The Great Zo
Verified Trader,
The 2014 Olympics are putting hockey in the national spotlight, but it's one guy who was on the 2010 team -- Tim Thomas -- who highlights this mail post.
Mail Post #3 for 2014
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98-99 Bowman's Best Fusion Atomic Refractor (Uncut / Unreleased)
-- John LeClair / Bates Battaglia
Here's an odd item for one of my mail posts -- a back-doored card (slightly larger than standard size) featuring two players I have no interest in at all!
Why did I acquire it? I was working on a deal with Rico Jacob, a trader from Germany, who collects Bates Battaglia. In exchange for the four cards he had found for me, he asked me to purchase this card for him from ebay.
I wasn't initially sure that I'd be able to get the card, because it was listed for a ridiculously high BIN price. However, I ended up making a very fair deal with the seller, getting the card for less than half of the original asking price. I sent the card to Rico, and acquired the next four cards in the mail post.
-------------------------------------------------------
10-11 German Lausitzer Fuchse Marek Posmyk (Set 1)
10-11 German Lausitzer Fuchse Marek Posmyk (Set 2)
These two cards are from team sets that Rico produces for his favorite team, Lausitzer Fuchse of the second-tier German league (now the DEL2). Only ten copies of each set are produced.
These cards probably fall somewhere between "team issue" and "fan creation" -- because of that, I haven't yet decided how I'll catalog them for my collection. Their scarcity alone makes them worth owning!
-------------------------------------------------------
13-14 Czech OFS Marek Posmyk
Here's another Posmyk card -- his only new item from the 2013-14 Czech OFS product.
-------------------------------------------------------
08-09 German DEL Parallels Travis Brigley (1 of 70)
The last card from Rico is a very nice one -- a parallel (limited to 70 copies) from the 2008-09 German DEL set. Although I own most of Brigley's cards from the DEL, I still need two cards from 08-09 -- a preview set multi-player card, and another parallel limited to 35 copies.
-------------------------------------------------------
08-09 Upper Deck MVP Winter Classic Chris Chelios
05-06 Upper Deck Ice Marian Hossa
These next two cards were delivered to me from a friend in Chicago. They were just random hockey cards he had found, and I can say that the Winter Classic card was actually one of the ones distributed from the event at Wrigley Field!
-------------------------------------------------------
11-12 Upper Deck Corey Tropp RC (SP)
13-14 Upper Deck Ryan Murray RC (SP)
The next four cards arrived in from a trade with P-L (Ultimater). Here are two Young Guns RCs for my collection
-------------------------------------------------------
06-07 SP Authentic 194 Benoit Pouliot RC (648/999)
This next card -- Benoit Pouliot's SP Authentic autographed RC -- was an awesome extra! Pouliot also has a non-autographed RC in the set (#238), which I already own.
-------------------------------------------------------
05-06 SP Authentic Valtteri Filppula RC (044/999)
The best card from the transaction is one of Valtteri Filppula's key rookie cards. He's going to be a fixture with the Lightning for a while, so his RCs have moved up a bit on my priority list.
Thank you for the trade, P-L!
-------------------------------------------------------
00-01 Titanium Retail Marian Gaborik RC (180/199)
This Gaborik rookie card is one of his best, and completes the trifecta of Titanium RCs -- hobby #/99, retail #/199, and Draft Day Edition #/1000. I got the hobby version last year, but I have owned the Draft Day Edition card for a long time.
-------------------------------------------------------
11-12 Panini Rookie Anthology Allen York RC (446/499)
This card contains two jersey swatches from current Syracuse Crunch goaltender Allen York. The swatches are dark blue and off-white, and come from the Blue Jackets third jersey. I only need two more Allen York RCs -- Crown Royale and Panini Elite.
-------------------------------------------------------
12-13 Certified Path to the Cup Conference Finals Dual Jersey
-- Paul Bissonnette / Alec Martinez (01/50)
This card arrived with the Allen York card above. This is a really important addition to my Alec Martinez collection, coming from the poorly-opened Panini Certified product. I have seen only a few copies of this card, despite a print run of 50. The Martinez swatch is white, and the Bissonnette swatch is the Coyotes' "sedona red" color. For a bonus, this is the first copy numbered.
