National Hockey Card Day

In Canada today, it is not only Hockey Day in Canada, it's also National Hockey Card Day.

As most Canadians know, Hockey Day in Canada means that all six NHL teams face each other in three games. In the afternoon, Ottawa hosts Montreal, in the early evening Toronto plays Vancouver, and later tonight, it's the Battle of Alberta as Calgary faces Edmonton.

A great event has been made better with Upper Deck's recent program called National Hockey Card Day which takes place today as well. Most hobby stores in Canada will hand out free five-card packs to each customer who comes through the door.

After my CrossFit workout today, I headed down to the local card store with my wife and picked up two packs of cards. One for each of us. The store was bustling with activity with lots of collectors, young and old. To go along with our two free packs, I grabbed some supplies and some packs of 2009-10 O-Pee-Chee hockey.

As I sat down at home to watch the Montreal/Ottawa game, we opened our packs. My pack contained Jamie Benn, Steve Yzerman, Vincent Lecavalier, Logan Couture, and Jarome Iginla. My wife's pack was much better. She read out the names of Mike RIchards, Roberto Luongo, Evander Kane, Sidney Crosby, and John Tavares!



Luckily for me, every card that she pulls out of a pack becomes my card and I'm more than happy to add another John Tavares card to my collection.

If you're in Canada, hopefully you made it out for your free pack as well.

Cheers.

The Unwanted

If you're reading this, more than likely, you're a card collector. But what do you do when your collection contains cards which you don't collect?

We all enjoy collecting certain players, teams, and sets. Through trades and eBay it's easy to accumulate a very impressive collection of things we want. However, when we break open packs and boxes, quite often we end up with jersey cards and autographs of players which we don't collect. Sometimes, this is a good thing. You open a pack and you've got a keeper for your personal collection. It's a rare occurrence but it's an awesome feeling.



Unfortunately, more often than not, when we break open boxes, we end up with a lot of cards like these:



The question is... What do I do with these? There are few collectors who collect the no name of the NHL. The odd person needs one of these cards for a certain set and the rare person collects these players. But no one bids on these cards on eBay. No one wants these cards in trade. Do kids even want these players? They sit in a shoebox in your collectibles room and they take up space. So what do you do with these cards? As a collector it's impossible to throw them away. What do you do?

Thoughts?