My 2008-09 Black Diamond Quad Jersey Set...A Journey
by
, 08-09-2011 at 07:23 PM (2114 Views)
Hi all and welcome to my first blog. expect nothing dazzling or extrodinary here, this is just me testing the waters of my literary patience as it relates to my other hobby, hockey card collecting. I have never mixed the two before, which is surprising as I have a large collection of both. I have been collecting hockey cards since 1987 (you'll never guess what card was the first in my real collection - stay tuned to a future blog entry for that!) and I have been writing for as long as I have known how to. The passion for both struck me the same, hard and convincing, kind of like when you scratch an itch in just the right place and you know you've done something right and you want to do it forever! I suppose the largest dichotomy to that metaphor is that you can scratch the itch until it hurts in the same way as you can collect and build your hockey card collection until you are broke, but in no way can you write or create too much shared imagination!
Well there's my introduction, now let me tell you a little story about my adventure into the land of game used jersey hockey card set collecting. The set: 2008-09 UD Black Diamond Quad Jerseys.
It began before I really knew that it did, when I purchased my first one on ebay almost two years ago. At the time, I was deeply involved with my Patrick Roy card collection and I found a great deal on a sweet two maroon/two white quad jersey card from the 08-09 Black Diamond set. $14 shipping included and I had 4 peices of St. Patrick's Colorado Avalanche jersey (unfortunately he was depicted on the front of the card in a Canadiens' uniform - although they are my favorite NHL team, I felt a strange and confusing dissapointment here). At the time, I already had numerous Patrick Roy memorabilia cards, so nothing seemed too special about this one, except that this was Black Diamond's first run at producing the quad jersey cards as mere inserts, in the past they were known as impossible sets to build (who has ever seen the 2005-06 BD Quad Jersey set complete? I sure haven't).
Skip ahead two months and I am having my brother Alex over one night for a few drinks and like usual, showing him the newest additions to my collection. He, as usual, "poo-poos" my Patty Roy cards, and tells me that I should collect his favorite player (and my 2nd favorite), Al MacInnis, and like usual, I tell him that when I get tired of collecting Roy, I may very well switch to MacInnis (again, stay tuned for a future blog for the rest of the Roy/MacInnis saga). After I show him a few of my newest pickups, he asks me where I find these nice cards, so I show him how the Ebay system works. To give him a full example of how easy it is to find cheap and attractive cards, I find a nice card that is nearing the end of its auction time and still has no bids. I bid on it - 99 cents and 2 dollars shipping - and end up with a 2008-09 BD Quad Jersey card of Keith Tkachuk with 4 different colored swatches! He asks me what I plan to do with it, and, after showing him the Patrick Roy card from the same set, I tell him that "maybe I'll just try to collect the whole set!" This was before I researched and found out that there are 98 cards in the set including players such as Gretzky, Crosby, Ovechkin etc...
Within two weeks, I had spent $50 and had 9 more cards from the set incoming, and felt really good about the prospects of actually finishing this set sometime before I retired. I started posting in the Facebook trade groups that I belonged to, and before long, everyone that I traded with online knew that I was the guy to offer the 08-09 BD Quad Jerseys to, and with the help of a lot of great traders (and some great Ebay steals, like $19 for the 2 color Crosby and $14 for a 3 color Ovechkin), I had 50 cards from the set in the first 6 months!
I am very fortunate that this set only has one short printed card, the Alexander Semin card, and although I don't have the regular white copy yet, I do have the super short printed Onyx version, numbered out of 10. I can hopefully someday trade it or sell it and get a copy of the regular short print white release as it would better match my set. But for now, I am very happy just having a copy of the card to complete my set!
I am so close to completing this set, a set that I thought was way out of my league (so far, the total book value of the cards is over $1700 collectively). I currinetly have 94 out of 98 cards and, with all of the listed superstars already safely stored away in my collection, the last remaining "final four" commons seem like a small step to completion and a very large personal achievement!
Upon completion, I will post a thread in the show and tell section, but until then, thanks for reading and happy collecting!
Ben Blois