Annual Pack Rip on the Golf Course

For the past three years, my brother and I have partaken in a fun little tradition: Opening packs of trading cards after a round of golf.

 

The inaugural event featured Upper Deck hockey packs. They were a surprise from my brother, and it was so fun that the next season I decided to return the favor with more hockey packs. And the third season was the wackiest: It featured packs of Pro Set golf cards, my brother's best friend, and a mischievous crow who got in the way. 

 

Would the newest pack rip on the golf course be filled with so much drama?

 

Thankfully, no. The packs were safely tucked away from any curious critters until we finished the round.

 

It was my brother's treat this time, and he went back to hockey. Instead of Upper Deck, it would be Stadium Club. Both packs were from the 1994-95 season.

 

I mentioned to him that I'd stopped collecting cards by 1994-95, but that I'd certainly know a lot of the players inside those packs. Back then I was a high school kid, playing hockey and soaking up as much NHL action as I could. He was looking forward to hearing stories about some of those players, so we got right into it. 

 

He let me choose which pack I wanted, and I made my selection. Here are the cards that were inside my pack: 

 

 

Nothing special with the first three cards out of the gate, but my brother did enjoy the Hartford Whalers logo that Sean Burke is sporting on his jersey. Who can argue? It's one of the all-time classic NHL logos.

 

 

 

We've got two Hall-of-Famers with Neely and Ciccarelli there. I mentioned to my brother that Cam Neely played a role in the film Dumb and Dumber, and when he said, "Oh yeah?", I asked him if he remembered the character named Sea Bass from the truck stop diner scene. Immediately he saw the resemblance, and he laughed.

 

  

  

 

 

Back to standard here with Bobby Boucher's brother (not really), a checklist, and Kevin Hatcher's actual brother. 

 

 

 

 

And we finish up with a nice Chris Gratton card from the Great Expectations subset. Overall, nothing fantastic, but a couple of good stories and laughs.

 

 

 

Now let's see my brother's pack.

 

  

Bam. Hall-of-Famer Ron Francis starts it off, and over on the right there's a great shot of Esa Tikkanen hoisting the Stanley Cup. Mr. Tikkanen was a big-time yapper and chirper, and would often try to throw his opponents off their game by using a sort of incomprehensible hybrid language of Finnish and English that Wayne Gretzky referred to as "Tikkanese".

 

 

 

It's difficult to make it out from the scan, but Brent Grieve's card has a gold foil stamp on the left-hand side that commemorates the date of his first career hat trick. There are 15 of these such cards scattered throughout the set. That's a nice little touch from the folks at Stadium Club. 

 

As for Derek King, about a year or two before this card was released, I attended a local summer hockey camp on Long Island, and he surprised us kids with a visit one day. It was pretty cool to be on the ice with an Islanders player, especially one who was just about to hit his prime and start scoring 30+ goals a year. But boy oh boy, did his equipment stink! He'd skate past you, and a couple of seconds later you'd get the vapor trail. My brother got a kick out of that story, for sure.

 

But let's get back to the photography, which certainly did not stink. Check this card out:  

 

 

 

 

It features Steve Larmer blasting a slapshot. No card border. Just the white ice in the background. You can almost hear the sound of the shot echoing through the arena. Stadium Club was really nailing images like this, even at the beginning of their history.

 

And speaking of nailing it . . . 

 

 

 

It's a hit!

We didn't know what kind of insert we were dealing with, so my brother flipped the card over.
 

 

 

After a little bit of scanning, we found the answer toward the bottom of the card.

 

Topps Stadium Club Finest! 

 

According to the pack wrapper, the odds of pulling one of these is 1:12. Not too bad.

