Wrong Holiday

 Have I mentioned my Terry Francona PC on this blog yet?

For a while I accumulated Francona cards on a whim, picking up a couple here and there when shopping at places like Cardbarrel and BaseballCardStore (rip). Evetually I decided to add him to my PC player list. Terry wasn't a star(rarely even a starter), played in the 1980s, and retired before there were 20+ sets a year. I thought a Francona career collection would be fairly simple and affordable.

Hasn't quite turned out that way. I still need a couple basic singles:

1982 - Donruss, Fleer, Topps
1983 - Donruss, Fleer, Topps
1984 - Donruss, Fleer, Topps
1985 - Donruss, Fleer, Topps
1986 - Donruss, Fleer, Topps
1987 - Donruss, Fleer, Topps
1988 - Score, Topps
1989 - Score, Topps, Upper Deck
1990 - Score, Topps, Upper Deck

Then there's O-Pee-Chee (need 1982, and 1987), Leaf (need 1985), and the Traded/Tiffany/Traded Tiffany sets (need most of those.) I might try to pick up his minor league cards but I am not messing with all those Brewers police issues. 

I don't have any cards of Terry's dad Tito Francona - unless you count the 1985 Topps Father/Son single. Might try to pick up some Titos, too. 

Father / son duos have been on my mind lately as I've been cataloging my card collection. We're all familiar with the Griffeys, the Bondses, the Hulls, the Currys, and so on. In recent years the McCaffreys, Guerreros, Bichettes, Witts, and Tkachuks have been in the spotlight. 

Cross-sport father-son duos have piqued my interest as well. 

Pat and Patrick Mahomes are the obvious ones. But did you know Wayne Gretzky's son played minor league baseball?

Popeye and Seth Jones are inteteresting. I may have mentioned this story before, but here it goes again. While the elder Jones was playing for the Denver Nuggets his son Seth saw their arena-mates the Avalanche playing hockey and took to the sport immediately. Popeye sought out the Avs' captain Joe Sakic for assistance on getting Seth started as a hockey player, and... 

It worked out pretty well. So, to summarize: Iconic hockey great's son = minor league ballplayer. Journeyman basketball player's son = NHL All-Star, Olympian, and Stanley Cup Champion. 

The sports world is full of countless father / son combinations. We’re even seeing the rare father / daughter combo once in a blue moon.

Some bloodlines are known immediately, like when the top of the MLB Draft includes Matt Holliday's kid and Reggie Willits's kid. Some sneak up on you. Have you ever seen an athlete with a name that sounds vaguely familiar and thought.. I wonder if they're related to that player I remember as a kid? 

There’s also the inverse of that- like when you come across a player from the past and connect them to a current star.

I've got some old WLAF singles saved for nostalgia and curiosity; no one but me is going to have any interest in 35 year-old cards from a long-dead league. Except .. looking closer, I noticed something. A quarterback with a familiar last name.

I flipped it over, saw that Mark Maye was from North Carolina, and learned that I have a card of Drake's dad. Which reminds me - I've also got a junk wax-era card of Jared Goff's dad. (And you probably do, too.) 

🏈🏈🏈🏈🏈🏈🏈🏈🏈🏈🏈🏈🏈

The sports card portion of this post is over but I thought I'd summarize my dating app experience since this is Love Day and all (hail Lord Huggington!)

I was on Hinge for about six weeks, and was well-prepared for the lack of likes and interest. Nearly all of the testimonials I read from regular guys said that dating apps are "pay to win" and "will destroy your self-esteem" Ha! You assume I have any to begin with!

 

But yeah, it was unproductive to say the least. I did not pay for a subscription and felt no need to do so. Is that why I managed a mere two likes on my profile pics and one like on my prompt answers? I doubt it, but who knows. 

My initial plan was to feed the algorithm by scrolling through profiles and clicking the heart next to any pics or prompt answers that I vibed with. If I could think of something to say I'd leave a comment with my like. Probably 'liked' at least a hundred things and commented 15 times. 

There was one woman who said she loved Ted Lasso and asked if the reader is a Ted or a Roy. I left a nice long comment stating I'm a Roy and .. she liked my profile. We had a connection! Except.. when I followed up it was gone. She must have unfollowed me immediately . Maybe because I have kids?

