The Great Zo
Verified Trader,
The contents of this post are a bit of a mix, with items from a card store, packages from overseas, and a few deals with Hobby Insider members.
Mail Post #17 for 2013
-------------------------------------------------------
1995 Anaheim Bullfrogs RHI Star Image 10 Darren Banks
I'm going to begin this mail post with a truly unexpected and unusual card.
In January 2011, I acquired three complete sets of Anaheim Bullfrogs RHI Roller Hockey cards. With those sets were two cards featuring Darren Banks -- cards that had been on my wantlist for no less than ten years. I was happy to get the Darren Banks cards from the 1995 and 1996 sets. I was absolutely shocked to find this new card on ebay, being sold by someone in the UK. I had never known that a third Darren Banks card existed from the Anaheim Bullfrogs sets!
How does this fit in with the other cards?
-- This card is produced by Star Image, with photo credit to South Coast Photographic. This is identical to the 1996 card, but unlike the original 1995 card (which credits South Coast Photographic alone).
-- The card back designs on both of the 1995 cards are almost identical, and the card back text is a direct copy, with one change. The original card says that Banks played for the Boston Bruins in 89-90, and the new Star Image card says that Banks played for the Calgary Flames in 89-90. In fact, Banks played for neither team in 89-90 -- he made his NHL debut with Boston in 92-93, and never played for Calgary at all.
-- The two "original" cards are standard sized, but the new one is just slightly bigger.
My Darren Banks collection is listed as complete at 11-for-11, but I guess this card makes it 12-for-12.
-------------------------------------------------------
98-99 Upper Deck UD Exclusives Joe Juneau (025/100)
While on a trip to New Hampshire a couple weeks ago, I stopped by Chris's Cards and Comics in Salem. Their selection of singles is very small, but I was able to rescue this awesome old parallel from the discount bin. I love the copper borders!
-------------------------------------------------------
FOUR PACKS -- 13-14 Panini Prizm (Hobby)
Base Cards
I also picked up four hobby packs of Prizm. For the record -- for as much as I hate shopping at "big box" retailers, I've searched a couple looking for blasters or rack packs, and found nothing. So, these may be the only four packs I open.
-------------------------------------------------------
13-14 Panini Prizm Sami Vatanen RC (SP)
13-14 Panini Prizm Justin Schultz RC (SP)
13-14 Panini Prizm Tyler Toffoli RC (SP)
13-14 Panini Prizm Eric Gelinas RC (SP)
I did pretty good with my rookies -- Schultz and Toffoli are well-known, Gelinas is a second round pick, and Vatanen is playing with the Ducks this season.
-------------------------------------------------------
13-14 Panini Prizm Prizms Derek Stepan
13-14 Panini Prizm Immortalized Joe Nieuwendyk
Only one of my packs didn't contain an insert. I received these two cards, and was really happy to get them. I like the die-cut Stanley Cup, and the Prizm is very attractive. The busy card borders, with all the small dots, look awesome when done up in refractor technology.
-------------------------------------------------------
13-14 Panini Prizm Orange Die Cut Prizm Joonas Rask (09/50)
The last pack of the four contained the big hit -- and I'm thrilled to have pulled one of these awesome cards! I believe this is the first NHL-licensed base parallel set to ever use orange as the main color, and it's really quite stunning because of it. No serious collector should ever get sick of chrome refractor cards -- the technology has been used since the mid 90s, and it still hasn't gotten old.
-------------------------------------------------------
12-13 UD Artifacts Rookie Redemptions RED206 Jonathan Audy-Marchessault (034/699)
12-13 UD Artifacts Rookie Redemptions RED224 Richard Panik (093/699)
These two cards arrived in from Upper Deck. It's the first year that the Artifacts rookie redemption cards won't be RCs -- they contain 13-14 eligible players on a 12-13 card release. Still, I will keep track of these for my collection. Now, the quest is on to get the Lightning and Blue Jackets redemption cards from the new Artifacts release.
-------------------------------------------------------
01-02 Vanguard Ty Conklin RC (178/404)
11-12 SP Game Used David Savard RC (094/699)
The next four cards arrived in from Brian (cfind). I had originally just asked about the Ty Conklin RC, from the tough 01-02 Vanguard set. Vanguard RCs from that year are tough to locate -- a print run of 404 usually means "not found."
However, Brian also included three other Blue Jackets RCs -- cards I still needed for my collection! I'm really happy with the Savard RC, as he's in the NHL this season, and he looks about as good as I've ever seen him play.
