Site for betting news

What a week.  Feeling great, long holiday weekend to enjoy some time off of work after a busy holiday schedule and then Monday rolls around.   Get out of bed, start coughing.   Don’t think much of it, because I feel well enough to get out with the missus and do some errands. Later in the evening, it starts to hit me.   Maybe the worst cold I’ve had in the past couple of decades.   I don’t normally miss 3 straight days of work when I get sick (it’s usually one), but this was so bad and wiped me out so much that I couldn’t even keep my eyes open most of the week. I didn’t even look at cards for 4 days.   Yep, it was that bad.So now that I’m almost a fully functional human being again, it’s time to get posting.  Today’s post is going to cut the “Doug pile” of serial numbered hockey cards on my desk in half. A trio of cards from the 2014-15 Artifacts set, the red parallels of Brent Seabrook, Corban Knight and Matt Lindblad.  The red on the Chicago red to me looks good, but for some reason I don’t get the same feel on the Calgary red.   I’m sure it’s the same shade of red, so what gives? Knight is currently a part of the Florida Panthers organization, playing in 20 games for them last year (Why don’t I remember him?).  Lindblad has played a total of 4 games for Boston, and hasn’t seen the NHL since 2014-15.   He was signed as a free agent by the Rangers in July of 2015, but Hockey Reference.com doesn’t have any stats on him after the signing…A little more star power with this scan, as these 3 cards from the 15-16 Artifacts release feature bigger names such as Nash, Lucic and Couture.  Amazing that Lucic has already changed teams twice since this card came out at the beginning of last year…The Jordan Schroeder card I had mistakenly thought was from last year, it’s actually from 2013-14, when he was still a member of the Canucks.  Jordan is now in Minnesota, and he’s still bouncing between the big club and their minor league affiliate in Iowa. Three of the 4 cards on the final scan are over a decade old.  I had forgotten the name Dan Cloutier until I received the 2002-03 OPC blue parallel in the lower left.  Dan was the #1 goalie at the time, and recorded 3 straight 30+ win seasons on the west coast.  After the 2004-05 season was wiped out, he wasn’t the same, and finished his last 3 seasons as a back up.  Martin Biron creeps me out.  He’s an intelligent man, don’t get me wrong, and I enjoy his analysis on hockey telecasts.   But boy, do those eyes scare me….I’m down to the final 12 cards from the 2 envelopes that Doug sent my way before the holidays.  It’ll be good to have them posted on the blog and put away. It’s just good to be back on track…Thanks for reading, Robert

Powered by WPeMatico

I didn’t mention it at all during yesterday’s “resolutions” post, but one of my goals for 2017 is to keep my desk clutter free.  That means keeping the piles of cards that tend to gather up over time put away in their proper place.That also means posting.  That’s right, the sooner I post the cards on the blog, the sooner I can get them where they need to go. I’ve actually done well so far in the new house, there’s only a few small piles on the desk.  The caveat there is I’ve only been in here 5 months, so I haven’t had a lot of time (or packages) to leave cards unattended.The biggest project going right now for me is the hockey version of SNI.  With about 40 cards on my desk to post, it’s a bit of a challenge for me to get posts going using a theme.  I decided for today to combine cards from a trio of bloggers who were generous enough to send me cards before the holidays.The first batch of 6 comes from Jim at the newly created cards as i see them blog.  (Sorry I couldn’t remember the name on my video post Jim, it just proves that I need to be better prepared for the videos!).  Favorite card?  Ray Bourque of course.  Love getting the veterans/star cards for this set, and seeing Bourque was an instant winner for me.  Patrik Elias isn’t far behind,  having played for the Devils since ’95-’96 (!) and winner of 2 Cups.  This group also knocked out 3 more cards that are #’d below 100, a task that I thought might take some time, but isn’t appearing to be that way.This trio is courtesy of Doug (Ranford on the left) and Dave (Sakic and MacKinnon) on the right.  I had showed on my video post a card of Sergei Varlamov from Dave, but alas that turned out to be a dupe, so instead of putting the Sakic into my PC, I decided to add him to the SNIH set instead. Here’s 6 more from Doug to round out the post.  Three more Ice Premieres from 2014-15 (there must have been a fire sale on these…), at least I’ve heard of 2 of the 3 so far.  The bottom row was easy to put together, as I had to mention the Columbus Blue Jackets, who are hotter than any team I’ve seen in quite a while, winning their last 15 in a row.  I had actually picked them last year to start doing bigger things, only to see them go quickly into the tank at the start of the season.  The Chris Nielsen card is the key card in this post, as it becomes the leader of the pack (so to speak) having the serial #1/1000. Jim, Dave and Doug, as always thank you very much.   Your envelopes are really appreciated!!2 posts already in the book for 2017, just 198 to goThanks for reading, Robert

