sedinfan
Verified Trader,
First off, hope everyone's staying safe!
I haven't been around much for a couple of years as other priorities had taken over for a while, finally finding life is slowing down a bit during quarantine-time and hopefully back to enjoy the forums.
While I've been known as the Sedin guy for many (many) years, I've always enjoyed set collecting since I completed my first OPC sticker book back in 81-82. In the twilight of the Sedins' careers, I found myself looking to return to my roots and looked for sets that appealed to me; when I saw the preview pictures for Leaf's 2016 ITG Used, I was blown away by the beauty of the Vintage Memorabilia cards. The sepia-toned backgrounds were reminiscent of old school studio portraits and the judicious use of foil (at least in some colours) gave a nice understated elegance. Also, Leaf kept the use of the dreaded 'back of jersey pictures' to a minimum - the single player subset had none, while multi player cards limited them to just Gretzky, Orr, and Dryden... and even then, the pictures blend in so much nicer than on many of their more recent releases.
Though I was hooked by the preview pics, I wanted to see what the checklist looked like before committing... have to admit I was a bit hesitant after seeing the print runs. If I was going to chase the set, it had to be all the same colour, I was glad to see that silver was the 'easiest' cause I liked the look of it the best anyways. When I say 'easy', that's definitely relatively speaking - out of an 88 card set, the highest print run was a dozen copies for a small handful, the rest have single digit print runs... exactly half the cards are limited to 5 copies, even harder there were 8 cards x/4, 3 cards x/3, and to top it off Cyclone Taylor and Georges Vezina each x/2. Looking back, I'm not really sure why I even thought it was doable, but after seeing a healthy amount of the cards surface online during the week of release I decided to take the plunge.
Liking the look of the ITGU product in general, I picked up a box or two when it came out, and while I sent out the rest of the cards to good homes here on HI, I was thrilled to pull a Vintage Mem card for my subset, and not just anyone but Mr. Hockey himself. I figured that was a good omen that I'd made the right choice in chasing the set.
A few months in I was able to knock off the majority of the cheklist, including the Cyclone Taylor... then disaster struck - a Vezina that I had incoming vanished in the mail. Still, I was deep enough in to the set that I figured I'd carry on, even though it seemed even less plausible that I would ever complete it with only a single copy of the Vezina left out there. When a gold Vezina (also x/2) showed up on ebay, I scooped it up as a consolation prize just in case. But, lo and behold, more than a year after starting the set, the second silver Vezina showed up online, and while I probably overpaid, whatcha gonna do. At that point I still needed a half dozen cards, but with the two toughest guys on the checklist crossed off I had hope!
Months later, the next toughest card hit ebay - a quad x/3 featuring Cyclone Taylor, Jack Adams, Frank Patrick, and Newsy Lalonde. I don't think the seller had any idea who any of these guys were, and someone instantly scooped it up for a BIN if I recall correctly was a hundred bucks or less? "Luckily" for me the buyer was just in it to flip, and I probably overpaid once more, but with this card out of the way it was down to a handful of x/5's and the home stretch - a dual Horton/Kennedy, an octo Leafs, and a King Clancy single. I had all sorts of ebay searches for the octo Leafs card with various combinations of the player names (cause you never know which player names the seller will try to squeeze into the auction title), luckily those searches paid off as I found a copy with a rather poorly written title, and the dual card not too long after.
At last I was down to one card, King Clancy x/5. Definitely not one that I expected to be amongst the toughest when I first started... and looking back at my spreadsheet I realized that I had missed out on the first copy that hit ebay shortly after launch - it sold at auction for around 50 bucks because I plain forgot to put in a bid, argh!!! At the time I was reeling in cards fast and furious, didn't give much thought, but as the months turned to years without finding another I kept kicking myself for what could have been. As I mentioned I've been mostly away from the hobby for a couple years, but I did have my saved ebay searches still registered... Ironically three years to the exact day that I missed out on the first copy, my saved ebay search popped up in my inbox that a King Clancy ITGU vintage had been posted... I prayed that it was a silver copy, and must have quintuple checked the image, sure enough it was! Probably put in a bid that was about 25x what the card ended up actually selling for (boy would the seller have been in for a surprise if someone else wanted it bad too eh?). And with that, my set was done.
So there you have it, my riveting tale behind what seemed like an impossible set to build, finally complete in all its glory! Nuff talking, enjoy the show.
