Generosity. Pass it on.

One of the greatest attributes of this hobby is the generosity from fellow addicts. As the card shows and trade nights roll along, friendships develop. You start keeping an eagle eye out for not just stuff for your collection, but cool things for people you know as well.

I was the beneficiary of this at the last card show. Instead of rolling out my purchases, (you may still see some of it later) I thought I'd show off two gifts that were by far, the treasures of the day.

From fellow blogger, bamlinden, of My Hockey Card Obsession fame, presented me with these two beauties for my Lyle Odelein pc. Two media slides from the late 90's.

My scanner decided not to participate this evening, but you get the gist anyways. These are awesome. Not found on any checklist by any means, but a more than welcome addition to the binder. Plus I can now make as many 8x10's of Lyle as I want. World domination to follow I'm sure.

Next up was from one of the sellers that has been setting up recently. We'll call him Vintage guy here. We'll call him that because to him a new card is something from 1985.

Because of our common collections, we've done our share of conversing. During those he discovered, and remembered, my ongoing collection of Joe and Jimmy Watson.

He's getting ready to move across country for his retirement soon. During his packing, cleaning, etc... he came across some odd ball items from the 1976 Canada Cup. On Canada's roster was a very young 22 year old puck moving defenseman named.... Jimmy Watson. In his second year in the league, here he was on the grand stage. And Vintage Guy had original 8x10's and post cards of most of the players.

Boom.

I love it. And, like the Odelein slides, it's something I've never seen before. In person or online.
Perfect.

Just when I needed a hobby pick me up. Thanks guys.

a Zistle swap with LatentMoths

I've made a couple of Zistle trades recently. It's a great site and I need to get my cards updated on there soon so I can trade some more and finish off some of these sets...

 

user LatentMoths, a Bruins fan in Texas if you can believe it, sent me some cards I wanted in exchange for some cards I didn't want.

 

awesome.

 

I'll show off a few of them here to give you a sampling...

 

First up some random OPC cards from various years...

and a couple more....

but the key card for me was this

a '95/96 UD Collector's Choice card of Lyle Odelein.

I've had the Platinum parallel for awhile now, but could never track down the base. And now I'm one card closer to having all of his cards.

if any of you feel like swapping, check out my want list page or on Zistle.

Kraft dinner!

my first Check Out My Cards order arrived a couple of weeks ago. 113 cards. Of which, 8 were of the hockey variety.

Only 8? Yeah... hockey cards are just a wee overpriced on comc. Must be a lot of Calgary sellers on there or something. Maybe they think it's an online showroom or something...

 

Anyways,

 

I picked up one card to go towards one of my sets, the other seven cards went into my player collections.

 

The first card I went for after attending our hopefully annual huge card show here in Big C. The seller had a graded 10 copy of it, and also a hefty $30 price tag.

 

I grabbed a mint, sharp cornered, well centered version for $0.35 cents. It's a 1986 Kraft Dinner card of Chris Nilan.

 

 I like mine better.

For Knuckles, I also obtained a 1991-92 Stadium Club for $0.60....

 and a snazzy 91-92 Bowman for $0.50

 Keep in mind I would never pay these prices in person, but on comc I sell crap I don't want dirt cheap, then use that to purchase cards I do. So I don't mind paying a little more.... a little.

Sticking with the same theme.... I got four cards of Lyle Odelein as well.

A gold parallel from 1994-95 Parkhurst SE for $0.63

and a copper parallel from 2000-01 Paramount for $0.70

Jersey card alert! 2000-01 Titanium Draft Day for $1.25. I can't believe how thin this thing is...

and an on card auto from 1995-96 Be A Pplayer for $1.25 as well.

a single card of Carey Price that no one around here would ever trade me. From last year's Fleer Retro set, the metal parallel for $1.00 It doesn't scan very well...

and finally a mask insert for the 2013 ITG:BTP mask subset.for another $1.00.
I'm slowly building this set... these are hard to find at realistic prices.

So there they are... I had fun shopping for them. And they all look fantastic in their respective binders.

Freebies.

Freebies. Swag. Booty. Plunder. Loot.

It all means the same, and it's all good. Here's a quick post to show off three new additions to my collection that were given to me free of charge.

The first one arrived in the mail from a fellow blogger. This and some baseball cards came from Casey at Drop the Gloves. (we won't comment on the Messier card that was included.... yuck.)

One of the corners is dinged up pretty good.... probably from Casey throwing it across the room when he pulled it. No matter, it fits in quite well into my Odelein/Nilan binder.