Although I own the base version of this card, I have yet to pick up the Prime parallel, which is limited to only ten copies. I only recall seeing two of those, and I believe one of them is owned by a Bissonnette collector.
-------------------------------------------------------
12-13 Crown Royale All The King's Men Prime Alec Martinez (46/50)
I have one more Martinez card for this mail post -- the prime version of this Rookie Anthology insert set. The card featuers a two-layer swatch -- silver seam and black jersey. This completes the set of three, as I already own the jersey and patch versions.
-------------------------------------------------------
13-14 Black Diamond Hardware Heroes Sergei Bobrovsky (041/100)
I always like to acquire cards that feature players from the Blue Jackets or Lightning who have won major NHL awards, and these insert cards from Black Diamond are among my favorites. I have to say that I'm a little disappointed in this year's set, as the construction feels cheaper, and there is no die-cutting on the card. I do like that the trophy name and year -- the 2013 Vezina Trophy for Sergei Bobrovsky -- is listed on the card front. I have no idea why they needed to include the year "2012" here, though!
The rest of this mail post will focus on Tim Thomas, with some outstanding memorabilia pieces I'm happy to show off!
-------------------------------------------------------
11-12 SP Game Used Authentic Fabrics Six Jersey (5/7)
-- Carey Price / Michael Cammalleri / P.K. Subban
-- Tim Thomas / Milan Lucic / Zdeno Chara
(RETURNED)
First, a disappointing story -- I no longer own this card.
I got it from a low-feedback seller for a very low price, but the card arrived without its associated COA (UDC113901). After asking the seller about it, and learning he was unable to find the COA, we decided to go the route of a refund. To me, the COA is an integral part of these SPGU multi-memorabilia cards, and I would have felt strange having this in my collection without it.
-------------------------------------------------------
10-11 Zenith Yours Truly Tim Thomas
Finally! Here's a relatively tough autographed card that completes a "9 card sheet" from 10-11 Zenith -- as Thomas had exactly nine different cards in the product. Although I don't see that this card is marked as a SP on either the Beckett or Panini checklists, I certainly haven't seen all that many of them. I would estimate a print run of around 50-75 copies (maybe as high as 100).
-------------------------------------------------------
11-12 Dominion Autographed Patches Tim Thomas (05/60)
This card combines two great elements -- a hard-signed autograph and a game-used patch. I'm still frustrated by the lack of insert set names in the Dominion product, so I guess this one just gets referred to (rather generically) as "autographed patches." The patch swatch on this card has four layers -- black jersey, white patch, black stitching, and yellow patch.
-------------------------------------------------------
11-12 Between The Pipes Game-Used Jersey Gold Tim Thomas (/10)
I already own several Cross-Canada Tour 1/1 cards with the same design, and similar jersey swatches. This card is the pack-inserted Gold Jersey version, which is limited to just ten copies. The swatch has three layers -- white jersey, black seam, and yellow jersey.
-------------------------------------------------------
11-12 Between The Pipes Anniversary Jumbo Glove Tim Thomas (/10)
How about a couple more BTP cards limited to just ten copies?
This is one of five Anniversary Jumbo cards to feature Tim Thomas. The glove swatch on this card is white, with several puck marks and two layers of stitching.
-------------------------------------------------------
11-12 Between The Pipes Anniversary Jumbo Stick Tim Thomas (/10)
This card is even nicer than the last one! I can't even begin to count how many different color layers are on this enormous stick swatch, between the three Bruins colors -- white, black, and yellow.
This swatch appears to come from the word "SUPREME" as visible on the shaft of this Bauer stick.
As I already own the Jumbo Pad, that leaves me with just two more of the Anniversary Jumbo cards to acquire -- jersey and glove/pad.
-------------------------------------------------------
10-11 UD Artifacts Tundra Tandems Jerseys Black Tim Thomas / Tuukka Rask (1 of 1)
I'm really happy to reel in this new 1/1 card, even if it's not one of my favorite set designs. Both jersey swatches are yellow.