Powered by WPeMatico

The video is 14:34 long, so if you don’t want to hear me talk, you can read the post below.Here’s my annual 7 goals for the year.   They are in no particular order.1. Set completion:  ’64 Topps, ’73 Topps and ’88-’89 OPC hockey are the three biggies that I want to finish during the first quarter of 2017.    I also want to work on getting the entire run of 80’s OPC sets.  I know that I will not finish all of them this year, but I have a start on a trio of others, and  by the end of the year have the remaining want lists on the blog.  2. Video posts.  Once a month.  Don’t want to scare everyone away.   I enjoyed the first one, and I was better prepared for this one.  Hopefully I can enhance my preparation and speaking ability to make better videos as time goes by.3.  COMC.   Time to get this going.  This was something I wanted to do last year, but just never got around to it.  Now that I have the time, and the first 100 cards ready to go, there’s no more excuses.4.  Jays and Leafs collections.  Have to get them organized and updated on spreadsheets.  This is going to take some time and effort. 5.  Contest, 100 cards, 100 words.  As I mentioned in the video, I’m hoping to send 50 PWE’s with 2 cards each to fellow bloggers.  The catch?  You have to write a 100 word post about the envelope when you receive it.   I’ll explain more as I get the project started.   Want 2 cards?  Make sure that your want lists are up to date and leave a comment below.   If I don’t get 50 comments, well I’ll be sure to pick some people that I want to see get some cards.  There’s a prize at the end…trust me.6.  2016 Allen & Ginter completion.  If you watched the video, you saw the small  brick of cards I have so far.  I want the whole set, 350 cards, plus the 100 card Number’s Game insert set.  I’m not buying any more packs.  Let’s go!7.  $2k.  I’ve flirted with raises for my budget in the past, now I’m going through with it.  52 x $30 is $1560, which is still pretty cheap when compared to some other hobbies.  I’m increasing my limit to $2000 total in 2017, and I’m going to chronicle every penny I spend.   This blog was started on trying to stay within a budget, and 2017 is going to be all about that.   Once I hit the 2000 dollar mark, that’s it, no more. Let’s have some fun in 2017, shall we?  That’s what collecting is all about…thanks for reading, Robert