Trade night at one of the local shops got me two more gifts. (Well, three, but the other one is baseball related.)
I thought about showing these off with the cards I traded for as well, but generosity deserves it's own post.
I had brought a couple of gifts myself for two collectors who I knew would be there. As fate would have it, one of them had this for me....

I learned something from it. I had always known Dave Hanson had played for the Minnesota North Stars.... but I thought that was it. I found out via reading the back of this card that Dave originally played 11 games with Detroit before being traded to Minnesota for futures. Hell if I can find what the futures turned into.
Dave played 22 games for the North Stars, scoring one goal and one assist before retiring.
For those who need to know, Dave played in the NHL for 33 games, 1G 1A and 65 PIMS. In the WHA he played 103 games with 13 goals, 40 assists and 497 PIMS.


The last card I wanted to show off today came from the same person who gave me the baseball card that I'll show off on Waxaholic at a later date.

Normally I avoid these manufactured letters..... but a gift is a gift. It now has an honoured place in my collection.

Thanks to everyone and as my pal Troll says, I love this hobby!

Double sided, double fun.

It's been awhile since I picked up a card for any of my 'long term' player collections. Somehow this card fell into my lap at tradenight in April. I had been packing around a few basecards from Parkhurst Champions to give to a buddy of mine to finish off his set. It had been awhile since I'd seen him, and he was very thankful that I remembered. He insisted on giving me something back. But really? How many tradeboxes have anything to trade for a few basecards? But I took a look anyways. In his box, at the back, I found this....

You may be saying.... yeah, and who cares? It's Jamie "Noodles" Mclennan. Big whoop. And I'd agree with you. But! turn it over and you get this....

Glorious! I've been after this card forever. There's always a couple on ebay, but those shippers want between $14 and $44 to ship it to me. They are what I like to call V-neck t-shirt wearing douche bags.

But now it's mine! MINE!

It always feels good to cross another card off of a long forgotten list.

These cards are actually pretty cool. I like a lot of what Pacific did with regards to stuff like this. But then again, they tended to, shall we say, overdo it in other areas.

I wonder why Lyle never made it into ITG's Captain C product????

Another one down, waaay more to go.

A wee while ago I wrote a post about getting back to my player collections that I had been ignoring far too long. One of the cards I featured was this Emerald parallel of Lyle Odelein from the 1997-98 Pacific set.

 The post wasn't even dry yet when another blogger piped up about having the Ruby parallel version of this card, and that he'd send it right out to me.

 If only I could remember who that blogger was......... if only I had a hint of some kind....

Thanks for the new Odelein Fuji!!!! That's one more parallel off of my list. Of course, I still don't have this base card.... but one thing at a time, right?

Two more for the PC.....

I've really let my player collections slack lately. Too busy chasing sets, or shiny things... you know how it gets. One of my collecting goals for the future is to concentrate more on my player collections.

Case in point, Lyle Odelein.

I hadn't been on ebay for awhile, and found myself on there for a completely different reason. So I decided before signing off to do a quick search for Lyle.

I found a seller who happened to have two cards of his that I needed. I mailed off an offer, and of course he accepted. It wouldn't be much of a post if he didn't accept, now would it?

$3 shipped got me this '97/98 Pacific Emerald Parallel, and.....

 this 2002/03 Pacific Complete Ruby Parallel # 099/100

Nice to be able to knock off one of those rare ones.

Of course, with the recent release of ITG's "Enforcers", Lyle's card count just went way up. More for me to chase I guess.

If you have any Lyle Odelein, Chris Nilan, Jim or Joe Watson, Carey Price, or PK Subban cards, send me an email.
Hopefully I can get my player collection want lists up soon to join my set want lists link on the right hand side.

It's been a long time...

I get distracted easily. To some of you this is not a surprise. You may even suffer along with me. It's odd because outside of this hobby, I'm very focused and efficient. But as for collecting little pieces of cardboard, I'm all over the map. I need help.

One of the downsides of being so scatter brained is that certain parts of my collection get ignored for awhile. One of those parts was my hockey individual player collections. I have binders going for Carey Price, P.K. Subban (just started that one) Chris Nilan and Lyle Odelein. And I may start one for Larry Robinson. Still debating that one.

While I have added a lot of new cards to my current players, Price and Subban, I have neglected my retired players, Nilan and Odelein.

A quick trip to ebay town rectified that in short order. I actually lucked out. I found one seller with two cards I wanted. For $3.50 shipped, I got not one, but two autographed cards of Lyle Odelein.

From the '96/97 Be a Player set...

 and the 2000/01 Be A Player set.

These on card autos are a great addition. And for under $2 each I cannot complain. Now if I could only find some relic cards of his.... especially the dual relic with Chris Nilan. That would be the end all be all card for me.