 

As for The Russian Rocket, man, was he exciting to watch. Knee injuries kept him from reaching some big milestones, like 500 career goals, but he's still a no-doubt HOFer. Check out this formula:

 

437 goals in 702 games played = 0.62 goals per game

 

At the time of this writing, that's the 5th highest average of all time in the NHL. For an idea of how impressive this is, here are a few other players who have lower goals per game averages:

 

Wayne Gretzky: 0.60

Alex Ovechkin: 0.59

Brett Hull: 0.57 

 

If you've never seen Pavel play, please search for some highlights on YouTube. Entertainment guaranteed. 

 

Let's get back to the card backs now. Here's an example from a base card:

 

 

  

Lots of color, and photos, and fonts. Even so, it's almost a little tame for the time period.

 

And here's the rest of my brother's pack:

 

Two HOFers in Dave Andreychuk and Mario Lemieux, both cards coming from the Power Players subset. The back of each card in this subset discussed how the players performed on the power play. Interestingly, there are only six players featured in this subset—two defensemen and four forwards. In any case, it was a nice way to finish.

 

Even without the Bure Finest card, there's no doubt that my brother's pack came out on top.

 

So that's another pack rip in the books. There's still a lot more golf to be played this season, so I'm thinking we might have to do a second pack rip at some point. Maybe we'll do baseball next. Or golf again.

 

What do you readers and collectors think of this little tradition? Do you have any pack-ripping traditions of your own? Share in the comment section, and thanks for reading! 

The 1989-90 OPC Hockey Sticker Album Project: Packs 13–18

 

We're going back to the 1989-90 NHL season, where young Gregory Ninepockets has been bitten by the hockey bug and is attempting to complete the current year's hockey sticker album. Previous entries in this series available here.

 

 

Young Gregory is psyched. It's summer break, and even though there's no hockey on TV, he's been playing in the driveway, in sneakers. He's only got a stick and a few tennis balls, but it's still super-fun to imagine skating around on the ice. Maybe mom will see all the hard work and time spent learning the sport, and answer Gregory's pleas for a pair of roller skates. Maye even rollerblades.

 

But now it's almost noon. It's gotten a little too warm to be out there running around, stickhandling and shooting tennis balls against the garage door. Time to go inside, cool off, and open a few more packs. 

This time, it'll be 6 packs from the bottom left part of the box.

Pack 13

Another Wayne Gretzky base sticker emerges! What a great start. Young Gregory is feeling so good that he even chooses to ignore a sneaking suspicion that he's seen all 6 cards in this pack before.

Pack 14

Well that's a pretty cool action shot of Blackhawks goalie Alain Chevrier. But a similarly worrisome feeling has come to bother young Gregory again. A lot of the cards in this pack look the same, too. He checks his album against the cards in the pack, and . . . he was right! Five out of six are duplicates. Frustrated, he grabs the six cards from the previous pack, including the Gretzky.

 

What? All six cards from that pack are duplicates.

 

Ugh. The Gretzky sticker is great and all, but Gregory doesn't like where this is going. 

Pack 15

The excitement from pulling a Patrick Roy duplicate was muted by the fact that all six stickers in this pack were duplicates, too. Young Gregory looks at the next unopened pack, picks it up, and hesitates. This nonsense couldn't happen again, could it? He peels open the wax seal, and. . . 

 

Pack 16

. . . all duplicates AGAIN!

 

Alright, O-Pee-Chee. You had us feeling like the king of the mountain after all the great stickers we found last time. Now we're down on the ground. 

Pack 17

Well whoop-de-doo. A duplicate of the Joe Sakic base rookie sticker. And a Guy Lafleur duplicate. Not only are we still down on the ground, but O-Pee-Chee is kicking us now.

Pack 18

 

Thanks goodness. In this pack, 5 out of 6 stickers were new. And the Tony Granato rookie subset sticker is a cool addition. In 1988-89, the American-born winger scored 36 goals—the most by any rookie that season—and added 27 assists for 63 points.

 

Favorite Page

 

  

Out of the 36 total stickers this time around, only 6 of them were new. However, 3 of those new stickers were Maple Leafs, so at least that page has gotten a boost. 