-------------------------------------------------------
12-13 Upper Deck Dalton Prout RC (SP)
12-13 Black Diamond Shawn Hunwick RC (Triple Diamond)
Here are the other two cards Brian sent. Thanks very much for your help!
-------------------------------------------------------
01-02 Upper Deck Honor Roll Raffi Torres RC / Brendan Shanahan (0144/1000)
05-06 Upper Deck Playoff Performers Martin St. Louis
2006 Upper Deck The National Convention VIP Steve Yzerman
07-08 Upper Deck Victory Curtis McElhinney RC
Next is a batch of nine cards I received from Andrew (Shanahan1414). The Torres RC (with Shanahan) is one of my favorites from the deal. The Torres jersey swatch is white, and the Shanahan jersey swatch is red.
The Martin St. Louis card commemorates his double-OT goal in Calgary to force Game 7 in the 2004 Stanley Cup Final. The card back states that St. Louis was named "Series MVP," which I'm pretty sure doesn't exist. He didn't win the Conn Smythe trophy, either -- that went to Brad Richards.
-------------------------------------------------------
09-10 Ultra Michael Vernace RC (SP)
09-10 Upper Deck MVP Artem Anisimov RC (SP)
10-11 Upper Deck Keith Aulie RC (SP)
11-12 SPx Tomas Kubalik RC (198/499)
Here are four random RCs -- with the cards on the right going into the Blue Jackets collection, and the cards on the left going into the Lightning collection.
-------------------------------------------------------
07-08 Hot Prospects Drew Miller RC (191/399)
The final card from Andrew is a collection-killer -- I now own all 19 of Drew Miller's rookie issues! This one has a three-layer swatch -- black patch, gold patch, and black jersey. Drew Miller only played 14 games with the Lightning in 09-10, before being acquired on waivers by the Red Wings.
Thanks for the sale, Andrew!
-------------------------------------------------------
05-06 SP Authentic Sign of the Times Vaclav Prospal
I think this is the first Vinny Prospal autograph I own, and I plan to keep it in my collection. Prospal has been one of my favorite players for a long time, and this big, hard-signed autograph is a nice one to have. Prospal's NHL career might be done, as the Blue Jackets did not re-sign him, and he hasn't latched on anywhere else.
-------------------------------------------------------
03-04 Topps Pristine (Rare) Nathan Horton (191/199)
The lone Nathan Horton addition for this mail post is a tough one! The Topps Pristine Rare cards don't show up for sale frequently, but this card came very inexpensively.
-------------------------------------------------------
Base Cards from 09-10 Upper Deck
These base cards protected the next card in the mail post.
-------------------------------------------------------
09-10 UD Black Artem Anisimov RC (004/499)
These UD Black RCs are surprisingly tough to find, especially when seeking only the first letter, as I do. I'm glad to have this Anisimov card out of the way, even if his elongated signature is basically illegible. Anisimov had a mediocre training camp, and a rough start to the season, but he now has points in three straight games for Columbus.
-------------------------------------------------------
11-12 The Cup Frederic St. Denis RC (143/199)
Frederic St. Denis is roughly 12th on the Blue Jackets defensive depth chart, so it seems unlikely that he'll ever play for the team. However, this is probably his best rookie card, so I couldn't pass on picking it up for just a few dollars.
-------------------------------------------------------
12-13 Crown Royale Dalton Prout RC (06/99)
I'm a big fan of the Crown Royale Silhouette cards, and I'm glad to pull in two more for this mail post. Here's Dalton Prout's Crown Royale RC, featuring a big piece of the Blue Jackets third jersey. The grey part of the swatch is a thick seam, stitched over the dark blue jersey underneath
-------------------------------------------------------
12-13 Crown Royale J.T. Brown RC (01/99)
I also acquired the Silhouette card of the only Lightning rookie player in the 12-13 product year. This card, featuring J.T. Brown, is the first copy numbered! It features a two-color swatch -- white and blue jersey, with a big seam on the white side.
Now, I'll step overseas for some new European trading cards.
-------------------------------------------------------
13-14 Finnish Cardset 66 Eric Perrin
13-14 Finnish Cardset High Scores 6 Eric Perrin
Yet again, Tatu (MOGO89) was very helpful to me, acquiring five items from the new Finnish Cardset product and sending them my way. The card on the left is this year's base card, and the card on the right is an insert. The card lists Eric Perrin with 317 points in the Finnish league (and the card back specifies that this was completed in 380 games) -- however, unless the stats on HockeyDB are incorrect, I couldn't figure out exactly how these numbers were arrived at.
