Jimmy Howard: New Additions

It's hard to believe that I've been collecting cards of Jimmy Howard for seven years now. Time flies, doesn't it? While there haven't been a ton of new additions in the last couple of years, he is still one of my favorite players and one that I will continue to collect. Thanks to Chris over at The Collector, I have a bunch of awesome new Howard cards to show off.

The first one and my favorite is this cool die-cut card from 2015-16 Upper Deck MVP. Technically it is a Level 1 Purple Colors & Contours parallel. Talk about a mouthful there. I love base set parallels so this one was perfect for me. The die-cutting is a bit crazy and reminds me of some of the great stuff from back in the 90's.

Up next is another colored parallel from the same MVP set. This time it is the green version of the base card. From what I remember, these could be obtained by combining 20 digital copies of any given base card on Upper Deck's ePack site. The green gives a nice contrast to the red and white of the Wings uniform, perfect for the day after Christmas.

Here we have the Silver Script version of the base card. It helps that Howard has a nice signature for cards like this. The other thing I like is that they decided to go with the silver foil on the MVP logo. If only they had done the same for the Upper Deck logo in the corner.

More 2015-16 MVP, this time the regular base card. While this base design is a bit nicer than some of the other recent versions, I still miss the days of the older MVP logo and the foil on the front of these cards. They just seem cheaper to me without any of the foil.

This post is definitely heavy with MVP. Here we have another Colors & Contours parallel, this time from the 2016-17 version. This is a Level 1 Teal version. The die-cuts are just as crazy with this set. Howard is also shown with his Christmas mask, so that's cool too!

Here is the green version of the base card for 2016-17. Unlike the previous season, this time they included a green facsimile signature on the front. I just wish this and the MVP logo were done in a green foil, that would look sweet!

The last of the MVP's is this Silver Script version of the same card. Again, I wish they would've done everything in the silver foil. It just does not seem like as nice of a card without it. Does anyone else really miss the older MVP sets now?

Moving on, we have this nice card from 2014-15 SP Authentic. While there are a lot of lines going every which way on this card, I really like the overall look. The red accents really help too. This is one of the better looking base designs I've seen for SPA.

More SP Authentic, this time from the 2015-16 base set. This one is really nice too and I love the use of the team colored accents. This even features one of Jimmy's best mask designs, so it is definitely a great addition to the collection.

Up next is another base card, this time from 2015-16 Upper Deck ICE. This is a pretty cool looking set and the blue elements of the design just work really well for whatever reason. The only thing I don't understand with this one is them shortening his first name to Jim. I haven't seen that on any of his cards since his rookie season back in 2005-06.

Here is another cool one, this time from 2014-15 UD Masterpieces. I think this is the first painted design like this for my Howard collection, so that's neat. I just wish they would've done a picture with his mask on to showcase the great paint job.

Champ's is another set that I do not have much of in my collection, so it was nice to add this one of Howard. This one is from the 2015-16 version. The design is very nice overall and I love the effect of making the background of the picture black and white. It really make the player image pop against the rest of the card.

This next card is one that did not scan the best, but looks awesome in person. It is a base rainbow parallel from 2015-16 O-Pee-Chee Platinum. It's kind of like a refractor and changes color as you turn it in the light. Now I just need to find some of the other versions to go along with it. The Black Ice and Traxx versions are pretty sweet looking.

Here we have a UD Canvas parallel from 2015-16 Upper Deck. It has an awesome photo of Howard entering the rink next to a stack of pucks for warm-ups. It's kind of neat that you can see a bunch of fans taking pictures in the background.

This next card is probably one of the worst looking scans I've had in a while. It comes from the 2015-16 Upper Deck Full Force Blueprint set and actually looks pretty cool in person.

Last but not least we have a silver foil base card from 2015-16 Upper Deck. This was another one of those ePack deals where you had to collect so many digital copies to be able to redeem them for a silver foil version. I actually did quite a bit of trading on ePack back then and have one of these in my account there (along with most of the other Red Wings from the set), I just never got around to redeeming them.

This will likely be my final post for 2017. I'm not really sure what I will be doing as far as collecting in 2018 as I am still using most of my hobby time for building my model railroad. I do still plan on reading card blogs and searching for the right deals on eBay though, I just don't know how often I will be posting on here. 

Thanks for reading and have a happy new year!