It should not be a surprise that I know how many cards I have of "my" New York Rangers. I ended March with 1,991 cards of my favorite hockey team. I'm guessing you've already guessed what that major milestone is now- yes, I hit 2000 cards of the New York Rangers!
I hadn't actually gotten any new cards at all in April until Easter, when I received a hobby box of 2022-23 Upper Deck Series 1 and a handful of parallels from MVP- my intention is to write about them in their own post- and that pushed me over the mark.
Barclay Goodrow got the honor of being #2000. As a bonus, this is also my first card of him with the Rangers and second overall! At least I think it is. I've only scanned one card of him, anyway, until now.
I didn't get all the Rangers in the set, but I did manage to pull a rarer one- the French parallel of Igor Shesterkin, which is the first French parallel I've pulled. (I didn't get a hobby box of the previous releases since it's returned to the set). The French parallels are one per hobby box.
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Unfortunately I didn't get the base card of Igor. I'm glad they labeled it as being the parallel on the front because odds are I wouldn't have noticed otherwise- at least right away. I usually read the card backs as I'm scanning them so I would have noticed by now, but I wouldn't have noticed the day I got it.
Before I got this hobby box, I had exactly 1 card from the set, thanks to Chris the Collector, making this the latest I've gone into the season without opening a single pack of Upper Deck s1...the NHL season ends on Friday, unfortunately.
To put into perspective how much of a lead the Rangers have on my collection, there are only two other teams that have even cracked the 1000 card barrier, the Bruins and Canadiens. Although the Red Wings are less than 10 away and will likely hit that mark sometime on the epic adventure my brother and I are getting ready to take. I'm bringing some cards with me to open in the new states I visit, something I really like to do, but don't always remember to do. For example I missed Nebraska last year. The box I have saved to bring with me, I actually got at a Wal-Mart in Rapid City, South Dakota last year! It's crazy that I live in an area with three local teams and my stores here don't stock the Parkhurst brand, but go to South Dakota- nowhere near any teams- and they had several blasters available, of which I bought one. Go figure.