-------------------------------------------------------
13-14 Finnish Cardset All-Stars Green 2 Eric Perrin
13-14 Finnish Cardset All-Stars Red 6 Tim Thomas
I really like the concept used on these insert cards -- a three-tiered set featuring some of the best players in the history of the Finnish SM-liiga. The green set features the best players of 2010 and into the future, and the red set features the best players of 2000-2010. There is also a blue set, depicting star players from 1990-2000. I'm not sure if there are different odds to the different tiers, or simply different foil colors. To the best of my knowledge, these cards are considered low-end inserts.
Tim Thomas hasn't played in Finland since 04-05, but his season was so dominant (34-13-7 with 15 shutouts and a 1.58 GAA) that the Finnish Cardset people just can't stop producing retrospective cards with Thomas front-and-center.
-------------------------------------------------------
13-14 Finnish Cardset Signatures Eric Perrin (86/128)
The last card from Tatu is a bit on the high-end side, especially for the Finnish card market. Autographed cards and jersey cards are still a very big deal in the Finnish release, so they are much more valuable than the average jersey or autograph cards from NHL products. This card has only 128 copies printed, and is serial numbered by hand on the back.
With that said, I don't think this is a particularly attractive card. It's almost paper-thin -- comparable to Pro Set. The card has no foil, and the sticker autograph quality is not good -- it looks like a piece of non-glossy scotch tape. However -- it's an Eric Perrin autograph, and to the best of my knowledge, it's his first certified autograph card ever!
Eric Perrin also has a patch card in the product, limited to only 100 copies. Any attempts to acquire that card probably start in the $70 US range, so I think I'm unlikely to make a run at it.
Tatu, thank you for your help!
-------------------------------------------------------
12-13 KHL Gold Collection Autographs SIB-A02 Kristian Kudroc (35/50)
-------------------------------------------------------
12-13 KHL Gold Collection Autographs NKH-A10 Martin Cibak (48/50)
While on the subject of autographed cards from overseas, here are two cards from the awesome KHL Gold product! These are very nice cards. They are about as thick as three standard-size cards, so they are very sturdy. The serial numbering is in the same font that Panini and UD use, but the size is slightly bigger. The autograph stickers feature KHL holograms, and the card design clearly shows some effort was put into it. For anyone who isn't collecting SeReal's KHL card sets, or at least paying attention to them, you're missing out. They're doing a great job.
Kudroc and Cibak were both members of the Detroit Vipers in their final season of existence (00-01). This isn't Kudroc's first autographed card, as he appeared in 01-02 BAP Signature Series. This is the first certified autograph card of Martin Cibak. I just wish that last loop on the signature didn't go off the sticker!
The final card in this mail post is a first for my collection -- a bit of precious metal to commemorate a championship!
-------------------------------------------------------
12-13 Dominion Engravatures Alec Martinez (03/15)
Let me get this out of the way first -- this is a very heavy card! The weight of the silver in the card is very obvious when holding it, as the card's center of balance is shifted to the bottom right.
If I'm being pedantic, this isn't the first piece of silver in my collection -- I own the Sergei Samsonov Pure Silver coin from 97-98 Pinnacle Mint. However, it's the first Engravatures card in my collection. Tim Thomas was featured in the set as well, but I've never been able to pull the trigger on that one, with prices hovering right around the triple digit mark. This card was nowhere near that expensive.
I haven't had the easiest time finding cards from Prime/Dominion, but I have seen at least six copies of this Martinez card -- a pretty high percentage of the print run. I wouldn't mind if this card was numbered to 50, or 100, or even higher -- I just think it's a great idea that Panini came up with, and one of the best and truest innovations in the last several years of card collecting. It seems a given that they'll have to take this idea to the next level at some point -- how neat would a signed-on-the-silver autographed parallel be?
-----------------
News and notes:
** If all goes well, my next two mail posts will be heavily themed to my two largest player collections -- Sergei Samsonov and Tim Thomas. I'm waiting on a few key incoming items, but there will certainly be some very nice cards worth sharing!
** Why on earth are people asking so much for the Lightning redemption from Artifacts? Drouin's in juniors, and the Lightning haven't even debuted a rookie yet. When they do, it'll be some guy no one's ever heard of (except for me).
That'll be it. Thanks everyone!
