Hockey isn’t big in Japan, so it kind of caught my eye. Why was this here? The cost of shipping tens of thousands of junk wax hockey cards to Japan is way more than the cards are worth, so you just don’t see stuff like this here.
The seller had broken some of the bunch into lots of two to three thousand cards each. No thanks, I’m not a hockey collector. But there were also a couple dozen binders full of cards being sold one by one.
I chose the binders not based on the cards, but by looking at the photos and judging which ones had the most Ultra Pro sheets in them. I now have several thousand cards from the 1990-91 Upper Deck and Bowman (ugly) sets and the 1991-92 Upper Deck, OPC and Pro Set sets. I am in the process of removing them from those pages. This is an annoying and time consuming task. But it is worth it, since this allows me to do some long overdue bindering of some of my vintage Menko and Calbee sets.
This is so great. In one fell swoop I have enabled myself to binder so many sets that until now have been scattered about in random boxes. Which was just wrong.
I only have two problems now. One is the massive pile of junk hockey cards that are now in my possession. Space for cards is already at a premium in my house and these are simply going to have to go, but I have no idea where. These cards were available for sale on Yahoo Auctions in nice binders for almost nothing for months with no takers until I came along, so selling them or even giving them away is going to be a long shot. I have to give some thought to that. If I was these cards, I would be feeling very apprehensive each time cardboard recycling days in our neighborhood come along.
The other is that while all these binders and pages are top quality and in nice shape the binders all say “Hockey” on them. There is no rule that says you can’t put baseball cards in a hockey album of course, but its one of those inconsistencies that is going to nag my brain every time I see them. I’m a bit of a cheapskate when it comes to supplies though so this is something I’m willing to live with.
Seven dollar for a binder with pages is a steal. The hockey cards are a bonus. By the way 1990-91 was a great year for HOF rookie cards. If you see any Mike Modano, Jaromir Jagr, Sergei Federov, Mats Sundin, Pavel Bure, or Ed Belfour cards they're worth setting aside and using for trade bait or something. There's even other hall of fame rookie cards I'm sure I'm forgetting.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I worked in a card store in Canada in the early 90s so I remember that year's rookies well. I've found some Mats Sundin rookies in the binders, but it looks like the original owner was one of those guys who stored the top rookie cards seperately, most of these binder are commons (though there are non-rookie stars like Gretzky, Roy, Lemieux, Yzerman, etc).
DeleteYep, Fuji is right on about the solid rookies in the 1990-91 Upper Deck set. I would add Alexander Mogilny, Jeremy Roenick, Scott Niedermayer, and Mike Richter to the list. Some of those guys appear in the 1990-91 Bowman set as well. As for 1991-92 Upper Deck, look for Teemu Selanne, Nicklas Lidstrom, Peter Forsberg, Dominik Hasek, John LeClair, Alexei Yashin, Alexei Kovalev, and Keith Tkachuk. Lots of great rookies, for sure.
ReplyDeleteYup, very strong rookie class. I love the 1990-91 Upper Deck set which is quite beautiful, but am surprised by how ugly that 1990-91 Bowman set is (which I never collected back in the day). The poor quality and awful photography are a real contrast to those nice UD cards.
DeleteI have repurposed most of the binders I had my pre-Japanese baseball card collection in over the years. It seems odd to me sometimes to realize that I've been using some of the binders for something like 35 years now!
ReplyDeleteI have a "Football" binder that I use to store my 2017-18 KBO cards in and it annoys my OCD quite a bit. On the other hand, I'm too cheap to buy a replacement one.
Wow, I have a few binders that are almost 35 years but they are in storage at my parent's place back home, full of 1988 Donruss and 1989 Topps cards that I would have been disappointed to know would be worthless 35 years later!
DeleteMost of my Japanese collection, even some of the better sets, have been in boxes for years and I've been wanting to put them in binders for years but would always balk at spending card money that could be spent on cards on supplies instead. I'm glad I'm finally doing it and I might hit this guy up for a couple more binders before they are all gone....
I don't think that you'll be doing a disservice to anyone if you do indeed end up recycling the cards.
ReplyDeleteI do feel that there are still way too many junk wax era cards in existence. The fact that they are even to be found by the truckload all the way over here in Japan is pretty good evidence of that!
DeleteNice, well played. Yeah, time to hit the recycle bin for the junk wax.
ReplyDeleteMost of the 1990-91 Bowmans went out for recycling a couple days ago. The set is just so ugly I just didn't want them in my house anymore. The Upper Deck cards are harder to be so callous with, they really are nice looking cards with great photography. There are a fair number of doubles though so I might get rid of them....
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