10 Years of Card Boarded

Today marks the 10th anniversary of my first post here on Card Boarded. Back in 2009 when I started this thing I never would've thought I'd make it this far. Blogging was kind of a foreign concept to me at the time and I really wasn't even sure what I was doing in the beginning. Now its become one of my favorite parts of collecting hockey cards.

Ten years and over 750 posts later, I feel like blogging has really helped boost my collection and kept me interested in the hobby. One of the best parts has been checking out all the other great hockey and sports card blogs I've found through doing this.

In order to mark this special occasion, I thought it would be fun to design a special edition header. It definitely resembles the current header that's been live for years now, but there are some obvious changes, the biggest being a departure from the regular color palette.

Another thing that sounded fun for the occasion was taking a look at some of the numbers related to the posts I've made on here. I use Excel quite a bit for work and really enjoy making tables and charts for this kind of stuff, so I decided to throw a few things together.

Here is a cool little chart showing the numbers of posts I've made each year. As you can see I was quite busy on here back in 2010-12. The biggest reason for that: I was still single and lived in an apartment so I had a lot more free time for collecting and blogging.

My wife and I were married in 2012 and our first child was born in 2013, which actually corresponds surprisingly well with the nosedive in the total number of posts beyond 2013. Having a family and a house definitely took away some of the free time I would use for blogging. Even through everything going on, I still tried to find time when I could. With the exception of 2018, my number of posts has been trending upwards, so that's cool.

Looking back over ten years worth of posts on here has definitely been interesting. While I have stuck to several primary collection projects over the years (e.g. Jimmy Howard, Super Scripts, etc), there are actually quite a few different topics I've covered.

Below is a chart that breaks down the proportions of the most frequent topics I've posted. These are the top ten according to total number of posts for a specific topic. I'm definitely not surprised that my main player collection takes the top spot.

Lastly, I thought it would be neat to see how my two main collection projects, the Super Scripts and Jimmy Howard, have progressed over the past ten years. The exact numbers might be a little off just because I determine them based on simply scrolling back through my posts on here and counting the number of new cards in chronological order.

With the exception of close to 90 Jimmy Howard cards back in 2011, things have been fairly consistent from year to year with these two projects. While it may not seem like all that much being around 20 cards per year, at least its something to keep each project going after all this time. Hopefully I can keep this up moving forward.

I want to say thank you to everyone who has stopped by over the last ten years. I still think its pretty cool that even a few people like to check out what I have going on here.

Most of you have your own blogs that I really enjoy reading. For those of you that do, keep up the great work. For anyone that does not have one, I highly recommend it. I feel like blogging has been one of the keys to my enjoyment of this hobby for the last ten years.

I would also like to give a special shout out to Brett from My Hockey Card Obsession. It was reading his great blog back in 2009 that actually inspired me to start my own. If I hadn't stumbled upon it from an old Puck Daddy post on Yahoo back in the day, who knows if I even would've started this whole thing. Definitely glad I did.

Here's to another ten years of blogging, hopefully...

SCE Super Script Update

Along with my recent run of Gold Scripts for my 1999-00 MVP Stanley Cup Edition project, I was again able to land all of the corresponding Super Scripts.

There was also one outlier that came from a different seller than the one from Sweden and it was just a lone Super Script. The funny thing is I actually lost out on an auction from the Swedish seller for this exact same card as one of their earlier Silver/Gold/Super lots. 

That one outlier would be this Stacy Roest, which is card #70 in the set and is serial numbered 04/25. To this day I'm not sure why he was chosen to represent the Red Wings in this set over names like Nicklas Lidstrom, Chris Chelios, Igor Larionov, etc.

Back to the ones from Sweden now starting with Sergei Brylin of the New Jersey Devils. This one is card #110 in the set and is serial numbered 10/25. While he isn't the biggest name of the Devils in this set, I definitely remember him from their Cup run back in 2000.

Continuing with that 2000 Stanley Cup winner, this Scott Gomez is card #107 in the set and is serial numbered 24/25. If only that had been one number less, it would've made for one of those neat jersey numbered cards. Not sure I have many in my set so far.

Up next is this Scott Young, which is card #166 in the set and is serial numbered 16/25. Is it just me or does it seem like the photo on this card is just a bit to the left? I get it though if they were trying to avoid the MVP logo covering up the player.

Then there was this Jeff Halpern, which is card #191 in the set and serial numbered 12/25. According to the checklist, this is actually a RC for Halpern. I vaguely remember him from back in the day. Gotta love those old Caps jerseys too.

This one featuring current Vancouver Canucks head coach Travis Green is card #141 and is serial numbered 01/25. Its always nice to have the first card of a print run like this. I'd have to look through my set to see how many I actually have.