I think I mentioned that local taco-lover I was on the fence about? I did message her, and .. nothing. For the most part I tried to stay local. But 'local' to me also means New York City, and.. whoa. Sooo many women way over my head. I usually don't care - they're all Type A with "growth mindset" listed among their green flags. But there was one woman who didn't have any corporate speak in her profile, didn't seem like an influencer type. Still way out of my league, but I took a shot because...

Yeeaahh.... all I got was a new crush out of that. And obviously she didn't reply. 

I didn't need to see any more. 

Happy Love Day everyone!



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A long post before a long break

Over the past two months I've added loads of new cards to my collection and thought of several blog post ideas. I've just lacked the time to write about any of them. And so I wanted to start the new year off with a relatively long post about my card collection, blog, and goals for 2026. 

Like a lot of long-time collectors, I definitely feel like I've been priced out of the hobby. 2025 was a horrible year personally but it was a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reshape my collection. If hobby box prices were reasonable (no monopolies, no breakers, etc.) I could see myself sauntering into my LCS and leaving with 5 or 6 boxes, single cards, supplies.. you name it. Instead, I bought one hobby box. I hadn't bought a hobby box in years - and I'll probably never do it again. 

 

Retail has been my go-to for about a decade, though it's frustrating to have your options limited by whatever basic products you can find at Target. $20 blasters were always a cheap way to get your rip fix; if the box is a dud, at least it didn't damage your wallet. But those $20 blasters are now $35 for the same amount of hits. If card shows were a thing around here -- and dealers brought quarter and dollar boxes -- I'd only go to Target for home essentials and whatnot. 

In fact I go to Target even less because Barnes & Noble has a better selection of blasters, they're closer, and I have more incentive to shop there because my daughters read books and I get rewards coupons. They even have hockey cards!

As any savvy collector will tell you, ripping boxes is a waste of money. It's better to just buy the singles you want. I did a mix of that in Q4 2025: some from the 'smart' side of the ledger and some from the 'foolish' side. Spending over $200 on Series One of Upper Deck hockey? Dumb! I could have bought the base set and the top rookies for roughly that amount. I still need about 40 of the 250 base cards and I didn't pull the Ivan Demidov RC out of hobby or retail (also - hobby doesn't have relics or autos anymore? what's the chase - low numbered parallels? ) 

Also on the 'foolish' ledger - I spent nearly $300 on a Jim Palmer second-year card that I could have bought for $30 raw. It's hard to explain this to a traditional collector/slab skeptic, especially with reports of grading malfeasance from PSA (which is now a monopoly!) popping up more frequently than ever. In general, it's a terrible time to invest in any type of graded cards - PSA, SGC, or especially BGS. 

But that train left the station a looong time ago, and I've never had the extra room in my budget to shape my seemingly disparate slabs into an actual theme. With each passing year, my interest in new cards and current players dims, allowing me to focus on players I grew up watching and 'golden era' legends whose legacies are etched in stone. 

It's exhausting trying to speculate on current players - which ones will succeed immediately? Which ones will fail spectacularly? Which ones will improve at a expected rate for their sport, but the hobby hypes them up soo much that by the time they reach the potential everyone knew they had, investors had already given up because they weren't immediately amazing?

I seriously considered picking up a Connor Bedard Young Guns RC last summer for about $200. Would have been a smart investment, but collecting current players just isn't a priority for me anymore. I buy new product for fun. I invest in vintage because I've made way too many mistakes selling too soon on recent stars. The Alex Ovechkin SP Authentic sale was amazing, but I still left money on the table. 

And I'm okay with that. I've learned to let go of the mistakes and forgive myself for selling cards I shouldn't have. This. Is. A. Hobby. Collect what makes you happy, not what makes you money. 

For me, that means one of three things: set building, team PCs, and vintage. There are some players(most of them retired) that still ping my antennae, but that's less of a priority at the moment.
 

Team PCs are the cheapest, and it's where I've spent the most time over the past year and a half. I'm running out of room for more Red Sox, Packers, Devils, and Whalers.. yet that doesn't stop me from hitting Sportlots or Beckett for new stuff. My final purchase of 2025 was from Rich N' Deals. I was lured in by a 30% off coupon, filled my cart with everything I wanted, and had about $70 worth of singles ready to order. But the coupon was only good for $100+ purchases. I needed to find a "free" card. 