Now here's the updated summary for the set build:

Main Set (182 total panels)

 

New panels: 6

New duplicates: 30

 

Total panels: 75

Total duplicates: 33

 

Panels needed: 107

Set completion: 41%

 

 

Future Star/All-Star Backs (34 total)

 

New backs: 0

New duplicates: 4

 

Total backs: 13

Total duplicates: 4

 

Backs needed: 21

Set completion: 38%

Best Stickers

Gretzky, Roy, and Sakic duplicates.

 

 

Man, 1989-90 Gregory is pretty bummed out by those results, but maybe he'll be able to trade some of those duplicates to friends at school.

 

How about you readers? Any specific memories of "collation frustration" back when you were kids?

 

Share in the comment section, and thanks for following along! 

A Smorgasbord! 7-Eleven Super Star Sports Coins

From the 1970s through the 1990s, it seemed like you could find your favorite baseball stars on food product packaging everywhere you looked: supermarkets, corner stores, restaurants, and beyond. This past year, in an effort to capture a little more nostalgia, I set a goal to expand my own collection of these "food-issue" cards. In this series I'll show the specific examples I've acquired, and share a little bit of history about the food or beverage sponsor as well. 

Previous entries can be found here. 

 

  

Summer, 1984. The MLB All-Star Game is coming up next week. You've been playing baseball with all your buddies just about every glorious, free morning since school let out. And on any day of the week, you can ride your bike down to the 7-Eleven, stroll right in, and use some of your lawn-mowing money to get yourself a nice, cool Slurpee.  

 

 

Life is good. 

 

So in you go, straight for the Slurpee machine. You know the flavors: Coca-Cola, Cherry, Grape, Fanta. 

 

Today feels like a cherry day. And it's going to be extra good, because you know you'll be getting a bonus. A special baseball collector's coin will be adhered to the bottom of each Slurpee cup!

 

 

 

At some 7-Eleven locations, they just give you the first Slurpee cup on the stack, so whichever player coin you get is the one you're stuck with. But at this location, you have an "in". The employee who's usually behind the counter in the afternoon is a big baseball fan, and if you're a good kid, he'll let you rummage through the cups to find a coin you really want.

 

Thankfully, he's behind the counter today, and the store is pretty empty, so you get carte blanche. After about a dozen cups, you find your guy. 

 

It's the Wizard of Oz! 

 

You hand the cup over to the 7-Eleven guy, and he promptly fills it up with icy, slushy, cherry goodness and hands it back. You walk outside into the warm summer air, take a few sips, peel the coin off the bottom of the cup. and flip it over. 

  

 

"4 Consecutive Gold Glove Awards"

  

That's the ticket. You just love the way he plays shortstop—his speed, his nimbleness, his acrobatics. And he just seems like a fun baseball player. You've already found his base card and all-star card in the Topps set this summer, and you can't wait to add this coin to your collection.

 

You hop back on your bike, and on the short ride home you hatch an idea.

 

Last week, mom brought a box of Post cereal home from the supermarket, and it had a pretty cool license plate prize inside. You've been meaning to attach it to the back of your bike. When you get home, you open the top drawer of your dresser (otherwise known as your collection drawer) and take it out.

 

 

  

Oh yeah. This summer is going to be rad.

 

Now let's give credit where credit is due.

 

 

 

 

7-Eleven began in 1927 as the Southland Ice Company. Eventually Southland became a chain, and the company added more goods and services to each location. These "convenience stores" were a hit, and by 1946, the name was changed to 7-Eleven. This helped indicate to customers that the store hours were 7 a.m. to 11 p.m.

 

Franchising began in 1961, and soon after the company would introduce the world to names like "Slurpee" and "Big Gulp".

 

By the 1980s, some 7-Eleven locations had arcades. And some even rented videos! Do any of you 1980s kids remember that?

