What's in a name

I know no one can win against Angel Pagan but Miroslav Satan is cute too.

Tyler Kennedy

Excluding Crosby Kennedy must be one of my favourite players.

He always look eager to participate and play.

And you can see he takes fun from what he's doing which is great to see.

Not in the first line of my Pens but he always put a tremendous effort in the game and he's missed when not in the lineup.

Retro uniforms - NHL style

I've liked Pens not only because the Penguin is cute but also for the black uniforms.

But then I totally fell in love with the yellow and blue retro uniforms.

I only have cards with the blue uniform. But it's something since I don't have much NFL cards.


Ahhhhhhhhh And I miss Jordan Staal huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuggggeeeeeeee time!

Late take on NHL final

I still have two games of NYRangers vs Montreal Canadians taped to watch.

So you can see how I've been out of the game lately.

I don't have any Stanley Cup game taped but since Rangers lost to the Kings I don't think I lost that much...

But the Rangers, even if beating my Penguins, are still my second favourite team so I was happy with their season.

One man that helped a lot with Rangers success was mister Rick Nash.

I already liked him while playing with the Blue Jackets and since I heard he signed with NY I was quite happy.

And he did great!

For next year I hope that my Pens, with a new coach, manage to win the playoff ghost that have been hunting the team since the Stanley Cup win back in '09.


By the way... I love this Upper Deck Victory cards!

Being victorious - or not quite

Finally some holidays!

I'm not interested in the festivities themself. That would be other looooooong talk.

But I truly needed some days off work.

Unfortunately I couldn't bring cards with me. But with the blogoshpere I never feel away of the hobby.

And the fact that I have a lot of cards to talk about I'll manage for the week.

So today I'm showing some victorious cards. But they only have the name. Because as you might have understood by now I'm talking about 2003 Upper Deck Victory cards.

A pack that came in one of the 3 or 4 repack boxes I bought a months ago.

I've read a mix of feelings about these repack boxes. But again, since I,m starting I really don't mind getting cards like these.

I want to *know*.

By the pack I got it already that the cards had a 'gaming part'. But thanks for the rules card.

I confess that I started to read the first couple of rules and quickly left it aside.

I once collected gaming cards for the game. But a few time later I collected it by the card itself.

Can we call it maturing? Perhaps...

But lets see if I could collect this UD set in a 'mature' way.

Ryan Klesko has a gret photo! Arriving for the training session or warm up before the game bringing the Mc bag and other stuff is a 'living the baseball life' card.

Players do other things besides batting, catching, pitching, sliding...They also drive or ride the bike and bring lunch to work.

They simply are lucky to have baseball as their work.

John Smoltz has too much achievemnts to enumerate here. I was lucky to see the final time he spent in the MLB.

Alfonso Soriano. Make them wear the Yankees uniform and they always look good! But Soriano is great just by his own.

Roberto Alomar playing for the Mets is something that tears my eyes upside down. It simply does not match in anyway.

Laying it on the Line is kind of a insert set appended to end of the base set. Here featuring mister Randy Johnson.

I think I saw some player in this year Topps Series 1 that reminded me of Randy. I'll look for it.

And finally Larry Walker. I didn't know him but he seemed to be quite a player with a career BA above .300.

Walker in a parallel green card. I must go and see if there are other colours or just greens.

The photos on the front were good and would be so much better if there were no vertigo effect obscuring almost all the photo.

I thought that if they were playing cards the playing actions/stats would be on the front. But no. Those are on the back.

The true is that we have normal stats as well as game features. But what made me like the card backs better than the front are the photos. We can see all the photo without any intruding effect.

The photos being different from the front photo isa good bonus.

I highlight the Randy card back. Maybe not quite visible on the image but the photo has some refractor/holograhic thing to it!

I think all of those sub-set are that way.

The green parallel look the same as the other base cards but with the green border. But I think the parallel cards have different game actions from the normal cards.


So, all in all I liked the cards moderatly. Points against are the obscuring front photo and mainly the cardboard. It's horrible. It's so thin it is ready to bend! But I give the mighty pros to the cards back.


Would UD made the set look like the hockey version of it and it would be better. Specialy because I like a lot the said hockey sets.

2009-10 Upper Deck Victory - NHL

Got yesterday an other pack of NHL 2009-10 UD Victory. Unfortunately it was the last one the sellers had. So I put all my faith in getting a Tavares RC and/or a Sidney Crosby card on it.

As you can see from the next photo I didn't get the Tavares RC. Got 2 RC even, but no Tavares. Got Byron Bitz and Peter Regin RC. I confess that I don't know them but I'll go and search.

I got pretty happy with this pack what concerned the base cards even if the first had 3 Pens players and this only gave me one. I like Sutter card very much because I simply prefer that team uniform than the current Hurricanes one. That's nice!

I don't like Philadelphia teams. Phillies, Flyers or Eagles. Simply don't like them. But I do can see that Briere and Gagne are two very good players. That's why I got them on the photo.

As you can also see I got 2 inserts. Rick Nash for the Game Breakers (red teeth protection is jumping off his mouth!) and this beauty Sidney Crosby Stars of the Game.

HURRAY!

He really is one of the Stars. And I hope that Winter Classic did not end his career...

But what I don't get it is...I'm not native English speaker so I do need to get to dictionary sometimes but isn't that 'transcendant' word misspell? I'll give it to you if so just because I like Crosby.

2009-10 Upper Deck Ice Hockey Victory

I buy and then read the reviews. I know it's dangerous! Spooky sometimes when you're a newbie and understand too late that the Opening Day set from Topps just add the OD logo to Series 1 cards.

But! None the same, I think I do all good.

It seems, after some web search, that this UD Victory set is the lower end of any ice hockey product they have. For me people think that because it doesn't have super-hyper-mega-special hit cards. But so I like base cards. And clean design cards for the matter. So I truly liked this set.

The card back has this little trivia with the way to pronounce the players name. But I would change that for having the players position. On the RC they have the position but for other players no. That's a shame.

Check the photo. Got 3 Penguins players. Weeeee...oh wait! Jordan Staal is no Pen no more. He got me on tears moving to Carolina. Marc will be next?
And just lucky me got Eric Staal insert card. The Staal brothers are all Stars of the Game for me. So I don't mind on which team they are currently playing...except for Jordan a bit.

Got Niemi RC! Woot! Got pretty mask.

But I must say this. I talked earlier about the clean design chosen for the cards. And they got me thinking of this:

Is just me that see some resemblance between the clean-white-design!?

I'll get 1 more rack pack in a few days. Will get to it then.