New Year, Old Cards

A big bunch of cards to peruse.

I think I've hit a first here at the blog where I busted on past Blogger's built-in character limit for tags. I like to tag each individual player whenever I show off a card that's notable (typically anything serial-numbered, signed or containing a memorabilia piece of some sort), but there was no way to do that with this bunch of cards from buckstorecards that I received back in September unless I broke this up into several posts, which isn't something I typically do. As daunting as it was to post about this massive, impressive batch, it would have been even more unwieldy to deal with it in multiple parts.

Off we go, sans tags for the Ducks cards (the bulk of these)...

I don't recall "PRESS PROOF" actually being stamped on any other so-called "press proof" parallels from Panini that I've seen before. Tots is still a free agent somehow. I wouldn't mind seeing him come back to St. Louis to be in the outfield mix.

Nick Foles cards are always going to be welcome in my collection, as he helped the Eagles to their first Super Bowl title.

Much more after the jump!

The Blues Hoist The Cup

For the first time in franchise history, the #STLBlues are champions! 

Doug from Sportscards From The Dollar Store has been sending me Blues hockey cards for a couple of years now, but I finally found the best use for them. Tonight the franchise, which has been around since 1967, finally won its first Stanley Cup -- in rather extraordinary fashion. Left for dead earlier in the season, with an interim coach and a rookie replacement goalie few had ever heard of, they essentially rebooted and went on to go all of the way. They took the favored Bruins to 7 games, winning 3 on the road, finally giving Boston fans something to sulk about.

I thought I'd scan a few cards from the latest package from buckstorecards, just a few guys from the current team. There were a ton of other great (non-Blues) cards in the package, but I'll save that for a later post. Tyler Bozak spent his entire NHL career with the Maple Leafs before joining the Blues this season.

David Perron began his third stint with the Blues this season.

Team captain Alex Pietrangelo is shown here on Upper Deck's current MVP design, but the real MVP honors (i.e. the Conn Smythe Trophy) went to Ryan O'Reilly, who was extremely impressive.

That's a (Hockey) Winner!

Probably the one and only time I post hockey cards. 

The St. Louis Blues just finished off the Minnesota (...ugh...) Wild in an overtime Game 1 playoff win, which gives me the best excuse I could think of to finally post some of the hockey cards Sportscards From The Dollar Store has been sending me. I remain a thoroughly casual and ignorant hockey fan at best, but I like the sport and when given the chance it's fun to watch a playoff hockey game. I've only had a hard time getting into the sport because of time (I spend entirely too much time watching sports as it is) and finding a team to root for. After years of following various media members, friends and internet acquaintances who write about the Cardinals and live in the area, their enthusiasm for the St. Louis hockey team finally started to rub off on me a little. Just a little.

Well all know about Brett Hull and his cool guy hockey hair. This Bowman design is similar to the 1990 baseball design, and I like that they used some weird old spy hat for the "Hat Tricks" logo. (Serious question, do people wear really cheap/unwanted hats to hockey games just on the off chance that they might be able to toss them on the ice?)

Classic Blues! This is from the 1979-80 O-Pee-Chee set.

This had to be scanned. I mean, his name is Jablonski. I think I may have actually opened one of these Score packs back when I was a teen, and was disappointed to find out that not every card was Wayne Gretzky.

The hilariously named Shattenkirk was traded away late in the season, which leads to at least 20% less giggling during broadcasts.

Pietrangelo became the Blues captain this season, and took on an increasingly important role after Shattenkirk's (heh) trade.

I'm only scanning guys I've heard of, and one of them is goalie Ryan Miller. He was very briefly with the Blues. Their current goalie, Jake Allen, was phenomenal tonight.

Same set, different guy. Steen is in his 9th season with the Blues. I completely fail to understand the name of this Rookie Anthology set, as these guys were both longtime vets.

Here's the man, Tarasenko. At this point a year ago he's the only player I could have named on the team with any confidence. Anyway, he's really good, and he gets name-dropped a lot during Cards broadcasts.

More Tarasenko.

Ha ha, Tony Twist! There's a great sports name.

Finally, David Backes was probably still with the Blues when this card was sent to me, which should tell you how long I've been holding back some of this stuff.

I really enjoyed the cards, but I want to tell everyone - if you send me Blues stuff, it will probably go into a box to enjoy on a rainy day. I am probably not going to start a serious Blues collection, These are fun to look at, though, and hockey is fun to watch. I just wish Portland would get an NHL team someday.

I Got the Blues, and I Can't Be Satisfied

It's not quite hockey season just yet. 

Longtime trade partner and hockey enthusiast Sportscards From The Dollar Store reacted to something I said on the internet during the NHL Playoffs about supporting the Blues by sending a starter collection that way. I think I was actually forewarned in some threatening terms that this might happen. I'm afraid I know more about the sport of hockey and the rules and so forth than I actually do about players and strengths and weaknesses of teams, but at this point in my life it was probably time to choose an alliance and I'm going with the St. Louis Blues. There was probably some part of me that was holding out hope that Portland would someday get an NHL team, having an NHL-ready arena now for more than 20 years. But there seems to be little to no local interest here among the elite folks with the huge bank accounts or the billionaire that owns the NBA team, so here we are. I will show off some of these cards in due time, but I figured I would wait until hockey season before I get into it, so I can help myself get more familiar with some of these players.

A few other non-hockey cards landed in my mailbox, like this Classic Alan Benes card. I'd never seen or heard of this "Images" set, which seems to be an attempt at more of an upscale release for the '90s games and cards manufacturer.

These early '90s Leaf Black Gold parallels always looked nice. This probably would have set me back a couple of bucks back in the day.

I usually reserve most of my Oregon Ducks cards for my Good Luck Ducks posts, but there are only so many Saturdays in the fall. Jordan Kent was at one point one of the most athletic players on the basketball team coached by his father, a Swiss army knife that was a key cog at both ends of the floor. During his junior year, he decided to give football a shot and ended up starting all 12 games of his senior season at WR. He's now a local sports broadcaster on Portland-based CSN NW.