--Andy
http://www.thegreatzo.com/cards/
-------------------------------------------------------
Mail Post #17 for 2013
-------------------------------------------------------
1995 Anaheim Bullfrogs RHI Star Image 10 Darren Banks
I'm going to begin this mail post with a truly unexpected and unusual card.
In January 2011, I acquired three complete sets of Anaheim Bullfrogs RHI Roller Hockey cards. With those sets were two cards featuring Darren Banks -- cards that had been on my wantlist for no less than ten years. I was happy to get the Darren Banks cards from the 1995 and 1996 sets. I was absolutely shocked to find this new card on ebay, being sold by someone in the UK. I had never known that a third Darren Banks card existed from the Anaheim Bullfrogs sets!
How does this fit in with the other cards?
-- This card is produced by Star Image, with photo credit to South Coast Photographic. This is identical to the 1996 card, but unlike the original 1995 card (which credits South Coast Photographic alone).
-- The card back designs on both of the 1995 cards are almost identical, and the card back text is a direct copy, with one change. The original card says that Banks played for the Boston Bruins in 89-90, and the new Star Image card says that Banks played for the Calgary Flames in 89-90. In fact, Banks played for neither team in 89-90 -- he made his NHL debut with Boston in 92-93, and never played for Calgary at all.
-- The two "original" cards are standard sized, but the new one is just slightly bigger.
My Darren Banks collection is listed as complete at 11-for-11, but I guess this card makes it 12-for-12.
-------------------------------------------------------
98-99 Upper Deck UD Exclusives Joe Juneau (025/100)
While on a trip to New Hampshire a couple weeks ago, I stopped by Chris's Cards and Comics in Salem. Their selection of singles is very small, but I was able to rescue this awesome old parallel from the discount bin. I love the copper borders!
-------------------------------------------------------
FOUR PACKS -- 13-14 Panini Prizm (Hobby)
Base Cards
I also picked up four hobby packs of Prizm. For the record -- for as much as I hate shopping at "big box" retailers, I've searched a couple looking for blasters or rack packs, and found nothing. So, these may be the only four packs I open.
-------------------------------------------------------
13-14 Panini Prizm Sami Vatanen RC (SP)
13-14 Panini Prizm Justin Schultz RC (SP)
13-14 Panini Prizm Tyler Toffoli RC (SP)
13-14 Panini Prizm Eric Gelinas RC (SP)
I did pretty good with my rookies -- Schultz and Toffoli are well-known, Gelinas is a second round pick, and Vatanen is playing with the Ducks this season.
-------------------------------------------------------
13-14 Panini Prizm Prizms Derek Stepan
13-14 Panini Prizm Immortalized Joe Nieuwendyk
Only one of my packs didn't contain an insert. I received these two cards, and was really happy to get them. I like the die-cut Stanley Cup, and the Prizm is very attractive. The busy card borders, with all the small dots, look awesome when done up in refractor technology.
-------------------------------------------------------
13-14 Panini Prizm Orange Die Cut Prizm Joonas Rask (09/50)
The last pack of the four contained the big hit -- and I'm thrilled to have pulled one of these awesome cards! I believe this is the first NHL-licensed base parallel set to ever use orange as the main color, and it's really quite stunning because of it. No serious collector should ever get sick of chrome refractor cards -- the technology has been used since the mid 90s, and it still hasn't gotten old.
-------------------------------------------------------
12-13 UD Artifacts Rookie Redemptions RED206 Jonathan Audy-Marchessault (034/699)
12-13 UD Artifacts Rookie Redemptions RED224 Richard Panik (093/699)
These two cards arrived in from Upper Deck. It's the first year that the Artifacts rookie redemption cards won't be RCs -- they contain 13-14 eligible players on a 12-13 card release. Still, I will keep track of these for my collection. Now, the quest is on to get the Lightning and Blue Jackets redemption cards from the new Artifacts release.
-------------------------------------------------------
01-02 Vanguard Ty Conklin RC (178/404)
11-12 SP Game Used David Savard RC (094/699)
The next four cards arrived in from Brian (cfind). I had originally just asked about the Ty Conklin RC, from the tough 01-02 Vanguard set. Vanguard RCs from that year are tough to locate -- a print run of 404 usually means "not found."
However, Brian also included three other Blue Jackets RCs -- cards I still needed for my collection! I'm really happy with the Savard RC, as he's in the NHL this season, and he looks about as good as I've ever seen him play.