 

As for these days, 7-Eleven is a global brand with about 85,000 locations in 20 different countries, including Thailand, South Korea, Denmark, Norway, and Australia.

 

If only they'd bring back the baseball coins. 

Some of the food-issue cards I've featured in this Smorgasbord series to this point have been fairly obscure, but I know a bunch of you must have some of these 7-Eleven coins in your collections.

 

So here are a few questions:

 

(1) Which coins do you have? 

 

(2) Were you big on Slurpees and Slush Puppies back then? If so, what was your favorite flavor? 

 

(3) Did you have any of those Post cereal license plates? Did you hang them under your bike seat?

Share in the comment section, and thanks for reading! 

2024 Series Custom Card Giveaway: Duck Race Winners

A couple of weeks ago I finally posted about the series of custom cards I designed in 2024. Better late than never, because it gave me the opportunity to create another giveaway. (And a duck race.) The first five finishers of the race would win a custom card of their choice from the 2024 series.

I was happy to see that 12 people entered the giveaway within the entry period. That's a good flock of ducks!

Here's a list of the competitors, and a link to their blogs or other trading card–related social media sites if they have any:

 

Jay Wigley (TCDB: jaywigley)

Tom (Batting Out of Order)

jlcre2003 (TCDB: jlcre2003)

RJ Sahl (TCDB: rjsahl)

POISON75 (S.R. '75 Cards)

Rod (Padrographs)

Matt (Cards over Coffee) 

Matt (Diamond Jesters) 

Sean (Baseball Cards In Japan)

Red Cardboard (Red Cardboard)

Mark (The Chronicles of Fuji) 

Derek (TCDB: CollectorTBNL)

 

 

Twelve competitors. Five prizes. That means you have more than a 40% chance of winning one of them!

If you haven't seen the duck race in action, or don't remember it from last time, here's how it works: 

Each entrant is represented by an animated rubber duck that is sitting at the starting line on an animated river. The starting gun fires, and all the ducks begin floating randomly along the river as the screen scrolls horizontally. Eventually the finish line appears, and the first duck to cross the line wins. 

 

Yesterday I ran the script and recorded the action. Want to see how it all turned out? 

 

Play the video, find your duck, and here we go. (You'll see a list of the top 5 finishers at the end of the video.)

Wow! That Batting Out of Order duck really turned on the jets at the end. And full credit to Fuji, who somehow managed to make it into the top 5 after blowing a tire around the 19-second mark.

Anyhow, as shown in the scroll-down list at the very end of the video, here are the top five ducks:

(1) Tom (Batting Out of Order)

(2) Rod (Padrographs)

(3) Red Cardboard

(4) Jay Wigley

(5) Mark (The Chronicles of Fuji)

Congratulations! All five of you will receive a custom card of your choice from the 2024 series. Here's the list again. Click on each card to see what they look like, and to read about them. Then make your selection.

Standard Set 

1956 Jerry Seinfeld

1956 Cosmo Kramer

Beastie Boys In Action

The Jimi Hendrix Experience

The Princess Bride

Mel Gibson Film Stars

Top Gear Future Stars

 

Sitcom Subset

The Golden Girls

Married with Children

Seinfeld 

 

If you're a winner, just let me know which card you'd like in the comment section.

If you've never sent me your mailing address, or if it's changed recently, please do send it to me. You can find my contact information on the blog here, or you can message me through TCDB here.

Thanks again to all of you for participating. Hope you enjoyed the race!

Stunners from the 1930s

So far this year, I've focused on adding more vintage cards to my collection. But I'm not talking about baseball, or any other major sport. It's the other stuff I've been after. And even more specifically that that, it's got to be real eye candy.

 

First I found a few cards from a 1956 set released by Gum Inc. called "Adventure". A couple of months later, I picked up a few more beauties from that same set.

 

Now I want to share a few cards from an even older set. I didn't know anything about it until the following image came up in a random online browsing session. 

 

 

I was floored. 

