Winter Wonderland

We're supposed to get a blizzard later today and I will probably get out of work early - at which point I will either take a nap or work on my short story. The first part is almost done.. which would be good timing since I need to make more progress on my NHL All-Time Teams series. 

And, since the forecast has me in a winter sports mood, here are my COMC hockey card purchases from the past year.

Two more Exquisite base cards for my 30-card set build. Now that I've added Nate MacKinnon and Zdeno Chara..

 

I'm down to just four needs - Toews, Seguin, Price, and Ovechkin. I also needs some penny sleeves and top loaders for these super-thick cards.

I picked up this Pat LaFontaine rookie year card for $10. I'm just 59 cards away from completing this set in PSA 9 or better (with two exceptions). This is an admittedly foolish pursuit; if money were no object and I bought every slabbed single I've seen for sale.. I'd still need about 40 "low pop" cards. 

Here's another project that I will never complete, but it's cheaper and brings me more joy than the PSA set.

Fuji asked his readers for their hobby highlight of 2020. That's an easy one for me. I found seven new Peter Worrell needs on COMC alone, including these five show stamped parallels. Over the past few years I've only added an average of one or two new Worrell cards per year to my collection, and there were some years when I didn't add any at all.

These two have eluded me for more than 15 years. By print run they were the most abundant singles I didn't have - the OPC Red parallel is numbered to 100. I'm still amazed that I found either one of them after years of scrolling through saved searches. Bringing them both home at the same time was a minor miracle. 

For all intents and purposes I only need four or five more Worrell cards. However, since TCDB lists every damn show stamped parallel, regional issue, and 1 of 1.. I actually need 58 more cards. :o

Now for the Devils portion of the post.

 

Allure is one of my favorite newer hockey sets, though it's far from perfect. Yes, Nikita Gusev was a Golden Knights prospect, but he's clearly a Devil now - and he's listed as such on his "base" card in this same set.

 

Nico Hischier is the one current Devil I've collected as he's the closest thing Jersey has to a "franchise" player.

That is, until Jack Hughes gains some experience. Hopefully he spent the nine-month layoff filling out that slight frame of his. Jesper Boqvist was a non-factor as a rookie but he's still got time to make an impact.

 

Assorted Devils including a Clear Cut Foundations insert of Hischier and Kyle Palmieri. The Taylor Hall Signature Swatch auto was $7.00 while the rest were cheapies. Each Canvas card cost just 26 cents.

 

These two Subban cards were also 26 cents. The Chronology Jason Arnott auto was $4.19, the same price as the Clear Cut card above. I was at the "St. Marty's Day" game on March 17, 2009 when Brodeur broke the all-time record for goalie wins. He got to cut out the net shortly after this celebration.

Eight new cards of the Great Eight, including another memorable moment that happened here in Jersey.

Just before Covid hit, Alex Ovechkin scored career goal #700 against the Devils. I had a feeling he'd score against our craptacular team, but I couldn't convince anyone to get tickets to that one. At the time I posted that several all-time great scorers lost dozens of goals to labor disputes. Ovechkin is one of them - and the shutdown probably swiped another dozen or more from his tally.

Toronto and Edmonton were "bubble" cities for the 2020 playoffs, which meant that the Stanley Cup was finally raised on Canadian soil! These guys will try to make that happen for real in 2021.

More cheapies I picked up over the past year, including my first Elias Petterson card (40 cents) and the only card from Upper Deck's 30th Anniversary insert set that interested me. The 1993-era Patrick Roy on a 2002-03 design cost an appropriate 30 cents.

And finally some irresistible shiny cards. The Bobrovsky red die-cut cost 33 cents. Kucherov cost 31 cents. Everything else in this scan was 27 cents each.

If you read this post (or you scrolled through it quickly) you deserve a reward. 

Way to go, Wild Bill!

Thanks for reading!



 

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