-------------------------------------------------------
12-13 Upper Deck Dalton Prout RC (SP)
12-13 Black Diamond Shawn Hunwick RC (Triple Diamond)
Here are the other two cards Brian sent. Thanks very much for your help!
-------------------------------------------------------
01-02 Upper Deck Honor Roll Raffi Torres RC / Brendan Shanahan (0144/1000)
05-06 Upper Deck Playoff Performers Martin St. Louis
2006 Upper Deck The National Convention VIP Steve Yzerman
07-08 Upper Deck Victory Curtis McElhinney RC
Next is a batch of nine cards I received from Andrew (Shanahan1414). The Torres RC (with Shanahan) is one of my favorites from the deal. The Torres jersey swatch is white, and the Shanahan jersey swatch is red.
The Martin St. Louis card commemorates his double-OT goal in Calgary to force Game 7 in the 2004 Stanley Cup Final. The card back states that St. Louis was named "Series MVP," which I'm pretty sure doesn't exist. He didn't win the Conn Smythe trophy, either -- that went to Brad Richards.
-------------------------------------------------------
09-10 Ultra Michael Vernace RC (SP)
09-10 Upper Deck MVP Artem Anisimov RC (SP)
10-11 Upper Deck Keith Aulie RC (SP)
11-12 SPx Tomas Kubalik RC (198/499)
Here are four random RCs -- with the cards on the right going into the Blue Jackets collection, and the cards on the left going into the Lightning collection.
-------------------------------------------------------
07-08 Hot Prospects Drew Miller RC (191/399)
The final card from Andrew is a collection-killer -- I now own all 19 of Drew Miller's rookie issues! This one has a three-layer swatch -- black patch, gold patch, and black jersey. Drew Miller only played 14 games with the Lightning in 09-10, before being acquired on waivers by the Red Wings.
Thanks for the sale, Andrew!
-------------------------------------------------------
05-06 SP Authentic Sign of the Times Vaclav Prospal
I think this is the first Vinny Prospal autograph I own, and I plan to keep it in my collection. Prospal has been one of my favorite players for a long time, and this big, hard-signed autograph is a nice one to have. Prospal's NHL career might be done, as the Blue Jackets did not re-sign him, and he hasn't latched on anywhere else.
-------------------------------------------------------
03-04 Topps Pristine (Rare) Nathan Horton (191/199)
The lone Nathan Horton addition for this mail post is a tough one! The Topps Pristine Rare cards don't show up for sale frequently, but this card came very inexpensively.
-------------------------------------------------------
Base Cards from 09-10 Upper Deck
These base cards protected the next card in the mail post.
-------------------------------------------------------
09-10 UD Black Artem Anisimov RC (004/499)
These UD Black RCs are surprisingly tough to find, especially when seeking only the first letter, as I do. I'm glad to have this Anisimov card out of the way, even if his elongated signature is basically illegible. Anisimov had a mediocre training camp, and a rough start to the season, but he now has points in three straight games for Columbus.
-------------------------------------------------------
11-12 The Cup Frederic St. Denis RC (143/199)
Frederic St. Denis is roughly 12th on the Blue Jackets defensive depth chart, so it seems unlikely that he'll ever play for the team. However, this is probably his best rookie card, so I couldn't pass on picking it up for just a few dollars.
-------------------------------------------------------
12-13 Crown Royale Dalton Prout RC (06/99)
I'm a big fan of the Crown Royale Silhouette cards, and I'm glad to pull in two more for this mail post. Here's Dalton Prout's Crown Royale RC, featuring a big piece of the Blue Jackets third jersey. The grey part of the swatch is a thick seam, stitched over the dark blue jersey underneath
-------------------------------------------------------
12-13 Crown Royale J.T. Brown RC (01/99)
I also acquired the Silhouette card of the only Lightning rookie player in the 12-13 product year. This card, featuring J.T. Brown, is the first copy numbered! It features a two-color swatch -- white and blue jersey, with a big seam on the white side.
Now, I'll step overseas for some new European trading cards.
-------------------------------------------------------
13-14 Finnish Cardset 66 Eric Perrin
13-14 Finnish Cardset High Scores 6 Eric Perrin
Yet again, Tatu (MOGO89) was very helpful to me, acquiring five items from the new Finnish Cardset product and sending them my way. The card on the left is this year's base card, and the card on the right is an insert. The card lists Eric Perrin with 317 points in the Finnish league (and the card back specifies that this was completed in 380 games) -- however, unless the stats on HockeyDB are incorrect, I couldn't figure out exactly how these numbers were arrived at.
