Jimmy Howard: BY Cards IIHF 2017 WC

Now that Jimmy Howard is officially retired from the NHL, I'm starting to focus on filling in my collection of his stuff with some of the older cards out there. With nothing new likely any time soon, I've been trying to grab anything I can find a good deal on lately.

That includes oddball cards, kind of like the two arena giveaway cards I posted a little while back. My latest pickup is even a bit more out there and actually adds an entirely new card manufacturer to my collection. Haven't been able to do that in a while.

I had been watching this pair of cards on eBay for months and finally decided to pull the trigger and grab both of them in one go to save on shipping. They actually showed up pretty quickly considering they came all the way from Riga, Latvia.

Up first is card #1 from BY Cards 2017 IIHF Team USA set. This was a 27-card set featuring the players and head coach of Team USA. It is actually a really nice looking design and is printed on a quality card stock. I'm definitely glad to have it in my collection.

The second one is card #26 in the set and has an awesome closeup shot of is Team USA mask. While it is definitely strange seeing him in a non-Red Wings mask, this one still looks pretty cool. Even though this is from 2017, I believe it is the same mask from Sochi in 2014.

As you can see from the upper right corner, this set focuses on the 2017 IIHF World Championships that were held in Germany and France. Howard appeared in six games over the course of the tournament posting a 4-2 record, 1.86 GAA and 0.920 save percentage.

While the US did not win, it is still neat to have a couple of cards showing Howard in some international competition. They are the first such cards in my collection, but hopefully not the last. I'm on the lookout for similar cards, so we'll see what I can find.