Dennis will be happy with my choice here: 

I've got a couple low-end rookie cards of the holy pitching trinity of the 21st century: Kershaw, Scherzer, Verlander*. None of them were Topps until now. I also picked up a Joe Flacco relic to get me just over the $100 minimum. I wasn't foolish enough to spend $30 on a $10 card alone - even if it was technically free. 

For a brief moment many months ago, I considered picking up a slabbed Bowman Chrome auto of Verlander - until I searched prices on eBay. Oof. This is why I can’t collect current players.

*Side note/mini-rant: why are the HOF vote totals for borderline pitchers exploding this year? We don't need to put Andy Pettitte or Felix Hernandez in the Hall to fill a quota - just wait for these guys (and Greinke). 

I don't want to spend too much time discussing my vintage graded card collection here; you'll see many of the cards in my upcoming Top Ten By Position series anyhow. It has been a lot of fun selling certain slabs and streamlining the collection. My graded card carrying case fits exactly 144 slabs, so I've named my PSA project "The 144". 4 Sharp Coners consignment has helped me essentially trade in unneeded vintage for 'bucket list' rookie cards and high-grade copies of legends that were missing from my collection. The Position series will serve as a checklist for who I'm still missing. Should be fun!

On that note, I'm going to take a break from blogging for the majority of January. I'm currently undertaking a major cataloging project that will prepare me for the blog series (set to debut in February or March) and allow me to trade on TCDB so I can fill some sets. Box and binder space in my collection is very limited but I do have room for one more row of boxes on my shelf. 

Looks like I'll be adding more Topps baseball and Upper Deck hockey sets to my collection this year.  

Of course the real set building focus remains my 1956 Topps set. I plan to complete this in 2026, for several reasons: 

-my mom got me started on this and I want to finish it while she is still alive (her health is declining faster than she wants to admit) 

-my kids are going to start planning for college soon, and I will either need to sell the set to fund their higher education or, at the very least, stop spending money on myself

-it's the 70th anniversary of this fantastic set, the 75th anniversary of Topps baseball cards in general, and my 40th year of collecting!

🎵Memmm-ries 🎵

As the year progresses, I will plan some festivities for these occasions. For now, my focus will be on the Top Ten By Position series - and possibly a post on collecting(or not collecting) bad guys before that. 

Thanks for reading!



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Sportlots and The Summer of Slabs

As I type this, I've got no sports card orders currently en route to Collector HQ, which is fairly rare for me as of late. I've had a steady stream of small orders - usually from Sportlots - at frequent enough intervals that I almost always have a couple cards to look forward to. But not today. They've all arrived, and I haven't yet placed a new order. 

Here's my entire shopping list. This is all I have room for after attacking the team binder bookshelves all year:

Packers cards

1995-1998 -- room for 5

2003-2013 -- room for 1

2014-2024 -- room for 6

misc./draft -- room for 3

Devils cards

1983-1993 -- room for 2

2014-2025 -- room for 26

misc./draft -- room for 6

These arrived earlier this week during an oppressive heat wave that knocked out our power at home and at my office (I couldn't work Tuesday.) The only way it could have been more apt is if I'd ordered Heat or Suns cards. 

Whalers cards

misc.*/draft -- room for 7

*includes Whalers cards issued after 1998

I had two pockets left to fill in my third Whalers binder - comprising 1995-96, 1996-97, and 1997-98 cards - and a miscellaneous section of oddballs, draft picks, and retro-base cards featuring Legends or Whalers Night photos. Thanks to Andrew Cassels and Keith Primeau here, the Whalers Era pages are now full... but I've still got room for a lot more cards. Kind of. 

Before I explain, let me mention that Upper Deck did not include any Whalers Night photos in their flagship 2024-25 set, and I haven't seen one in any other set this year. I'm really hoping someone at UD finds a way to memorialize Mikko Rantanen's 13-game stint in Carolina with a photo like this:

This would be perfect for a UD Canvas insert

Okay, so.. my Whalers binders are currently full. However, I have one small binder that can hold about 20-25 9-pocket pages. That's completely empty, waiting for me to bulk acquire about 100+ Whalers cards so I can move out the miscellaneous and make room for what's left on my wantlist. 

I also moved some things around in my Connecticut Cards binder, which was shared with Whalers extras until recently. 

