Predators: 17-18 Parkhurst

Continuing the Parkhurst theme from my last Golden Knights post, I was able to grab some Predators cards from the same set at the show. I guess good things do come in three's because that's exactly how many Preds I ended up with. 

The first card was #137 in the set and features defenseman Mattias Ekholm. Interestingly, this one has a photo of Ekholm from the 2016-17 season as evident by Nashville's old road jersey. I actually really liked that set of uniforms and was kind of bummed that they completely overhauled them for the switch to Adidas. 

Up next was card #138 featuring Nick Bonino. The photo on this one is from the 2017-18 season as evident by the new road jersey. In this case, the green elements of the Parkhurst design make for a nice contrast against the gold on the Preds uniforms.

The last one is #132 and features defenseman and team captain Roman Josi. We're back to the old road jersey with this one. This is also the first horizontal card I've grabbed from the Parkhurst set. Now I'm not sure which orientation I prefer as they both work pretty well.

That's it for now. Not a bad haul for just 30 cents. I have a few more to find to complete this team set, so I'll be on the lookout for those now. After some quick research, I found that there are also red border and black border parallels for this set. I'll have to get some of those too. Black seems like it would make for a nice sleek and simple looking design.

Predators Collection Total: 18

Golden Knights: 17-18 Parkhurst

Looks like I chose a good time to be in the middle of posting my Predators and Golden Knights pickups as they just played one another last night in Vegas. Its not every day that I can root for both teams about equally. If anything, I would've been slightly more inclined to go with Vegas as they were the home team. Even though the Preds came out on top, I thought I would show off the beginning of my VGK collection today. 

Surprisingly, I was only able to find a handful of Vegas cards in the 10 cent boxes at the show. The first group all came from 2017-18 Parkhurst. With their green accents, they really stood out when flipping through stack after stack of singles. 

The first card for the collection is #232 in the set and features Reilly Smith. This one has a great look at Vegas' awesome home jersey. I absolutely love these things. I even bought one of the Adidas replicas and have been wearing it out and about a lot recently.

The next one of now former Golden Knight David Perron is #235 in the set. Here we get a good look at Vegas' road jersey. I might be in the minority on this, but I love the white gloves. They just work so well with the overall look.

The last of the group is card #236 featuring defenseman Nate Schmidt. Despite the fact that he was suspended to start this season, he is one of my favorite Knights. He bring a ton of skill and seems to always be a great source of positive energy both on an off the ice.

So there you have it, the start of another new team collection for me. I'm excited to keep building this project representing my newest favorite team. I've got a few more cards to get so I can complete this team set, so I'll be on the lookout for those in the near future. 

Golden Knights Collection Total: 3

Predators: 18-19 MVP

Back when I started my Nashville Predators collection after their run to the 2017 Stanley Cup Final, my primary focus was cards featuring pictures from home games that season. I've been following and rooting for the Preds since then, so I figured I would expand the collection to include any card showing anything from the 2016-17 season onward. 

This opens up quite a few more possibilities for the collection and means I can keep adding cards from new releases as they come out. 

The best thing about beings a Predators collector in Michigan is the lack of inflated prices for the local team. All of the cards I'm going to show in this post came from 10 cent boxes at a couple of different dealers. If I were to try and buy the same cards for the Red Wings, I'd probably be looking at five to ten times that price. 

The first group of new Preds comes from 2018-19 MVP. I'll start things off with card #161 featuring Pekka Rinne. I really like the look of this set, which is something that I can't say for most of the recent MVP designs. Those new Preds road jerseys look great here.

Up next is card #77 featuring one of my favorite current Predators: Viktor Arvidsson. Its always fun watching a smaller guy speed around the ice scoring a lot of highlight reel goals in the process. This one also has a nice look at the Predators new home jerseys.

 

I'm really liking the design on the left side of these cards. Its pretty simple, but it works somehow. Not sure what the five dots are for though, but they do look good in this case. Here is card #20 from the set featuring P.K. Subban, another one of my favorite Predators.