-------------------------------------------------------
13-14 Finnish Cardset All-Stars Green 2 Eric Perrin
13-14 Finnish Cardset All-Stars Red 6 Tim Thomas
I really like the concept used on these insert cards -- a three-tiered set featuring some of the best players in the history of the Finnish SM-liiga. The green set features the best players of 2010 and into the future, and the red set features the best players of 2000-2010. There is also a blue set, depicting star players from 1990-2000. I'm not sure if there are different odds to the different tiers, or simply different foil colors. To the best of my knowledge, these cards are considered low-end inserts.
Tim Thomas hasn't played in Finland since 04-05, but his season was so dominant (34-13-7 with 15 shutouts and a 1.58 GAA) that the Finnish Cardset people just can't stop producing retrospective cards with Thomas front-and-center.
-------------------------------------------------------
13-14 Finnish Cardset Signatures Eric Perrin (86/128)
The last card from Tatu is a bit on the high-end side, especially for the Finnish card market. Autographed cards and jersey cards are still a very big deal in the Finnish release, so they are much more valuable than the average jersey or autograph cards from NHL products. This card has only 128 copies printed, and is serial numbered by hand on the back.
With that said, I don't think this is a particularly attractive card. It's almost paper-thin -- comparable to Pro Set. The card has no foil, and the sticker autograph quality is not good -- it looks like a piece of non-glossy scotch tape. However -- it's an Eric Perrin autograph, and to the best of my knowledge, it's his first certified autograph card ever!
Eric Perrin also has a patch card in the product, limited to only 100 copies. Any attempts to acquire that card probably start in the $70 US range, so I think I'm unlikely to make a run at it.
Tatu, thank you for your help!
-------------------------------------------------------
12-13 KHL Gold Collection Autographs SIB-A02 Kristian Kudroc (35/50)
-------------------------------------------------------
12-13 KHL Gold Collection Autographs NKH-A10 Martin Cibak (48/50)
While on the subject of autographed cards from overseas, here are two cards from the awesome KHL Gold product! These are very nice cards. They are about as thick as three standard-size cards, so they are very sturdy. The serial numbering is in the same font that Panini and UD use, but the size is slightly bigger. The autograph stickers feature KHL holograms, and the card design clearly shows some effort was put into it. For anyone who isn't collecting SeReal's KHL card sets, or at least paying attention to them, you're missing out. They're doing a great job.
Kudroc and Cibak were both members of the Detroit Vipers in their final season of existence (00-01). This isn't Kudroc's first autographed card, as he appeared in 01-02 BAP Signature Series. This is the first certified autograph card of Martin Cibak. I just wish that last loop on the signature didn't go off the sticker!
The final card in this mail post is a first for my collection -- a bit of precious metal to commemorate a championship!
-------------------------------------------------------
12-13 Dominion Engravatures Alec Martinez (03/15)
Let me get this out of the way first -- this is a very heavy card! The weight of the silver in the card is very obvious when holding it, as the card's center of balance is shifted to the bottom right.
If I'm being pedantic, this isn't the first piece of silver in my collection -- I own the Sergei Samsonov Pure Silver coin from 97-98 Pinnacle Mint. However, it's the first Engravatures card in my collection. Tim Thomas was featured in the set as well, but I've never been able to pull the trigger on that one, with prices hovering right around the triple digit mark. This card was nowhere near that expensive.
I haven't had the easiest time finding cards from Prime/Dominion, but I have seen at least six copies of this Martinez card -- a pretty high percentage of the print run. I wouldn't mind if this card was numbered to 50, or 100, or even higher -- I just think it's a great idea that Panini came up with, and one of the best and truest innovations in the last several years of card collecting. It seems a given that they'll have to take this idea to the next level at some point -- how neat would a signed-on-the-silver autographed parallel be?
-----------------
News and notes:
** If all goes well, my next two mail posts will be heavily themed to my two largest player collections -- Sergei Samsonov and Tim Thomas. I'm waiting on a few key incoming items, but there will certainly be some very nice cards worth sharing!
** Why on earth are people asking so much for the Lightning redemption from Artifacts? Drouin's in juniors, and the Lightning haven't even debuted a rookie yet. When they do, it'll be some guy no one's ever heard of (except for me).
That'll be it. Thanks everyone!
--Andy
http://www.thegreatzo.com/cards/
-------------------------------------------------------
Last edited:
