Jimmy Howard: SCF Trade Pickups

Along with the cards I showed off in my last post, I managed to pick up some nice new base cards for my Jimmy Howard collection through a couple of trades over on SCF. For whatever reason, I haven't been that into this part of my collection the last few months or so, maybe the lockout had something to do with it, or just the fact that prices have gone up on Howard's stuff over the last few seasons. 

The first one and my favorite of the bunch comes from 2011-12 SP Authentic. This is one of the mid-range sets from Upper Deck and these cards definitely have a "mid-range" feel to them. The design is simple allowing the player image to be the main focus.

The next one also comes from 2011-12 SP Authentic, specifically the SP Essentials subset. Nothing spectacular here, but I do like how the Wings home uniform stands out against the white and grey background of the card.

Then there was this one from 2011-12 SPx, which is one of my least favorite SPx designs of the last few years. Remember way back when this set was actually cool (i.e. 96-97, 97-98, 99-00)? The biggest complaint I've seen with this that the tops of the player's heads are cut off, which makes no sense whatsoever. Why couldn't they have just shifted the bottom of the card down, I mean look at all the dead space below the player name.

Next was one from 2011-12 Panini Rookie Anthology. Again nothing spectacular here, but its still another one to cross off the want list. I do like that they went with team colors for the right and left sides of the card.

Here's a set I had been looking forward to ever since Panini announced they would be bringing it back to life. I really liked the Titanium base set designs back in the day and this one is no different, I just wish they used the rainbow foil card stock for this set too.

And last but not least we have one from Upper Deck's 2011-12 Biography of a Season. This one is kind of neat because it chronicles a specific achievement, a seven-game in streak in this case. The only downside to this one is the way the picture looks as if the Wings logo is missing with Howard's white pads over top of his white road jersey.

So there you have it, six new base cards for my main player collection. Getting these has actually got me a little more back into player collecting. I love the variety that you can achieve by going over a specific player throughout many sets, rather than a bunch of players from one specific set.