These and other ecent MVP sets make me miss the original MVP logo from the late 90's and early 00's. While the large script logo looks alright at the bottom of these cards, I feel like it would look better with the original logo. Up next is card #48 featuring Filip Forsberg.

We're back to the Predators new road jersey with card #114 in the set featuring Ryan Johansen. These cards also have the newer, full color, Upper Deck logo in the upper right corner. While I don't mind this logo, I feel like these would have been that much nice with some foil on there somewhere.

Predators captain Roman Josi is featured on card #129. Another thing I just noticed about this set is the slight fade to white around the Upper Deck logo. This is a nice touch and helps the logo stand out from the rest of the image.

Card #178 in the set features one of the newer Preds that wasn't part of the Stanley Cup Run. Kyle Turris was acquired from the Ottawa Senators in November of 2017 as part of a three team trade that also included the Colorado Avalanche. 

The last card for this post is #195 set and features one of the newer Predators: Ryan Hartman. He's only been with Nashville since February of 2018 after being acquired in a trade with the Chicago Blackhawks. While he wasn't a part of the 2017 Stanley Cup Final run, he was a good pickup and I'm glad to have this card as part of my collection now.

I think these eight cards are most of the Nashville cards from the set, but I'll have to track down a checklist to be sure. I'm also on the lookout for the script parallels and the 1998-99 20th Anniversary Tribute cards. Those look pretty sweet. That original MVP set is one that I remember collecting as a kid and that design will always stick with me.

Predators Collection Total: 15

First Card Show of 2019

Today was the first time I've been to a card show in well over a year. For whatever reason, I decided to get more active with my card collecting this past week and have been on the lookout for local shows. Some quick searching online and I found a relatively new local show that I've never been to. 

The card shows I usually went to were all at a local trade center, but that has closed since my last visit there. This new show was a bit smaller, but still had some of the same dealers I've bought from in the past. On the plus side, it was only 15 minutes from my house in an area I know pretty well. Another good thing about this show was the free parking and admission, which I always had to pay for separately at the trade center shows. 

I went in with a plan to hopefully find some cards for my newly started Vegas Golden Knights collection as well as some stuff for my Nashville Predators collection. I figured if anything was available, it would be priced decently with neither of these teams being local. Even the lowest end cards of any Red Wing is always overpriced at the shows in Michigan. 

While I didn't spend a lot of time or money at this particular show, I was at least able to grab some stuff to get my Golden Knights project going along with a few things to grow my Predators collection. Here's a quick look at the haul: about 30 cards all together. 

It was definitely nice getting back out to one of these shows again. I've been going to them since I was a kid and it's always fun to see what's there. You never know what you'll stumble upon. Now I just need to get started scanning this stuff so I can post some updates for these two projects. Stay tuned for that.

New Side Project: Vegas Golden Knights

Wow, I can't believe we're already ten days into 2019. I just realized that I only posted on here once in all of 2018, and it wasn't even related to my card collection. I'd like to change that this year and be a little more active on here if possible. 

That being said, I've decided to add another side project to my collection: the Vegas Golden Knights. I've been a fan since October of 2017 when they came into the league. Before that I'd been following their development pretty closely since the franchise was awarded. It was really neat to see the whole process play out.

With my Red Wings out of the playoff picture again for 2018, I went into the first round rooting for both Vegas and my other favorite team the Nashville Predators. Like in 2017 with the Predators, it was a great ride to watch one of my teams get all the way to the Stanley Cup Final in 2018. It's been 10 years now since the Wings were there. 

At least this time, the my team lost to a team that I did not despise. I've always been a fan of Ovechkin as an individual player, so it was nice to see him finally get his Cup in 2018. 

Now, as far as collecting, I'm not going to be as specific as I was with my Predators side project. I'll be on the lookout for cards from both their inaugural season as well as this year. I don't have anything to show yet, so here's an example from Upper Deck.

I'm sure there are a ton of cards out there for the Golden Knights by now, so hopefully I'll be able to grab at least a few this year and show them off here. I'll be happy if I can surpass my post total from last year, which shouldn't be all that difficult.