 

It's just such a cool scene. Three archers in uniform with bows drawn and aimed toward the sky, displaying their technique. On a trading card.

 

I had to do more research.

 

It turns out that the card was issued by a German margarine company called Sanella. One card was included inside each margarine wrapper, and there were 112 cards in the set. They measure 2 3/4 inches by 4 1/8 inches.

 

Here's another example: 

 

 

 

Total stunner.

 

And that's the thing about great artwork. It captivates you by freezing a moment in time. Think about it. If this card were an 8-foot by 4-foot painting in a museum and you saw it from across the room, it would stop you in your tracks and almost force you to take some time to look at it and appreciate it.

 

Here's another fantastic example: 

 

 

 

Great vantage point, right?

 

Now here's what you'll find on a card back:

 

 

 

Here's the first three lines of text, translated by online software: 

 

German fencing champion Helene Mayer (front right) against Hungarian champion Miss Bogen

As for the text after that, you're in for a pretty cool surprise. Check this out:  

 

The space for pasting in this picture is left blank under the keyword "Fencing" in the Handbook of Sports section.

Yeah, that's right. Back in 1932, you could have obtained a handbook of sports from Sanella, and slotted each collector's card into its very own section!

 

I found some images of it online. Here's the front cover:

 

 

 

And here are a couple of interior pages:

 

 

 

 

Now more translation from the card back:

  

This handbook, which contains space for 112 different colorful collectible pictures, provides alphabetical information on the entire field of sports on 120 pages and is also equipped with more than one hundred monochrome illustrations. It will be delivered postage-free upon receipt of a 70 Pfennig stamp addressed to "Sanella," P.O. Box No. 125, Berlin C2. Please clearly indicate your address.

These sports pictures are available when purchasing Sanella margarine, one picture for every half pound. A special exchange center will allow the exchange of any missing pictures starting in February 1933.

 

If you collected baseball stickers in your younger days and had the accompanying album to stick them in, those paragraphs will sound quite familiar.  

 

But back to the cards now. Here's the fourth one I purchased:

 

 

 

What a great study in light and dark, big and small. That climber is just a tiny speck of life, dangling in the shadows, compared with the enormous range of mountains surrounding him. I think the only sound he'd be hearing right there is the wind, and an occasional creaking of the rope that he's rappelling down. How much farther does he have to go? We've got no idea. But he's probably never breathed such fresh oxygen or felt more alive and aware.

 

And that's what I've been adding to my collection lately. These particular cards ran me between $5 and $12 each, which is quite affordable considering their age and foreign origin.

I think the next step is creating a binder for my growing vintage multi-sport and non-sport collection. Some of them, like these Sanella cards, are cut at an unconventional size, so I've got to find pages that will accommodate them. Might take some research, but it'll be worth the time spent. Cards like these need to be in a binder, not tucked away in a box somewhere.

How about you readers and collectors? Are you fans of the more obscure vintage cards like these? 

 

Let me know in the comment section, and thanks for reading! 

2025 Series Custom Cards: PRINTED (Plus a Giveaway)

Did you think all of the "2025 year in review" content out there on the internet was finally over?

 

Well, think again!

 

You're looking at a collage of the custom cards that I shared on the blog in 2025 (or thereabouts). Here's the list:

 

Standard Set 

1956 Jerry Seinfeld

1956 Cosmo Kramer

Beastie Boys In Action

The Jimi Hendrix Experience

The Princess Bride

Mel Gibson Film Stars

Top Gear Future Stars

 

Sitcom Subset

The Golden Girls

Married with Children

Seinfeld  

So, that makes 10 cards total, which is not quite up to the usual Nine Pockets numbers. However, I did create quite a few one-off customs for clients throughout the year, and I'm pretty happy with the way they turned out, so that's a plus.

 

Here's a closer look at a card front and a card back:

The Sitcom subset received special card backs that more closely resembled the style of the original set. Here's an example:

 

 

Those are always fun to do.