Connecticut cards

minor league baseball -- room for 1

UConn men/women -- room for 2

minor league hockey -- room for 4

CT hockey isn't necessarily AHL only. If I can find new-to-me NHL cards of players who played in or hailed from my hometown, I'll count those. 

CT baseball is actually two binders - I've got a mini-binder full of New Haven/West Haven teams, and a second binder with some pages for New Britain Rock Cats, Norwich Navigators, Hartford Yard Goats, and a team set of Connecticut Tigers (I don't have any Waterbury Reds 😒)

However, that one isn't exclusively Connecticut cards. I needed to make room in my (non-PC) baseball card boxes for all the 2025 Topps Heritage I bought (couldn't resist) and realized that the best way to clear out cards without throwing them in the trash or messing with my sorting system was to make some new player PCs. 

The problem with that? I have every single player PC card (base, inserts, parallels, anything) in a top loader. I have 12 player PCs - not including Pedro Martinez Dodgers/Expos/Mets/Phillies cards and David Ortiz Twins cards, because I didn't have room in the PC box or the baseball-only boxes. So now I have those cards in the baseball mini-binder, along with Kris Bryant cards and my now-official Terry Francona PC.

I'd been passively picking up playing-era Francona cards at Cardbarrel and baseballcardstore if I saw any unique issues or anything under 15 cents. Now I've got enough to try and fill in Francona's entire playing career (unless there are some unexpected rarities that cost more than a couple dollars.)

The binder bookshelf is basically my penultimate project. It's a fun and affordable warm-up to the grand finale, which is definitely not happening any time soon. 

My eBay buddy Baseball Brittie had been holding some sales credit for me and I cashed it in. This Joe Adcock gets me to less than 56 cards away from completing the 1956 Topps baseball set. {side note: he just informed me that he sold a card of an MLB batting champion to the mother of said batting champion}

I've considered buying more ungraded singles to get closer to completion, but I just cant. There's an auction up on eBay for three cards. I need all three, and two are Red Sox. The seller wants $53 + tax and shipping. And there's a print line through one of them. Ugghhh...

I spent much of Spring shopping on Sportlots and Beckett Marketplace. But I'm going big-game hunting this summer, Because Mrs. Collector is expecting to have surgery right around Labor Day. They might extract all of the cancer, they might not. She might be back to 100% in fall.. or life as I know it may get much, much harder. 

BGS is currently working on grading some of my cards. Once those arrive, I'll add some from that batch to a stack of my own and send some slabbed singles to 4 Sharp Corners for consignment. Some of that cash will be set aside for home repairs (hopefully).. and some will be set aside for cards that I've wanted since I was a teenager...

Thanks for reading!



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Packin' 'em in

Welp, the Red Sox are definitely done now. Rafael Devers is a Giant, and Boston didn't even get Yastrzemski in the deal 😉 So many Sox fans renounced their fandom when the team traded Mookie Betts - but this one might be worse. Raffy was already signed long-term (unlike Mookie) and they depreciated their own asset by jerking him around about his role with the team until he didn't want to be in Boston anymore. Also, most fans forget that the Sox convinced the Dodgers to take on David Price's albatross contract in the Betts trade. 

The players coming back from the NL West team based in California this time are... slightly better. But they gave up many more years of a superstar under contract and sent the wrong message to the three blue chip prospects who just arrived. Ugh...I'm not just done with this team, I'm done with this sport. 

So let's look ahead to football. 

My Green Bay Packers collection is close to complete, thanks to an order from Sportlots and an order from the Beckett Marketplace. 

Filling in the 1980s requires doubling up on '86-88 cards (I've already completed these sets.) The Tim Hauck Pro Set fills the last spot in my early 1990s binder. You don't see '93 Pro Set singles nearly as often as their first three sets; Hauck and Brett Favre are the only two Packers I have from that set. 

I though I had most of the basic Sterling Sharpe cards but Playoff snuck this one by me - until now. These were 20c each on SportLots. Hold that thought. 

Really wish I could expand the selection of Packer players but Robert Brooks and Edgar Bennett were in just about every mid-'90s set. (Now you see why I picked the Tim Hauck card from '93 Pro Set.)

More Brooks cards, but at least there's some new faces here. I'm not seeking out Mark Chmura cards but I wanted the Action Packed single because I had that hat back in the day. Still do somewhere in my hat bag.

