The All-Connor All Stars

 As I was watching the Oilers-Blackhawks game tonight, most of the coverage was about the first meeting of Connor McDavid vs. Connor Bedard. 

But I thought, why not go further and have the All-Connor All-Stars? 

Sure, you'll lead with McDavid and Bedard...

Then you add in Kyle Connor

Conor Garland, Connor McMichael and Conor Sheary are all solid players...

and you can fill out the team with Connor Brickley, Connor Brown, Conner Clifton, Connor Dewar, Connor Hall, Connor Murphy and Conor Timmins. Connors Brown and Murphy also played in the game that led to this post. 

Backing up the team in net is the tandem of...

Connor Hellebuyck and Connor Ingram, a perennial All-Star and a player who is making the case to be an all-star for the first time this year. 

This is actually a pretty good team, and probably could win a good number of games, even with being a little bit light on depth having only 13 skaters. Maybe some more Connors and Conors will join the NHL and fill out this team over time. 

Christmas Cards from Chris and Kari

A couple of posts ago, Chris of The Collector mentioned that he had sent me a PIF, but I hadn't seen it yet...it finally showed up, on the 19th...he mailed it on November 23rd! It was in perfect condition, but it would have been faster if we had just set out on foot, as Chris isn't that far away from me, haha.

Inside was a great bunch of cards, and this...

OK, that's cool! I knew he wasn't my Secret Santa because that showed up within a week of Jon sending out the names and addresses!

 From 1978-79 O-Pee-Chee, only my 5th card from this set.

 My first and second cards from 1979-80 O-Pee-Chee!

 Chris Stewart from 2013-14 Black Diamond

 A new Henrik Lundqvist from 2015-16 MVP!

 From 16-17 O-Pee-Chee

And my very first card from the 2019-20 O-Pee-Chee set! I missed this year's OPC totally...I didn't think I was going to be able to get any of them, so this is a very welcome card. Kyle Connor was the first NHL autograph I ever pulled back in the 2016-17 season, and he's become one of the most important players on the Jets.

The last card I needed was this awesomely diamond cut parallel from 1993-94 Topps! It's pretty unusual to see a cutting error on a parallel...this may be the first in my entire error collection, I can't think of any others off the top of my head! Also, 1994 is very late for a Diamond cut. I think it may be my newest Diamond Cut card as well. Unfortunately, it scanned with a bit of a yellow tinge that it doesn't have in real life, sometimes my new scanner does that for some reason.

I'm not sure which card is my favorite here. Two new sets, a new card of my favorite player, and an error that stands out as unusual! Thanks Chris!

I was going to post about this mailing when I posted about the cards I got for Christmas (I know there will be some because I bought some for myself, but my family never disappoints me) but since I was doing a post about an unexpected Christmas gift, I must mention a very pleasant surprise I got from Kari, aka Karsal, on the Trading Card Database. He sent me more than 150 cards (stickers) from a car set I never even knew existed, but would have had on my wantlist had I known it existed. It's from 1994, and made by a company called Service Line, and is called Auto 2000. It's a European set, obvious because it features European cars heavily, but it has vehicles from all around the world. There's not a lot of love for 1990s cars in the hobby (or anywhere else) so these were really fun to get. Here's just a small sampling:

 A Fiat concept car, #1 in the set.

 In the USA, the NSX was marketed as an Acura, and it's my favorite Japanese car ever.

 A station wagon card! Mercedes-Benz was one of the last to offer a true wagon in the USA. I believe Buick and Subaru both have one now, but that's it.

Believe it or not, this is the second card I have of a Dodge Caravan/Chrysler Town & Country/Plymouth Voyager! This is the European model, so it's called a Chrysler Voyager, which is unusual to me. It carries the Plymouth name, has the Chrysler Pentastar, and the Dodge grill...how different!

 Range Rovers were a status symbol then, and still are.

There are several concept cars scattered throughout the set.

Quite a few are Panini style puzzle cards, most of which I now have both of. This Volkswagen Concept 1, which became the New Beetle in 1998, is one where I only got one half. I decided to show this one instead of one where I have both halves because I don't want to struggle with combining them into one image, LOL!

These really are awesome, and the ones I don't have now ARE on my wantlist! He also sent along the first actual Christmas Card my family got this year, and I will show that on Christmas Day when I do my annual Christmas post.  Thank you Kari!