Single - 35 cards
Dual - 18 cards
Triple - 12 cards
Quad - 10 cards
Sixes - 6 cards
Eights - 7 cards
I haven't been around much for a couple of years as other priorities had taken over for a while, finally finding life is slowing down a bit during quarantine-time and hopefully back to enjoy the forums.
While I've been known as the Sedin guy for many (many) years, I've always enjoyed set collecting since I completed my first OPC sticker book back in 81-82. In the twilight of the Sedins' careers, I found myself looking to return to my roots and looked for sets that appealed to me; when I saw the preview pictures for Leaf's 2016 ITG Used, I was blown away by the beauty of the Vintage Memorabilia cards. The sepia-toned backgrounds were reminiscent of old school studio portraits and the judicious use of foil (at least in some colours) gave a nice understated elegance. Also, Leaf kept the use of the dreaded 'back of jersey pictures' to a minimum - the single player subset had none, while multi player cards limited them to just Gretzky, Orr, and Dryden... and even then, the pictures blend in so much nicer than on many of their more recent releases.
Though I was hooked by the preview pics, I wanted to see what the checklist looked like before committing... have to admit I was a bit hesitant after seeing the print runs. If I was going to chase the set, it had to be all the same colour, I was glad to see that silver was the 'easiest' cause I liked the look of it the best anyways. When I say 'easy', that's definitely relatively speaking - out of an 88 card set, the highest print run was a dozen copies for a small handful, the rest have single digit print runs... exactly half the cards are limited to 5 copies, even harder there were 8 cards x/4, 3 cards x/3, and to top it off Cyclone Taylor and Georges Vezina each x/2. Looking back, I'm not really sure why I even thought it was doable, but after seeing a healthy amount of the cards surface online during the week of release I decided to take the plunge.
Liking the look of the ITGU product in general, I picked up a box or two when it came out, and while I sent out the rest of the cards to good homes here on HI, I was thrilled to pull a Vintage Mem card for my subset, and not just anyone but Mr. Hockey himself. I figured that was a good omen that I'd made the right choice in chasing the set.
A few months in I was able to knock off the majority of the cheklist, including the Cyclone Taylor... then disaster struck - a Vezina that I had incoming vanished in the mail. Still, I was deep enough in to the set that I figured I'd carry on, even though it seemed even less plausible that I would ever complete it with only a single copy of the Vezina left out there. When a gold Vezina (also x/2) showed up on ebay, I scooped it up as a consolation prize just in case. But, lo and behold, more than a year after starting the set, the second silver Vezina showed up online, and while I probably overpaid, whatcha gonna do. At that point I still needed a half dozen cards, but with the two toughest guys on the checklist crossed off I had hope!
Months later, the next toughest card hit ebay - a quad x/3 featuring Cyclone Taylor, Jack Adams, Frank Patrick, and Newsy Lalonde. I don't think the seller had any idea who any of these guys were, and someone instantly scooped it up for a BIN if I recall correctly was a hundred bucks or less? "Luckily" for me the buyer was just in it to flip, and I probably overpaid once more, but with this card out of the way it was down to a handful of x/5's and the home stretch - a dual Horton/Kennedy, an octo Leafs, and a King Clancy single. I had all sorts of ebay searches for the octo Leafs card with various combinations of the player names (cause you never know which player names the seller will try to squeeze into the auction title), luckily those searches paid off as I found a copy with a rather poorly written title, and the dual card not too long after.
At last I was down to one card, King Clancy x/5. Definitely not one that I expected to be amongst the toughest when I first started... and looking back at my spreadsheet I realized that I had missed out on the first copy that hit ebay shortly after launch - it sold at auction for around 50 bucks because I plain forgot to put in a bid, argh!!! At the time I was reeling in cards fast and furious, didn't give much thought, but as the months turned to years without finding another I kept kicking myself for what could have been. As I mentioned I've been mostly away from the hobby for a couple years, but I did have my saved ebay searches still registered... Ironically three years to the exact day that I missed out on the first copy, my saved ebay search popped up in my inbox that a King Clancy ITGU vintage had been posted... I prayed that it was a silver copy, and must have quintuple checked the image, sure enough it was! Probably put in a bid that was about 25x what the card ended up actually selling for (boy would the seller have been in for a surprise if someone else wanted it bad too eh?). And with that, my set was done.
So there you have it, my riveting tale behind what seemed like an impossible set to build, finally complete in all its glory! Nuff talking, enjoy the show.
Single - 35 cards
Dual - 18 cards
Triple - 12 cards
Quad - 10 cards
Sixes - 6 cards
Eights - 7 cards
