Hockey Card of the Day: 1999-00 MVP Silver Signature #146 Eric Lindros

• Maybe one day I'll work on finishing another one of these silver signature sets.  I've always liked the MVP brand, especially the price point.
• Congrats on reaching the Hockey Hall of Fame Eric!!
• Market Watch:  1 copy of this card on COMC, priced at $3.05 (28% discount).  I would say that's about right for the big E.
• 98/99 is when the NHL started keeping Time on Ice stats.  Eric averaged 22:56 per game which is big for a forward, especially one who took a lot of punishment as Eric did.

15 years in the making

Many of you who read the $30 a week habit blog are well aware of my foolish fascination with various types of parallels.  Serial numbered or not, I've chased many of these ever since the mid 90's.

There have even been a handful of parallel sets I've liked so much that I have chased the entire set.  The 1999-00 Upper Deck MVP silver signature set is one of them.   Today, I finally acquired the last remaining card I've needed for a long time, Mike Richter.

I've been searching eBay for this card for the past couple of months (off and on), and the few copies that I did find were about $1-$1.50 apiece, plus about $3 shipping (most were from Canada).  I really didn't want to pay that kind of money just for one card.

Then I remembered a web site that many, many other people out there have used for a long time, but for some reason I have stayed away from.

COMC.com 

I decided to give it a try for the first time, and ordered the Richter along with 10 other SPs I needed to finish another set.  8 days after the order was placed, the cards arrived and I will say that my first foray into the COMC world was a great success.  

It makes me wonder why I waited so long.  Hopefully the next attempt at putting together a silver signature set will take less than 15 years....

thanks for reading, Robert

5 down, 1 to go

Like many of the older baseball sets that I've completed since I started the habit blog almost 3 years ago, I want to start trying to complete a lot of the older hockey sets that I've left unfinished for years.  One of those is the 1999-00 Upper Deck MVP silver signature set.

Both of these guys were Leafs at one time or another during their great careers

This set is as basic as it gets.   Silver signatures were inserted one per pack, and with only 220 cards in the set, this was a very realistic set to complete, even back then.

There weren't even any big RCs in the set (Jochen Hecht was the priciest, listed at 75 cents), so this parallel set shouldn't have been that difficult to complete, right?

Even with a multiplier of 3x, the Gretzky cards (3 of them) were even affordable.  But over the years the set just got pushed to the side while the latest and greatest came out.

Now, it's finally here.   I'm at the pinnacle.  One card to go.   Mike Richter, #133.   I only see one on eBay right now, but it's in Canada, the shipping is $3.50, and the seller has a nearly 3 week delay before shipping.

I'll keep waiting....after all, I've gone this long, right?

Thanks for reading, Robert