And as always, I'd like to get some of these cards into the hands of you fellow collectors. So let's do a giveaway.

The duck races that I've held for a couple of previous Nine Pockets giveaways seem to go over pretty well with readers, so I think I'll do that again. If enough folks enter, I'll award a custom card from the list above to the top 5 finishers. (Feel free to share this giveaway with other bloggers and collectors who might enjoy it.) Winners will get to choose which custom card they'd like.

To enter the giveaway, just add a comment to this post. That's all you have to do. I'll keep the entry period open through next Sunday, June 21st. Then I'll close it out and get those ducks ready to race. Results will be posted here on the blog on Sunday, June 28th.

  

Thanks so much to all you readers, fellow collectors, and fellow bloggers for spending some time here at Nine Pockets. You guys continue to provide great inspiration and entertainment, and I look forward to holding the giveaway and getting these custom cards out to the winners.

 

Great Hockey Photos AND Wise Advice? I'll Take It!

You know what I enjoy?

A good 1980s hockey police card set.

For one, they're rather plentiful.

They also provide excellent information on the card backs. Local police departments at the time would encourage kids to exercise, study hard in school, and develop self-esteem. They also warned us sternly about the dangers of hanging out with the wrong crowd, and of drugs and alcohol.

And a third reason? 

 

You'll find some surprisingly good photography. Check out this shot from the 1986-87 Washington Capitals Police set:

Now that's hockey action. 

Bob Carpenter is waiting for a shot to come in from the point. He'd love to try and redirect it with his stick blade or shaft and score a goal that way. But at very least, he's succeeded in making life difficult for Islanders goaltender Kelly Hrudey. Just look. Hrudey is trying his hardest to keep an eye on the play in front of him by crouching down and looking around Carpenter, while maintaining some sort of angle with the shooter. With all of that happening, the crowd behind the glass knows a scoring chance is coming. Just look at their focus!

Can you find this same kind of action in the 1986-87 Topps flagship hockey set? Fat chance!

And that's not all. Check out this next card:

 

 

 

I think more goal celebrations like this one should be featured on hockey cards. I love it because Lou Francheschetti and his teammates are not elated. They're not exuberant. They're just some blue collar players getting together after scoring a goal. 

 

Good job, guys.

 

And then it's back to work. 

 

The camera angle and proximity almost make you feel like you're celebrating right along with them. Fantastic.
 

 

Both of those cards are now in my collection, thanks to a small trade on TCDB. Here's the third card that was part of the trade.

 

 

 

Mike Gartner scored 708 career goals. He's a member of the Hall of Fame, and was selected as one of the NHL's 100 greatest players during the league's 100th anniversary in 2017-18. He was also one of the fastest skaters of his generation. Despite all this, I feel like he's underrated—or at least a little bit underappreciated. For all those reasons, I snatched up the card. I like how the image shows him in action, using that speed. 

 

Now here are the card backs, featuring some of that wise advice mentioned earlier.

 

 

Do police departments still have these kinds of programs today? If not, I think they should.

 

Regardless, I'm pretty happy to have these cards in my collection, and I think I might search around for examples from other teams to add.

 

With all that being said, however, I think it's only fair to mention that not every card in this police set is fantastic. The TCDB member I traded with was kind enough to add an extra card for me in the envelope. 

 

 

Who's there? Michal? Is that you? Tap your stick on the ice three times if that's you. 

(Taps stick on ice three times. Sound echoes through empty, dark hockey rink.)

 

Yep, that one's kind of a stinker. But think back to those flagship Topps and O-Pee-Chee sets of the era again. You'll find image after image of players standing around in warmups, or waiting for a face-off to start. So even with the few stinkers, you've still got to be impressed with police sets like these.

 

How about you readers and collectors? 

 

Do you have any police cards from a local team, be it hockey or another sport? Do any of the cards boast surprisingly good photography? 

 

Share in the comment section, and thanks for reading!