Mailday #4: Kirk McLean

As a kid I really liked Kirk Mclean, especially in his playoff run in '94 with the Canucks and his amazing kick save. It was a great Stanley Cup Final and as much as I wanted the Rangers to win, I also would have been happy if the Canucks won. Pavel Bure was one of my favourite players at the time and the reason I watched the Canucks.

In the fall of '09 I started to grow tired of all the new over priced product that was coming out, so I dusted off my collection as a kid and started trying to finish insert sets from the '90's. Over time I started to work on food issued set and began collecting my favourite players as a kid.

I was happy to find that most Kirk McLean items were not too expensive and I could realistically collect him. My goal now is to own every card of McLean. I knocked off a few tough ones this mail day with his '88 and '89 OPC stickers.

I have another lot of McLean stuff incoming which is mostly inserts. Some of his tougher issues from the early to mid 2000's don't come up very often on ebay. Rarely ever does GU'ed cards pop up, even though he just has a handful.

The above card was picked up on ebay and arrived on Christmas Eve, before I started this blog. At the moment it's my favourite McLean card. It's a piece of game used stick and this is the only one I have seen in the past year since I started collecting McLean. I would love to find a patch variation of this card!



Mailday #3: 7 Card PC Pick Up

One thing that has bothered me about ebay is the high shipping charges that most sellers charge. The most I'll pay is $3.00 plus at most another .75 cents per additional card from the same seller. I was lucky to pick these up from a seller who offers a great initial shipping charge, then a very small additional charge by card.

As usual I picked up a few Brathwaite cards for the PC. I really like the 01-02 Pacific Net Fusion Cards as they've put a netting in the card for the goal. I really liked Pacific in the late 90's and early 2000's as they always seemed to be putting out new creative product.

Another player I like to collect is Stephane Fiset. As a kid I liked him when he was with the Kings and had a few good seasons. In the mid to late 90's I would go to this flea market about half an hour away from my house with my family and I would sort through large boxes of base to find the players I collected, including Fiset. One seller always seemed to pull high end Fiset and would sell them to me for cheap. One of my best buys being a 96-97 Pinnacle Die Cut Mask of Fiset for $10. At the time of release this card booked for $100+ dollars. This was before ebay, so most sellers sold cards at, or close to book value.

The 96-97 Flair Hot Gloves is one of the nicest insert sets ever put out. I've always wanted to work on the set but due to cost and scarcity I haven't been able to. This Jim Carey was a steal at under $3.

The last card's of the bunch are of Doug Gilmour, my favourite player with the Leaf's in the 90's. While he has some nice cards coming out in recent releases they are always in demand and command some big money (big for me at least). I like to stick to the older inserts. The 96-97 Leaf Leather and Lace card is numbered 3022/5000 and the laces on the card actually stick out a bit. It's a pretty nice card and a shame they don't make inserts like this now.