Jimmy Howard: AMPIR IIHF 2017 WC

This year has definitely been a good one for adding to my Jimmy Howard collection. I've gotten a bit of everything from base cards to some oddballs to cards from The Cup. I even got a couple of Team USA cards all the way from Riga, Latvia of all places. Speaking of Team USA stuff, my latest pickup is an awesome IIHF card from Russia.

A while back I had been doing some searching online for Howard Team USA and stumbled upon the website for AMPIR Trading cards. There was a single listing for Howard and it just happened to be from the same 2017 IIHF World Championships as the other two cards I posted back in March. There was just one in stock and I jumped right on it.

This one from AMPIR has a nice action shot of Howard playing during the 2017 tournament on top of a cool blue background with the American flag in the upper left. 

If you're into cards like these they actually have a decent selection of cards available. There are plenty of NHL players included in the IIHF World Championship sets for 2017, 2018 and 2019. Of the ones still in stock there were quite a few recognizable names.

The site was very easy to navigate and purchasing the card went pretty smoothly. I was able to pay with PayPal, which made me feel a little better knowing this was from a random Russian site I had never used or even heard of before. 

 

The only issue I ran into was the shipping time. I placed my order on 3/13 and it was subsequently shipped on 3/14. Tracking was provided and I was able to see its progress all the way through. The problem was after it left Moscow the tracking didn't update for almost two months. I figured it was lost forever a that point. Not a huge deal for a $3 card, I was just disappointed that it was the only one in stock.

Luckily though I just happened to check the tracking for fun one last time on 5/31 and it had updated to show it scheduled to be delivered the next day. After all that waiting I was just happy to actually have the card, one that I'm not sure many other collectors have.