First we had the beginning, now we have the end of print run. This one featuring Jonas Hoglund of the Toronto Maple Leafs is card #175 in the set and is serial numbered 25/25. I don't think I have many numbered 25 in my set so this is kind neat as well.

The first of four CHL Super Scripts was this Justin Papineau, which is card #216 in the set and serial numbered 17/25. One thing I always liked about the CHL portion of the set was how they used a foil version of the league logo instead of the facsimile signature.

This Taylor Pyatt is card #213 in the set and serial numbered 07/25. For whatever reason my scanner decided to make this one look a little different than the Papineau. The rainbow foil look spectacular in person and you can kind of get an idea of it with this scan.

Of course now that I said something earlier about hitting the last card of a print run, I would do it again in the same post. This Luke Sellars is card #206 in the set and is serial numbered 25/25. This one also shows the nice rainbow foil, especially on the MVP logo.

Same as my last posts, we'll finish thins up with Michael Zigomanis. This one is card #215 in the set and is serial numbered 09/25. Its nice knocking off as many of these CHL cards as I can. Then I'll be able to focus solely on the main portion of the set.

So that's 11 new cards for my 220 card set. Not a bad chunk to knock off the list if you ask me. I believe this is the most I've ever posted on here at one time.

The Green and Hoglund are the two that were not included in my previous Gold Script update. That's because I already had them. For the deals I was getting I would've been happy if all I got was just the Super. The Golds were just a bonus. That being said, I was definitely willing to take on a few duplicate Golds in order to boost my Super Script set.

Super Script Total: 82/220

SCE Gold Script Update

This year has been great for my collection so far. I've been more active on here than I have the past five years. I've been to more card shows than normal and have been buying things on eBay more frequently. One of the beneficiaries of this has been my long neglected 1999-00 MVP Stanley Cup Edition Gold Script set. While I did just post an update recently, I had nothing new to show for it in almost five years before that.

Thanks to one eBay seller from Sweden, I've been able to knock more than a dozen of these off the want list just in the last few months. While that may not seem like much, I consider it to be some good progress for me. These things are 20 years old now and serial numbered to 100, so they don't exactly show up for sale all that often.

The best I can guess is that this seller had most of if not all of the master set and finally decided to part it out. They've had a ton of listing recently and almost all of them included the Silver Script, Gold Script and Super Script for a given player. Most of them got out of my price range so I had to pass on dozens of them. Some of the bigger names were fetching some crazy amounts, which were even further out of my price range.

The first one I got was this Scott Young, which is card #166 in the set and serial numbered 032/100. I remember seeing a lot of this guy back then with how often the Blue and Red Wings played one another. I miss the days when the Wings were still in the West.

 

Up next was this Sergei Brylin, which is card #110 in the set and is serial numbered 079/100. This one has a cool shot of Brylin appearing to celebrate a goal. I like how he is isolated in the shot other than the random stick from the left.

Then there was this Jeff Halpern, which is card #191 in the set and is serial numbered 037/100. I'm noticing that my scanner really does not like the gold foil on these things. It almost turns black and makes some of the last names pretty hard to read.

Back to New Jersey, there was this Scott Gomez, which is card #107 in the set and is serial numbered 016/100. He is another guy that I will always associate with that 2000 Stanley Cup Championship team. If I remember right they even did a special feature on him being from Alaska on the commemorative DVD (it was actually a VHS for me). 

In addition to those four, I was able to snag a few from the CHL Prospects portion of the main set. The first was this Justin Papineau, which is card #216 in the set and is serial numbered 025/100. Papineau is shown here playing for the Belleville Bulls.

Up next was this Taylor Pyatt, which is card #213 in the set and is serial numbered 077/100. Pyatt was drafted 8th overall by the New York Islanders in 1999 and last played for the Penguins in 2013-14. He is shown here with the Sudbury Wolves.

Then there was this Luke Sellars, which is card #206 in the set and serial numbered 086/100. Sellars was originally drafted by the Atlanta Thrashers in 1999. Unfortunately, he only ever played one game in the NHL and that was with Atlanta in 2001-02.

Last but not least, we have this Michael Zigomanis, which is card #215 in the set and is serial numbered 094/100. He was actually drafted twice, one by the Sabres in 1999 and then again by the Hurricanes in 2001. Apparently there was a typo in his first contract with Buffalo and the league decided he had to re-enter the draft.

So that sums the biggest influx of Gold Scripts I've had in quite a while on here. I'm really glad I've kept these things in my saved eBay searches all these years. They don't come up very often, so it was nice to be able to grab this many all from one source lately.

Gold Script Total: 77/220