Met an NHL Player for the first time today!

 A small local card show was held in Poughkeepsie, NY today, and they brought in former Ranger Stephane Matteau as a guest. I was tipped off to this show's existence by my friend Dan, aka Vrooomed on the Trading Card Database, and made plans to attend...which of course, as you can tell from the title, I did! 

It's funny, I have only been an NHL fan since late 2016 and I've met a player now. It took me 15 years to meet a NASCAR driver and it's 25 years this year and I still haven't met an NBA player! 

Stephane Matteau played in the NHL for 16 seasons, of which only three were with the Rangers. However, his first year with the team was very notable, as the Rangers won the Stanley Cup for the first time since before World War II. He scored the goal that won the Eastern Conference Finals in OT so while he may not have been a Ranger for very long, he sure did make an important impact! 

That was really pretty cool, and it's very rare for me to get an autograph in person. 

As for the show itself...that was a mixed bag. First off on their Facebook page they say autographs are free, but that's not true, it's $20 if you bring a card from home, and the "free autograph" only comes free with the purchase of a picture, so none of the three autograph signers were actually free. I don't mind paying, as I'm sure there was some expense for him to get here...I overheard him talking to one of the baseball guys and he said he came up from Florida. But, don't say it's free and then when you walk in the door say that it's not. 

The show was well attended and well stocked. Prices weren't too high as a general rule on single cards, but higher than I feel they should be for the quality of modern cards. Almost all the cards were modern...I saw only two dealers with vintage and none that were solely vintage. Basketball was well represented but it was almost all Prizm stuff, which shouldn't be much of a surprise because that's what Panini is pushing. I would say basketball was second only to Baseball which was the most well represented, and football was also very well represented albeit less than baseball or basketball. Hockey was slim pickings though I did manage to add a great card. NASCAR was barely there- I saw three single cards, which I bought all of. There were quite a few multi-sport cards, mostly Goodwin Champions but some Leaf stuff, I even saw one dealer had golf cards in his box. Wrestling was there but less than 10 cards that I saw. Non-sport traditional cards were very slim- I saw two dealers with Marvel cards and nothing else. Gaming cards like Pokeman and Magic were there but didn't appear to be moving. 

Parking was a nightmare. The hall was plenty large enough but the parking lot was small. My brother dropped me off and came back later. The show was small enough that we actually left and came home, then went back for the signing, which was at 2 PM. The show only opened at 11 AM, so that should give a size description. 

Although the bait-and-switch aspect put me in a bit of disgruntlement at the start of the show, I do consider it a success. Even if I hadn't met Stephane Matteau, it would still have been a success in my eyes. It is the first show this program has done, so I suppose there are some flaws that have to be ironed out. It was also the first show I've gone to since February 2020 so that's cool. 

Now, I'm sure you want to see the cards I got, so let's take a look! It would take a long time to get these scanned so I'm going with photos...scans will come eventually!

This is the card I brought to get signed. I need an unsigned version for my collection too...I got this one off of COMC on Ebay just specifically to get signed. I looked through his gallery on the Database and when I saw this awesome photo holding the Cup I knew it was the card I was going to get. 

This was actually my last purchase of the day...but the first out of the bag. I won't turn down a numbered Klay Thompson for $1. The Jordan card is my first from the semi-bootleg Hanes set from a couple years ago. My second Obi Toppin card (the first comes later in this post) and a shiny card of Karl-Anthony Towns, which I have not even checked to see if it's a base parallel or insert card yet. 

Another shiny card of Paul George from the above dealer. The three autographs came from a dealer's 3 Autos for $10 box, the Thomas Vincour was the only NHL card in the box. The Nicolas Batum is just a cool looking card and the Lorenzen Wright is from the Scoreboard buyback autograph insert from 1997, the first buybacks I'm aware of in the hobby. It's my second from the set, I got a John Wallace when it was new, now 24 years ago. 

The same dealer that had the autographs had these as well, and the McDyess 1996-97 Topps Chrome Refractor was in the dollar box! I don't even know if I need it but at that price I was not going to take any chances. The Kidd PowerDeck is a rare find. The Guentzel is my first UD Exclusives card from last season, and the Newman is the first of three NASCAR cards to appear. 

Sorry this photo is so crappy. The Jakob Poeltl autograph came from a 4 for $10 box as did the Evans, Blaney, Booker, and the bottom two cards in the previous photo and the top two cards in the next photo.

I like the colored parallels so I got the Domboya. The Karlsson was the only Golden Knights card I saw in the entire show. The Jalen Smith card is clear plastic which you know I like and is also my first card of him. Honestly, I never heard of Sam Morrill and I'm guessing most people haven't either which is why his autograph was in a $2 box. That doesn't matter though as he's one more new player for my project of getting at least one card of every NBA player! 

This was my first look at the new Recon set, which only came out last week, I think. Yes, a 2020-21 set is still being released a month into the 2021-22 season. These cards are not great and I don't think I would buy them even if the prices weren't stupid high, so these may be it...well these and the ones in other photos. This is my first card of Obi Toppin and Immanuel Quickley. 

I had an uneven number of cards so this guy gets a photo by himself. I mostly got this card because it was $1 and a player I didn't have in my collection. 

I made two larger single card purchases and the last was this autograph of Chris Kreider. It's from 2012-13 Fleer Retro but has a very mid-90s Fleer or Ultra feel. The dealer had a row of Kreider autographs and by this point I was low on money, so when he said this was the lowest priced, I was happy to take it home. 

This was my big purchase of the day, a Ryan Blaney Autographed 1 of 1! I broke my self imposed $20 per card limit on this one, but I had been wanting his autograph and it's a 1 of 1... had to do it! Wish Panini had used a less-goofy picture but it's panini, you can't expect much, LOL. 

Scalped wax was very common at the show...and I won't do that. I did get these packs of cards, which even they were overpriced at $5 per pack, but I know these will probably be the only time I ever get to open a pack from these sets. 

I bought this hand-colated repack and in retrospect I shouldn't have. It was not worth the $18. Even $10 would have been pushing it. Six of the cards were college so I didn't even get 20 real cards, and the one parallel I got is my all-time least favorite player. So yeah, not great. The RJ Barrett card showing turned out to be my favorite of the pack. 

Even though I got the least amount of new cards vs. money spent at any show, I am pretty happy with it, and meeting Stephane Matteau set the bar pretty high.