1991-92 Pro Set Platinum Series 2

Pro Set comes out with a glossy brand to counter Topps Stadium Club and called it Platinum. The set is split in two series. This is series 2 featuring cards 151-300. Who are the 12 cards?

166 - Michel Goulet - in Pro Set fashion they slapped "Prospect" on a 14 year veteran. They never corrected it. He played two more seasons before call it a career. Went in the Hall of Fame in 1998. Great looking card of him wearing Blackhawks throwback. No stats on the backs. Just mention of a player's highlights.

164 - Brent Sutter - one of six Sutter brothers in the league. Went on become a coach

187 - Brian Propp - 5-time All-Star waiting for his shift

181 - Bob Kudelski

182 - Brian Benning

183 - Mike Donnelly - face off time. Also photo looks a bit dark.

220 - Greg Paslawski - this is one of those cards where darkness in the background worked. The light shines on the player.

219 - Jacques Cloutier - overhead shot of Cloutier trying to make a save

289 - Terry O'Reilly - former Bruins player and coach featured as celebrity captain. Fitting as he wears throwback Bruins sweater.

255 - Josef Beranek - an actual prospect. Played 9 seasons in the league before spending remainder of his career in Czech League. Part of 98 Olympic gold medal winning Czech team

211 - Garry Galley

279 - Mike Richter - great looking card wearing All-Star Wales jerseys. He manned the pipes in the entire 90s decade for Rangers helping them to 94 Stanley Cup title.

The set got good photo selection. You can easily find a box to your disposal.

2020 Donruss Optic Baseball

I stopped into my LCS, Boscos, this afternoon after work mainly to check out new comic book day.  But there wasn't a whole lot going on so I headed over to the sports card department and decided to sample a couple packs of the new Donruss Optic.  I wasn't expecting a whole lot, but this might be the best two random packs I've ever opened.  Since there are only 4 cards per pack I figure I'd share both packs with you.

Lot's of parallels and shiny inserts.  I like the inserts in this set much better than prizm.  They have more color and just look nicer.

Let's start with the first pack.  First up is a Diamond King of some guy named Tatis.

 Then a base Rated Rookie of another second generation MLBer.

And a really nice looking Stained Glass insert of Torres.  This one's going in my type collection.

I was also pleasantly surprised to see this in the middle of the pack.

 Not too shabby an on card Kyle Lewis Rated Rookie auto, yes please.

That was a pretty darn good pack, but my second pack was the one I enjoyed the most.
First out of the pack was this Trey Mancini Diamond King.  I've been passively collecting the vintage and modern Diamond Kings sets so getting two from this set is great for the PC.

Another rated rookie this time Zac Gallen

The next card was a total surprise, mainly because there are only two autos per hobby box and while possible it's unlikely I'd hit both out of two random packs, but low and behold this Retro 86 Shun Yamaguchi.

The card I was most stoked about pulling was really the one card I really wanted and that was this Retro 86 insert of Robin Yount.  It's incredibly rare that I hit a card that goes into my #1 Player Collection.  So yes I hit two autos but pulling Robin's insert card made it even better.

2019 Wizards of the Coast Transformers - War for Cybertron: Siege I TCG Booster Pack

Greetings!

Hope everyone is doing well.  It was announced yesterday that Wizards of the Coast is ending the Transformers Trading Card Game.  The fifth release, released back at the end of May, is the last one (I have yet to see the latest release at Target, and Walmart hasn't had Transformers cards in a long time).  It's quite unfortunate since I enjoyed the artwork on the character cards, but if not enough folks buy it...well, you know.

To mark this sad occasion I went to locate a pack of the second release, but it's still packed away from the move.  I did find a pack of the third release, so I'm going with that:

War for Cybertron: Siege I was released back on June 28, 2019.  The gimmick they had for this release was the inclusion of mini-Transformers called Micro Masters (smaller robots), and Battle Masters (weapons for the Transformers).  Because there was a mini-Transformer, you now got 2 Transformers in a pack, the regular large character card and the "small" character card, which was the same size as the battle cards.  You now get 6 battle cards in the pack instead of 7.

Again, the battle cards are sized like regular baseball cards and are wrapped in clear plastic.  The 2 character cards are not in plastic and are protected by 2 pieces of cardboard.  This time they put ads on the cardboard:

Hasbro owns Wizards, so hey, might as well sell some toys.

There are 48 Characters and 64 battle cards in the release.  Here's the battle cards:

#11/64 - Combat Dagger
#41/64 - Pep Talk

Once again you start with the commons.  You can see which release the card is from in the lower left.  The colored pips in the upper right is still being used to add to a Transformer's attack or defense, but I believe they started adding more colors with this release.  There are several YouTube videos out there on how to play the game, if you wind up picking up a bunch of cards for cheap.