John Michels was the Packers' 1st round pick in 1996 and I'm just now adding him to my collection. Offensive linemen (who washed out of the league within two years) didn't get many cards back then. 

I picked out exactly enough cards to fill my 2000s Packers binder, but the seller couldn't find an Ahman Green card and issued a refund. 

Sportlots still has Beckett beat, especially on price. Regardless, I had to fill a cart with 50 cent commons for one specific single that no Sportlots seller had in stock...

More mid '90s here. If I'm going to pay half a buck for commons they'd better be HOFers like Sharpe and Butler.. but the 1994 Ultra and UD singles are now duplicates because I didn't check them off after buying them 30c cheaper at Sportlots. Oh well, wasted 90 cents there. 

But it came out in the wash when the Eddie Lacy Finest RC I purchased (for 62c) along with another Ahman Green single were out of stock and I was refunded $1.12. where are these Ahman Green collectors coming from?

Here's the 2010s Packers single that prompted my return to Becket marketplace after nearly three years. Can you guess which of these basic looking base cards has finally been crossed off my want list?

That's right, it's the Scott Tolzien Prizm base card. This is one of very few Tolzien singles that depict him as a Packer; he started two games in place of an injured Aaron Rodgers during the 2013 season and was ...not good. And yet - none other than the Dallas Cowboys hired him to be their quarterbacks coach for two seasons!

We'll wrap this up with the newest Pack singles, including a trio of Davante Adams cards.
 

So.. how much room do I have left for more Packer cards?

• 5 more cards from the mid-late 1990s
• 1 more card from the 2010s
• 6 more cards from the 2020s
• 1 miscellaneous card 

Overall, I'm about 60 cards away from filling all my team PC binders. I'll have one more inventory update by the end of June, and then -- assuming my wife's health holds up -- it's the Summer of Slabs.

Thanks for reading!

~

One Page PC - James Wilder

While digging through my football card box for Neil Lomax cards I came across a few singles of another underrated '80s NFL star that didn't get much national press because he played on a lousy team.

Drafted by Tampa one pick after St. Louis selected Lomax in 1981, James Wilder played ten NFL seasons - nine with the hapless Buccaneers, who only reached the playoffs twice in his tenure. Tampa parted ways with starting quarterback Doug Williams after the '82 campaign... and finished 2-14 in three of the next four seasons. 

Wilder did everything in his power to keep the Bucs competitive, leading the team in yards from scrimmage each year from 1982 to 1987. In 1984,  he led the NFL with a then-record 407 carries and set a single-season franchise record with 1,544 rushing yards -- still the highest total in Tampa Bay annals. Wilder also holds the Bucs' career records for carries (1,575) and rushing yards (5,957) 

While his average yards per carry (3.8) is sub-standard, he was an exceptional receiver out of the backfield. Among 1980s running backs, only Roger Craig and Marcus Allen had more receiving yards. 

Here's my nine pocket PC of James Wilder. The 1983 Topps and 1985 Topps Wilder cards are about as exciting as his '87 and '88 issues, which is probably why I skipped them. The man's name is Wilder. Show him in action, dammit! 

That's better. 

As a kid I was drawn to the Bucs' orange creamsicle uniform, and it became apparent from Topps team Leader cards that the only player worth following (or collecting) from that era was their running back. 

According to TCDB, James has 71 cards - four fewer than Lomax. Look closer and you'll see that some of those listings are actually Leaf All-American cards of his son, James Wilder Jr. - who won a national championship at Florida State and has over 440 cards despite never playing in the NFL. 

Oh Canada...our home and native land...

I'd be willing to bet that every other NFL franchise's career rushing leader has more cards to collect than Wilder. Go ahead, name one. 

Ottis Anderson? 627. 

Gerald Riggs? 142. 

Sam Cunningham? All right, you got me. 29. 

Looking at the list of franchise leaders, it does make some sense that Wilder has the second-lowest amount of cards since his yardage total is the second-lowest. His career barely extended to 1990, and he was only in two traded sets so the overproduction era couldn't boost his card count like it did with Riggs and Anderson. But how does he have only half as many cards as Gerald Riggs? Why wasn't Wilder in Upper Deck Legends or named a Franchise Legend by Panini Prizm? 

