The hockey portion of the COMC order brought me more Andrew Shaw, a Steve Montador and also two cards that, when I bought, I wanted to send as a TTM autograph request.
Not that it’s a surprise, since I believe that I have the best Andrew Shaw collection in existence, but none of these were new for me. The First Goal card is only my second copy of these. Over time, sellers have just wanted to much for this card. I’m not going to throw money away. Heck, I probably paid too much for this one, but since it’s $3 shipping for all cards from COMC, I feel that I “saved” money buying this way.
LINK: The Andrew Shaw Project (Gallery)
The SP Authentic was my fourth copy. It’s another one that I feel too many sellers ask too much for and I’ve not picked up many copies. Compared to what many are asking, I felt $4 was a good deal on this and about as cheap as I would find one.
At this point, I pick up any cheap copy of the Contenders card that I can. I’m up to 14 and it’s numbered to 999. Maybe in time, I can get obtain a significant amount of the print run. While possible that someone out there has more of these than I do, it’s not likely.
When Steve Montador played for the Blackhawks, he was the player that I disliked the most. I felt that he cost the team more than he provided, in multiple ways. He was overpaid and his negative on-ice plays far outweighed his positive ones.
As a fan, you never know what battles these athletes may be fighting at the time or in many cases, once their career ends. After Montador’s death, I learned of his friendship with Dan Carcillo. I have passively collected Carcillo cards because even though I didn’t care for his on-ice game, there was just something I liked about him.
After Carcillo’s retirement announcement and learning of his next step in life, I decided to pick up Montador cards that he’s wearing a Blackhawks sweater in. At the time all I could find were the cards from the 2012-13 O-Pee-Chee set. I will look later on and see if there are more. I do want to collect this rainbow as my own little tribute. Sometimes we all need a reminder that these athletes are human, just like us.
Matthew Barnaby’s playing career has ended, but he is a show host on the Sirius NHL Network. I became a big fan of him last season and picked these up to attempt to get a TTM autograph. However, because of some crappy programming changes that saw some of my favorite personalities leave the air, I don’t even listen to the channel anymore. Maybe I’ll still send these off, who knows. I tweeted at Barnaby asking if he’d be willing to sign if I sent them, but got no reply. He replies to many people, so that rubbed me the wrong way as well.
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