This card completes the four jerseys from the 10-11 Tundra Tandems set -- the others are Silver #/75, Emerald #/35, and Gold #/10. I'm only one-for-three on the patches (Emerald #/40), but with the way the cards were tiered in 10-11, this new card is the only 1/1 from the Tundra Tandems set.
-------------------------------------------------------
2012 ITG Ultimate The National Superbox Redemption
-- Dual Memorabilia Tim Thomas (01/01)
-------------------------------------------------------
2012 ITG Ultimate The National Superbox
-- Autograph and Memorabilia Tim Thomas (01/01)
These two incredible Tim Thomas cards are basically bookends to each other, as evidenced by the similar design.
First, how were these cards released? Both are from the 2012 National Sports Collectors Convention in Baltimore, Maryland. The autographed version was included in each Ultimate Memorabilia 11th Edition Superbox, which included one of 100 1/1 cards, and five packs of the product. Those who opened the box at the In The Game booth also received a non-autographed 1/1 redemption card.
Both of these items sat on ebay for quite a while, but I waited out the high prices, and things eventually came down. I paid what I thought were fair values for promotional, unlicensed (but still very attractive) Tim Thomas memorabilia cards.
Both cards contain memorabilia pieces from Tim Thomas jerseys with the Boston Bruins and Providence Bruins. The Boston patch pieces contain several layers of white, black, and yellow (three for the memorabilia card, and four for the autographed card). The Providence patch pieces contain five layers of silver and black stitching each, clearly from the Reebok logo. I wonder why the full Reebok logo wasn't used for a card?
Three new Tim Thomas 1/1s? That makes for a nice end to this post! I'm up to 71 different Tim Thomas 1/1 cards in all.
-----------------
News and notes:
** Tim Thomas made his debut for the Florida Panthers in October, and he'll finally appear in a set as a member of the team in late February (Totally Certified). I'm not exactly clamoring for more Tim Thomas cards -- my wantlist is too long, as it is -- but why did it take over four months to get him in a product?
** My next post will be a little bit of back-to-basics, with a batch of tough 90s minor league cards that I needed for several obscure player collections!
That'll be it. Thanks everyone!
--Andy
http://www.thegreatzo.com/cards/
-------------------------------------------------------
Mail Post #3 for 2014
-------------------------------------------------------
98-99 Bowman's Best Fusion Atomic Refractor (Uncut / Unreleased)
-- John LeClair / Bates Battaglia
Here's an odd item for one of my mail posts -- a back-doored card (slightly larger than standard size) featuring two players I have no interest in at all!
Why did I acquire it? I was working on a deal with Rico Jacob, a trader from Germany, who collects Bates Battaglia. In exchange for the four cards he had found for me, he asked me to purchase this card for him from ebay.
I wasn't initially sure that I'd be able to get the card, because it was listed for a ridiculously high BIN price. However, I ended up making a very fair deal with the seller, getting the card for less than half of the original asking price. I sent the card to Rico, and acquired the next four cards in the mail post.
-------------------------------------------------------
10-11 German Lausitzer Fuchse Marek Posmyk (Set 1)
10-11 German Lausitzer Fuchse Marek Posmyk (Set 2)
These two cards are from team sets that Rico produces for his favorite team, Lausitzer Fuchse of the second-tier German league (now the DEL2). Only ten copies of each set are produced.
These cards probably fall somewhere between "team issue" and "fan creation" -- because of that, I haven't yet decided how I'll catalog them for my collection. Their scarcity alone makes them worth owning!
-------------------------------------------------------
13-14 Czech OFS Marek Posmyk
Here's another Posmyk card -- his only new item from the 2013-14 Czech OFS product.
-------------------------------------------------------
08-09 German DEL Parallels Travis Brigley (1 of 70)
The last card from Rico is a very nice one -- a parallel (limited to 70 copies) from the 2008-09 German DEL set. Although I own most of Brigley's cards from the DEL, I still need two cards from 08-09 -- a preview set multi-player card, and another parallel limited to 35 copies.
-------------------------------------------------------
08-09 Upper Deck MVP Winter Classic Chris Chelios
05-06 Upper Deck Ice Marian Hossa
These next two cards were delivered to me from a friend in Chicago. They were just random hockey cards he had found, and I can say that the Winter Classic card was actually one of the ones distributed from the event at Wrigley Field!