Here's a better question -- why haven't the Tampa Bay Buccaneers added their all-time leading rusher to their Ring of Honor? They have a running back and an offensive star from the early-mid 1980s. Guess the Bucs thought that Mike Alstott and Jimmie Giles have got those bases covered. (btw, did you know Giles was drafted by the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1976? I didn't.) 

I'd love to end this post by showing off a James Wilder Starting Lineup figure, but 1988 Buccaneers are expensive! (This guy is dreaming; you can buy an autographed creamsicle jersey for that price.) 

Perhaps I'll pick up this SLU card someday. It's a sharper looking single than his Topps issues, but fifty times more expensive. 

🏈

I don't have any other mini-collections of overlooked football stars. The only other non-Hall of Famer who played before the 1990s and appears in my collection more than a few times is Steve Bartkowski, and he retired when I was in kindergarten. (Bart has 216 cards, btw.) 

Do you have any favorite "overlooked" football stars of your childhood?

Thanks for reading!



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One Page PC - Neil Lomax

I started collecting football cards in 1988, before I'd even seen a game on TV. Much of what I learned about out-of-market teams in the NFL (and the NBA and NHL) came from collecting cards. There may have been other ways to learn about underrated stars at the time, but if I didn't see them on SportsCenter or read about them in a magazine I only knew what the back of a trading card would tell me. 

One of those overlooked players was Neil Lomax, quarterback of the St. Louis/Phoenix Cardinals through much of the 1980s. The Cardinals were one of a few teams (along with the Buccaneers, Chargers, Seahawks, and Packers) that fascinated me as a kid because I only knew of their existence though Topps cards. I didn't see them on TV or hear about them, and I couldn't get my hands on their Starting Lineup figures (more on that later.)

Spending hours flipping over cards was my version of sports-reference pages. That was how I learned that Lomax was a really good passer and wondered why I didn't hear about him as much as Boomer Esiason or John Elway. Small markets were much smaller back then, and the Cardinals had just relocated from St. Louis. 

Also, as I would learn later on, playoff success is crucial. Esiason and Elway were AFC stalwarts, along with Dan Marino and Bernie Kosar. Joe Montana was king of the NFC (and NFL); Phil Simms and Randall Cunningham were leading nearby teams to the playoffs. Jim Everett and the L.A. Rams were emerging as a threat to the 49ers' dominance. 

I wanted to learn more about Lomax, but the Cardinals were terrible. And just when I started watching more SportsCenter and NFL highlight shows that covered the whole league... he was gone. I don't even think I noticed at first. Hey, a Cardinals highlight! Wait... who the heck is Timm Rosenbach??!?

A hip injury ended Lomax's career after the 1988 season, which is one reason why he's largely forgotten by modern NFL fans. The lack of playoff success and the fact that his team relocated are probably factors as well. Based on his too-brief career as a top tier passer, I initially though that Lomax was the Andrew Luck of the '80s... but his career numbers are more comparable to Baker Mayfield.

I had to laugh when I saw cards of his predecessor Jim Hart in 2024 Panini Prizm. No one is happy pulling Hart, but I would have liked a new Lomax card or two. He didn't have many cards during his career and has appeared in very few sets post-retirement.

This is a nearly complete career run of Lomax cards - I'm only missing 1984 Topps. Not pictured are two Team Leader cards from 1985 and 1987 Topps. According to TCDB, Lomax has 75 different cards - but they stretch the definition of "different" to include copyright variations and stickers with seven different backs. 

Only seven of those 75 cards were released post playing days, and two of those are 1989 Score buybacks. Lomax only has two autographed cards and no game-used issues, so a (more) complete PC wouldn't be expensive to build. 

I'm probably going to add his '84 Topps card to my next Sportlots order and I'm tempted to toss this in the cart as well: 

Or maybe I'll pick up a sealed figure and card on eBay to pair with my 1988 SLU:

Thanks for reading!



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More than one One of One

Most sports card enthusiasts have a player collection or ten, a short list of guys (or gals) that we'll prioritize and stash away as a 'PC'. Some of us even attempt to Super Collect one specific athlete. The Lost Collector(Tino Martinez), Collecting Cutch(Andrew McCutchen) and Zippy Zappy(Luis Torrens) come to mind. CC has ceased his pursuit of all things Cutch and ZZ has divested himself of nearly all his Torrens singles, with good reason. Super Collecting is insane!