Powered by WPeMatico

To say the least, 2016 was an interesting year.  We lost 3 great sports icons (Howe, Ali and Palmer) plus many more celebrities.  The USA elected a business man for a president, which should make 2017-2020 very interesting.2016 was also a year of upheaval for me.  I was able to get my wife down to Florida with me, and we started the process of finding our “forever home”.  It took over 4 months from the day we started seeing houses until the day we signed the contracts and obtained the keys. That certainly affected the blogging and collecting process for me (as it would anyone, I believe).I decided to pull up my January 1st post last night to see what I wanted to accomplish, and how I did. Here’s the seven items I wanted to accomplish in 2016.1.  I’d like to get more envelopes in the mail.  If you want to get picky, I accomplished this.  26 mailers sent out in 2015, 27 sent out in 2016.   To be honest, that’s not how I wanted it to go down.  I think more PWE’s will help increase this number.  Grade:  D2.  Finish off a couple of vintage sets.  OK, I could make excuses about how for 4 plus months my life was a little upside down, and I didn’t have much time to do anything card related.   Yes, that’s true, but it’s also bull shit because I had more than enough time to finish off my ’64 set at the end of the year, but instead I went off on a tangent and started the SNI Hockey project.   Grade:  F3.  Player PC 1 of 1’s.  2016 will also see more attention paid to my Sakic, Thome and Lawrie PCs.  White whale cards??  Didn’t happen.  I did a fair job though increasing by Sakic and Thome collection this year, but Lawrie didn’t get a whole lot of attention. As far as the 1 of 1’s go?   Fail.   The rest of it I’ll give myself a C-.4.  Get back into a regular writing rhythm.  This will be the toughest of them all.  108 posts during 2015 isn’t enough, in my opinion.This post is #130 for 2016, and with 4 months being a total write-off (bad pun, I know), I feel that the last part of 2016 saw my interest in blogging come back.  If I can write 17 posts in November and 19 in December (including this one), there’s hope yet.   Have to shoot for at least 15 per month in 2017.Grade:  C-5.  Try and get rid of some of the excess.  Well, I did do that to some extent, by donating a bunch of cards to local charities down here after I moved in.  What I mentioned at the beginning of the year was getting set up on COMC with selling some cards.   I started to put cards together the last couple of months to send off, but never got around to it.  A grade of D- for only fulfilling a portion of this goal. 6.  Read, read and re-read.  It’s time to start reading more blogs.  Fail.  Fail.  Fail.  Shame on me.  If there was a grade Z, that’s what I would get.7.  Clean up the blog a little.  Wow!  I actually did do something right this year!!  I really worked on my want lists, rearranged the layout a bit and changed the font.  What I’d like to do is figure out to make a new header for the blog.  I’m going to be generous on this one and give myself a B+.I have a few things that I want to accomplish in 2017, but that’s tomorrow’s post.  In keeping with the one card rule for any post I write, here’s my Sakic card of the year.This was part of my secret Santa envelope that Jim from GCRL fame sent me.   This is the rainbow foil 2008-09 OPC retro insert, #98/100!!  I don’t know if I had ever seen one of the rainbow parallels anywhere, so getting this card in the envelope was truly unexpected and totally amazing.   Thank you Jim!To all those out there who actually still read this blog, I want to say thank you for sticking by me in 2016.Have a great and safe 2017, and whatever you do tonight, please do it safely. Thanks for reading, Robert

Powered by WPeMatico

Kerry from the Cards on Cards blog is always good to hit any want list that is put in front of him.  Or maybe it’s just my want lists that he has success with.   I don’t know for sure, but an envelope that came my way recently from his neck of the woods was full of Blue Jays goodness that certainly made my want list a bit lighter.Even with the X-Large setting for this scan, the cards still look like minis, don’t they?  None of the 4 were in my collection before now.   Love the two Damaso Garcia stickers from the early 80’s on the left, the Aaron Sanchez sticker is from this years release, and the Lloyd Moseby on the right I originally suspected to be one of the Topps Micro, but is in fact a sticker from 1987.   Great stuffI was in shock when I looked at my ’90 Leaf Jays want list, there was actually 8 cards on there before these 5 came my way.  Naturally, I’ll need those 5 again for my set, so I’ll have to hunt for those one day.  I had to check my have list to see if I had the ’85 Topps All Star card for Dave Stieb, I didn’t.  It’s almost as if Kerry has psychic abilities….Not only did older wants go by the wayside, but newer release want lists were also damaged.  Love them all, the ’16 Heritage, the ’15 A&G (which I didn’t even have a list up on the blog, but I’ll take Kerry’s word for it that it’s needed), the 2015 Topps and Gypsy Queen also have fewer cards on their want lists as well. Side note:  I was sad to Edwin Encarnacion go to Cleveland.  Very sad indeed.  But I don’t blame him one bit.  He’ll provide better numbers offensively than Napoli, and is also better defensively (although his GP at 1st last year was half of Napoli’s).   I think Cleveland is even closer to the WS now with EE in their lineup.More hits on the want list, including the Power Players Colby Rasmus, who has since moved on to the Astros.  I got a kick out of the AL RBI leaders card, particularly the Jose Bautista portion.  Did Topps actually catch him 5 minutes after a shave?  I’ve never seen him that clean shaven…All in all, a fantastic package from Kerry.   Thank you very much Kerry, the cards are greatly appreciated!  Thanks for reading, Robert

Powered by WPeMatico