-------------------------------------------------------
11-12 Upper Deck Corey Tropp RC (SP)
13-14 Upper Deck Ryan Murray RC (SP)
The next four cards arrived in from a trade with P-L (Ultimater). Here are two Young Guns RCs for my collection
-------------------------------------------------------
06-07 SP Authentic 194 Benoit Pouliot RC (648/999)
This next card -- Benoit Pouliot's SP Authentic autographed RC -- was an awesome extra! Pouliot also has a non-autographed RC in the set (#238), which I already own.
-------------------------------------------------------
05-06 SP Authentic Valtteri Filppula RC (044/999)
The best card from the transaction is one of Valtteri Filppula's key rookie cards. He's going to be a fixture with the Lightning for a while, so his RCs have moved up a bit on my priority list.
Thank you for the trade, P-L!
-------------------------------------------------------
00-01 Titanium Retail Marian Gaborik RC (180/199)
This Gaborik rookie card is one of his best, and completes the trifecta of Titanium RCs -- hobby #/99, retail #/199, and Draft Day Edition #/1000. I got the hobby version last year, but I have owned the Draft Day Edition card for a long time.
-------------------------------------------------------
11-12 Panini Rookie Anthology Allen York RC (446/499)
This card contains two jersey swatches from current Syracuse Crunch goaltender Allen York. The swatches are dark blue and off-white, and come from the Blue Jackets third jersey. I only need two more Allen York RCs -- Crown Royale and Panini Elite.
-------------------------------------------------------
12-13 Certified Path to the Cup Conference Finals Dual Jersey
-- Paul Bissonnette / Alec Martinez (01/50)
This card arrived with the Allen York card above. This is a really important addition to my Alec Martinez collection, coming from the poorly-opened Panini Certified product. I have seen only a few copies of this card, despite a print run of 50. The Martinez swatch is white, and the Bissonnette swatch is the Coyotes' "sedona red" color. For a bonus, this is the first copy numbered.
Although I own the base version of this card, I have yet to pick up the Prime parallel, which is limited to only ten copies. I only recall seeing two of those, and I believe one of them is owned by a Bissonnette collector.
-------------------------------------------------------
12-13 Crown Royale All The King's Men Prime Alec Martinez (46/50)
I have one more Martinez card for this mail post -- the prime version of this Rookie Anthology insert set. The card featuers a two-layer swatch -- silver seam and black jersey. This completes the set of three, as I already own the jersey and patch versions.
-------------------------------------------------------
13-14 Black Diamond Hardware Heroes Sergei Bobrovsky (041/100)
I always like to acquire cards that feature players from the Blue Jackets or Lightning who have won major NHL awards, and these insert cards from Black Diamond are among my favorites. I have to say that I'm a little disappointed in this year's set, as the construction feels cheaper, and there is no die-cutting on the card. I do like that the trophy name and year -- the 2013 Vezina Trophy for Sergei Bobrovsky -- is listed on the card front. I have no idea why they needed to include the year "2012" here, though!
The rest of this mail post will focus on Tim Thomas, with some outstanding memorabilia pieces I'm happy to show off!
-------------------------------------------------------
11-12 SP Game Used Authentic Fabrics Six Jersey (5/7)
-- Carey Price / Michael Cammalleri / P.K. Subban
-- Tim Thomas / Milan Lucic / Zdeno Chara
(RETURNED)
First, a disappointing story -- I no longer own this card.
I got it from a low-feedback seller for a very low price, but the card arrived without its associated COA (UDC113901). After asking the seller about it, and learning he was unable to find the COA, we decided to go the route of a refund. To me, the COA is an integral part of these SPGU multi-memorabilia cards, and I would have felt strange having this in my collection without it.
-------------------------------------------------------
10-11 Zenith Yours Truly Tim Thomas
Finally! Here's a relatively tough autographed card that completes a "9 card sheet" from 10-11 Zenith -- as Thomas had exactly nine different cards in the product. Although I don't see that this card is marked as a SP on either the Beckett or Panini checklists, I certainly haven't seen all that many of them. I would estimate a print run of around 50-75 copies (maybe as high as 100).