Box Break Review: 2016-17 Fleer Showcase (My first NHL Box!)

Sorry this has taken me so long to post- I received this box as an Easter gift in 2017 and I'm just now finally getting around to posting it...the queue is long and growing. I don't know why I've been such a slacker in getting this posted, just not mentally in the game I guess. I'm not even writing most of the post until almost a year later, in February 2018. I'm embarrassed about it, but better late than never, no?

This was, as I say in the title, the very first NHL Box I ever opened. (It has since been joined by 16-17 Ice, 16-17 UD S2, 17-18 UD S1 and 1992-93 Ultra s1, and I have some more I'm working on but have not finished yet!)

Fleer has always been my favorite company, a large part of that because they made Ultra, my favorite brand. Fleer Showcase can trace it's roots all the way back to Flair, which eventually evolved into Flair Showcase, then Fleer Showcase, then Flair and Fleer Showcase were two different sets being issued the same years, then finally Flair Showcase being an insert in Fleer Showcase, which is now part of the Upper Deck family. (whew!) The Fleer Showcase set is now the only set of cards Fleer shows up on, although UD reintroduced some Marvel Comics sets with the Fleer banner last year. For most of the brands that made Fleer great, they appear as inserts in this set.

Enough pre-amble, let's see some cards, right?
Here's the base card design.

It's very gold and the players are all glowy. This one happens to be the only card in my collection showing the Nets-inspired alternates the Islanders wore last year.

Some of the photos really could have used more context, like this shot of Alex Ovechkin, who looks kind of possessed...

...which Anze Kopitar appears to be trying to escape from.

Scroll down below to see the rest of the base cards.

There were two rookies in the box, both numbered.

and Kyle Connor is clearly autographed. In fact, this was the first NHL autograph I pulled from a pack myself, and the second in my collection! I had never heard of him at that time, but I have watched the Jets a little more during the 2017-18 season and he's playing a pretty good role in their actually being good this year. He's put up 18 goals on the year in 50 games, with 35 points overall. Zack Mitchell has not done as well, playing only 21 games with three goals this season, he appears to be on the end of the bench in Minnesota.

The real draw of Fleer Showcase is the retro inserts, however. All the Fleer/Skybox brands live on solely in this set, as I've mentioned, but I was not able to pull all of them from my box.

Ultra lives on only as the mirror foil Scoring Kings, a long-time staple of the brand. Tarasenko was key in the Blues winning the first NHL game I saw in it's entirety so that is cool.

EX features a clear cutout with a cloud pattern printed on clear plastic- a definite throwback to the 1996-97 set.

Flair Showcase showed up with 5 cards, including one parallel of the insert, called Blue Ice, which is kind of funny if you know what that is. The card has an unusual texture on the back, is serially numbered, and sparkles much more than the scan shows.

The most populous throwback insert though, was Metal Universe, which saw 6 cards.

The Crosby is die cut, and the Carlo is fairly low numbered, 50 copies exist of this color Precious Metal Gems. There are also Green, Red and Purple, of which I didn't get any. The big problem with the Metal Universe cards, though, is that they are not etched. With the exception of one series in 1997-98, all the other Metal branded cards are etched foil, which I know Upper Deck has the capability to produce, as they used it in the Black Diamond brand for years.

There was also a Skybox Premium insert but they are numbered and rarer, I didn't get any of them. 

There were also three of the Red Glow parallels, which are not numbered. There is also a White Hot parallel, which is numbered to 25, that I was unable to pull.

I have to admit, I love parallels...I love parallels more than inserts, in fact...but in this case I would have been happier getting base cards, as I got none of these three in base format. It was my first cards of Drouin and Stepan, but being a known Rangers fan, I've gotten more Stepans since.

Overall, I got 71 of the 100 non-SP base cards. All the inserts and parallels I got are shown above.
Since it would be a lot of work to post the other 68 base cards, I'm not going to do that. Instead, here's a little gif of them.

They are in number order, but if you want to see the number and card backs, I suggest going to see the set on the Trading Card Database here. You can see the cards I didn't get there, too.

I don't know if they plan to do Fleer Showcase again in the 2017-18 season, but if they do, I hope I get a box again. There's a lot of nostalgia and the cards are pretty cool, even if they are mostly cutout of a full photo...you can still see it in the background.