of the 97-98 pocket schedules, I never owned any of the Jeff Reese variation. Now I've got a few!
The Sykora "card" was printed in the newspaper, in a kid's section, and intended to be cut out. I have never even seen this item before, and I think it's very interesting to own! John claimed it to be "the first Detroit Vipers card ever" and I definitely am inclined to believe that.
The 99-00 cards are extras for my trade stock, as I had very few left of those two players.
-------------------------------------------------------
97-98 Detroit Vipers Bobby Jay (100%!!!!!)
Finally, here's the most important card! This is the only 97-98 card I had yet to own... and it was very important because it also counts for one of my specific player collections. With the card in hand, my Bobby Jay collection has increased to a perfect 100%. This is certainly an important accomplishment for me, since Jay was one of the nicest guys to me on the team (and coaching staff, where he spent the 00-01 season). I'm glad to have this one finished up.
-------------------------------------------------------
News and notes:
**I am continuing to update the Press Plate tracker. Here's the link: Press Plate Tracker
**My birthday is next Tuesday, the 25th. I may have a few hockey-related items to share here... but we'll leave it at that for now...
**I am ONLY posting this here at Hobby Insider, which is a smaller registration-only community, as I'm not comfortable with this going out everywhere... but I want to share it with my friends here. I received word on Friday that I am being hired into the National Weather Service.
Through a student program, I'll be fulfilling some work requirements before my college graduation in May 2007... and then hired in permanently for, hopefully, the rest of my life! This is huge news and basically the realization of a dream I've had since I was 5. I really respect the NWS organization and will be a forecaster for them (no, I'm not interested in the whole TV deal )It will affect my card collecting a bit, though. From here on out I'm going to TRY (key word: TRY) to slow things down a bit... once summer starts I will be working full time and won't have as much time to sort through gigantic stacks of parallels, etc. The good news is that I'll have a bit more money, and the chances of me attending the Fall Expo have just shot up exponentially...
Just thought I'd share that bit of good news
now back to your regularly scheduled thread closing.......That'll be it. Thanks everyone!
LINKS:
http://www.beckett.com/userpages/hatzosman6.html - Homepage/Wantlist/Tradelist
http://pipsey.net:8080/~thegreatzo/players/players.html - Player Collection Website
http://pipsey.net:8080/~thegreatzo/vipersrc/vipersrc.html - Vipers Best-RCs Project