-------------------------------------------------------
11-12 Dominion Autographed Patches Tim Thomas (05/60)
This card combines two great elements -- a hard-signed autograph and a game-used patch. I'm still frustrated by the lack of insert set names in the Dominion product, so I guess this one just gets referred to (rather generically) as "autographed patches." The patch swatch on this card has four layers -- black jersey, white patch, black stitching, and yellow patch.
-------------------------------------------------------
11-12 Between The Pipes Game-Used Jersey Gold Tim Thomas (/10)
I already own several Cross-Canada Tour 1/1 cards with the same design, and similar jersey swatches. This card is the pack-inserted Gold Jersey version, which is limited to just ten copies. The swatch has three layers -- white jersey, black seam, and yellow jersey.
-------------------------------------------------------
11-12 Between The Pipes Anniversary Jumbo Glove Tim Thomas (/10)
How about a couple more BTP cards limited to just ten copies?
This is one of five Anniversary Jumbo cards to feature Tim Thomas. The glove swatch on this card is white, with several puck marks and two layers of stitching.
-------------------------------------------------------
11-12 Between The Pipes Anniversary Jumbo Stick Tim Thomas (/10)
This card is even nicer than the last one! I can't even begin to count how many different color layers are on this enormous stick swatch, between the three Bruins colors -- white, black, and yellow.
This swatch appears to come from the word "SUPREME" as visible on the shaft of this Bauer stick.
As I already own the Jumbo Pad, that leaves me with just two more of the Anniversary Jumbo cards to acquire -- jersey and glove/pad.
-------------------------------------------------------
10-11 UD Artifacts Tundra Tandems Jerseys Black Tim Thomas / Tuukka Rask (1 of 1)
I'm really happy to reel in this new 1/1 card, even if it's not one of my favorite set designs. Both jersey swatches are yellow.
This card completes the four jerseys from the 10-11 Tundra Tandems set -- the others are Silver #/75, Emerald #/35, and Gold #/10. I'm only one-for-three on the patches (Emerald #/40), but with the way the cards were tiered in 10-11, this new card is the only 1/1 from the Tundra Tandems set.
-------------------------------------------------------
2012 ITG Ultimate The National Superbox Redemption
-- Dual Memorabilia Tim Thomas (01/01)
-------------------------------------------------------
2012 ITG Ultimate The National Superbox
-- Autograph and Memorabilia Tim Thomas (01/01)
These two incredible Tim Thomas cards are basically bookends to each other, as evidenced by the similar design.
First, how were these cards released? Both are from the 2012 National Sports Collectors Convention in Baltimore, Maryland. The autographed version was included in each Ultimate Memorabilia 11th Edition Superbox, which included one of 100 1/1 cards, and five packs of the product. Those who opened the box at the In The Game booth also received a non-autographed 1/1 redemption card.
Both of these items sat on ebay for quite a while, but I waited out the high prices, and things eventually came down. I paid what I thought were fair values for promotional, unlicensed (but still very attractive) Tim Thomas memorabilia cards.
Both cards contain memorabilia pieces from Tim Thomas jerseys with the Boston Bruins and Providence Bruins. The Boston patch pieces contain several layers of white, black, and yellow (three for the memorabilia card, and four for the autographed card). The Providence patch pieces contain five layers of silver and black stitching each, clearly from the Reebok logo. I wonder why the full Reebok logo wasn't used for a card?
Three new Tim Thomas 1/1s? That makes for a nice end to this post! I'm up to 71 different Tim Thomas 1/1 cards in all.
-----------------
News and notes:
** Tim Thomas made his debut for the Florida Panthers in October, and he'll finally appear in a set as a member of the team in late February (Totally Certified). I'm not exactly clamoring for more Tim Thomas cards -- my wantlist is too long, as it is -- but why did it take over four months to get him in a product?
** My next post will be a little bit of back-to-basics, with a batch of tough 90s minor league cards that I needed for several obscure player collections!
That'll be it. Thanks everyone!
--Andy
http://www.thegreatzo.com/cards/
-------------------------------------------------------