I knew this when I started super collecting a former NHL enforcer, but I figured that Peter Worrell would have a manageable amount of cards to collect considering that he had a short career (mostly in south Florida) and was not a star. TCDB doesn't have every Worrell card counted, but a rough estimate puts his card count at about 205-210 unique singles.

Today I'm going to spotlight just two specific sets, to illustrate how chaotic super collecting can get.


2011-12 Enforcers Combatants dual relics had an announced print run of 120 copies per card. Peter Worrell was featured on two of these - one with future Hall of Fame defenseman Zdeno Chara, and one with prototypical pugilist Dennis Bonvie, who holds the career record for penalty minutes in the AHL. 

These cards have rare red parallels (red because.. blood) with a print run of 10 copies per card

Simple, but not easy. The Chara red parallel was a tough one to track down, but once I did it felt like a complete collection of Worrell cards was possible -- aside from One of Ones of course. Hold that thought.

Pete also appears in the 2013-14 Enforcers Combatants set. This was billed as a Series II even though it was released nearly two years later. In The Game used many of the same designs as the 2011-12 set - and many of the same players. Worrell was featured with former Dallas Star Aaron Downey.

The print run was increased to 150 per card for these base relics, but the red parallels were still 10 copies each.

My guy was still appearing on hockey cards ten years after he played his last NHL game. This pleased me as a super collector; I wasn't expecting to have any more of his cards to collect. And I assumed this unlicensed niche set would be the last one I'd have to worry about - especially when In The Game was unable to secure NHL licensing and folded in 2014.

But... two years later, the company liquidated its stock in a 2015-16 release called Final Vault. The cards ITG set aside as replacements were stamped in several different colors, creating "new" cards.

On the plus side, this allowed me to easily acquire Worrell One of Ones.

On the minus side, there were now way too many One of Ones.

In The Game used ten colors for these 1 of 1 stamps. So the base Worrell-Chara now has ten more variations and the red Worrell-Chara has ten variations. Twenty more "unique" Worrell cards to collect!


And twenty more One of Ones of Worrell and Bonvie:

And twenty more One of Ones of Worrell and Downey:

I actually don't have a Vault 1/1 of Downey, so I clicked on over to COMC and that's when I saw this:

There are two Emerald Green One of Ones?!?!? That's unpossible! No wonder In the Game went under.

And that's not the only Peter Worrell One of One that isn't a true One of One! Going back to 2014, In The Game released Ultimate Tough Decade Enfourcers - which included quad relics of the decade's top face-punchers:

These Silver versions had a stated print run of 9 copies per card - though, it should be noted, there is no serial numbering on the cards. I considered myself lucky (and slightly foolish) to secure these for about $40 per card.


The gold versions are One of One, at least according to TCDB. I have assumed this to be true since they were released. How eva..

I have a couple Worrell-related eBay searches set to notify me whenever something hits the site. Just a few days ago I was deleting the same 'Artifacts Petwer' email that yields nothing for me, when I thought to myself that I might never find another Peter card I need. There are very few non One of Ones remaining, and everything that does come up is a show-stamped parallel of the same card I already have.

That's right -- even more One of Ones!!

But this seller had two of the EnFOURcers Superbox quads - the gold versions.

 

I was so.... annoyed. They are asking $50 per card. Plus shipping and tax, that comes to over $110! For two tiny quadrants of a guy who hasn't played in two decades? I already have the silver versions, do I really need these?

Not to mention the fact that I'm planning to attend a card show in three days. If I blow three digits on these two quad cards, what will I have left for the show?


I quickly accepted that I would not be adding any more Worrell to my PC. And then I started to wonder if I was satisfied with my collection as-is. Do I really need any more cards of this long retired 4th-line enforcer? There are so many other things to collect.  

 

And so I pulled the Peter PC box from my closet and thumbed through the cards to appreciate what I had, and to scan the cards you've seen here. 

And that's when I found this:

One of One my ass...

This is the worst case scenario because 1) I know these 1 of 1s aren't 1 of 1s, and 1) I have 1 of the 1 of 1s but I don't have the other 1. If I had both, I'd be thrilled. When I thought I needed both, I decided they weren't worth acquiring at the seller's asking price. But now I only have to spend half of what I expected. Hmmm...


What would you do in this situation - buy the card you don't have and continue super collecting? Or let it go because the Ones of Ones are multiplying so fast that a complete collection will never be possible?

Thanks for reading!



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