#26/64 - Force Field
#56/64 - Spinner Rims

Only 3 commons per pack in this release.  2 uncommons and 1 rare coming up.

#13/64 - Covert Armor
#45/64-  Quartermaster

Quartermaster is the rare battle card.  I thought I saw it used a lot in several decks so it should be useful.

The small character card is in-between the battle pack and the large card:

#T16/T48 - Private Mudslinger (front and back)

Because it's a war, the Transformers are assigned various ranks.  Mudslinger is a Micro Master...not real useful in battle but they all have different abilities to interfere with card flips or add or subtract damage to the final totals.

Mudslinger is a common and the robot side is foil.  I remember him from the Off Road Patrol release back in the late 80s so that's cool.

The Battle Master cards have a robot and a weapon mode.  They start play in robot mode and transform to weapon mode if they're knocked out of the game (run out of health, the number in the red square).  The Transformer can then use the weapon to enhance their attack.

#T12/T48 - Private Arcee

Arcee is also a common and the robot mode looks real nice all foiled up.

Anyway, that's the pack.  I'm still not a big fan of mixed teams battling each other (many decks still have both Autobots and Decepticons), and the military designations are silly, but I still bought the packs because of the artwork and because it's Transformers.  Sorry to see it's cancellation.

Have a good week everyone, and thanks for reading!

2006-07 Parkhurst Hockey Retail

  This is one of my all-time favourite sets, even more so if you get a hobby box.  Hobby packs are 6 cards, retail packs are 4, and you have better chances at autos.  Every card in the set has an autographed version.  The base set is 160 cards of retired players and then there are 90 numbered, to about 3000, Captains or Enforcers cards combined.  There are no other inserts or subsets.  Some cards have black and white pictures.  The player selection is varied.  It's not all superstars and even includes some fringe players.  Although sometimes, it seemed like Parkhurst looked around for old guys who were still alive and physically able to sign several hundred cards or so.

Hawerchuk is often overlooked since he played in the time of Gretzky and played in the same division as #99.  In the eight seasons Hawerchuk and the Jets made the play-offs, they faced, and lost, to the Oiler six times.  They lost 22 out of 26 play-off games against the Oilers.  

The backs include a single line for NHL career stats.  No WHA stats.  There is a brief five line bio of the player and a team logo on the bottom.  

Greg Millen led the NHL in losses three times and finished 2nd during a five season stretch from 1980 to 1984.  he is 20th All-time for career losses, and 81st for wins.

Rick Vaive scored 50+ goals three straight seasons for the Maple Leafs and holds the team records for goals in a season, 54.

Eric was a student-athlete.  In 1956, he attended Toronto University during the week and on the weekends played for the Chicago Blackhawks.  I stocked shelves on the weekends in a grocery store while I was in school, how about you?

1990-91 Bowman Hockey

Even Bowman made it to hockey for a very short and unmemorable time. If you ever picked up a Fairfield 100 card repack its most likely you will get 8-15 cards from this set. There are total of 15 cards in this pack.

26 - Dominic Lavoie - they used the same design from 1990 baseball including the card stock. Back of card feature breakdown of player's stats against 21 teams in 89-90 season with games, goals, assists, and points. Lavoie played 38 games in the NHL before spending remainder of his career in Europe.

66 - Mike Liut - goalie breakdown have how many times he played against the team, total minutes, goals allowed, and average. Liut stats were combined totals from his time with Whalers (now Hurricanes) and Capitals.

195 - Glenn Anderson

125 - Joe Reekie

164 - Lou Franceschetti

170 - Michel Petit

7 - Ed Belfour - his rookie card and one of few good cards from the set

19 (out of 22) - Jari Kurri - Bowman insert set featuring players who scored a hat trick (3 goals in a game) during 89-90 season. I got the entire insert set from Fairfield repacks. Kurri scored his in a playoff game.

203 - Wendell Young - impress your friends with sports trivia? He's the only hockey player to win Memorial (Ontario Hockey League), Calder (AHL), Turner (defunct International Hockey League), and Stanley (NHL) Cup.

111 - Kjell Samuelsson

79 - Bob Brooke

224 - Paul Broten

60 - Paul Reinhart - this photo looks like when I try to take it at hockey game: off center

228 - Marc Habscheid

72 - Don Beaupre

Topps pretty much had dud year especially with overproduction of this set. At least O-Pee-Chee (same design; more cards) got a better card stock than Topps. Bowman would stick around with hockey with their final set in 92. Their final set is hard to find when it was rumored only 2000 cases were made due to low orders from dealers. My bonus is the pack's 30 year old stick of gum.