Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Panini announces its plans for the 2011 Fall Expo!

Panini made a big splash last year in their first foray to the Canadian Sportcard Expo, and they're back again this year! Check out the great stuff they'll be bringing on the Panini America blog and stay tuned both there and here for more information!

Just a reminder -- as always, we'll be in booths 1211-1214 at the Expo with Set Killer's Corner, our amazing array of patch cards, the Robert Thomas Collection of autographed cards and 8x10s and much, much more!

See you there!

Saturday, October 22, 2011

The 2011-12 Upper Deck Young Guns are coming!

Michael Phillips of Upper Deck was kind enough to send along the information for this year's crop of Young Guns! Here's the list, and check out Upper Deck's blog for more information and pictures!

We'll be getting in our Series I boxes right before the Fall Expo and we are accepting preorders for boxes and cases! Stop by or email us today to reserve yours!


201 Devante Smith-Pelly Anaheim
202 Maxime Macenauer Anaheim
203 Greg Nemisz Calgary
204 Roman Horak Calgary
205 Justin Faulk Carolina
206 Marcus Kruger Chicago
207 Brandon Saad Chicago
208 Gabriel Landeskog Colorado
209 Cameron Gaunce Colorado
210 John Moore Columbus
211 David Savard Columbus
212 Cam Atkinson Columbus
213 Tomas Vincour Dallas
214 Ryan Nugent-Hopkins Edmonton
215 Anton Lander Edmonton
216 Teemu Hartikainen Edmonton
217 Erik Gudbranson Florida
218 Brett Bulmer Minnesota
219 Aaron Palushaj Montreal
220 Alexei Yemelin Montreal
221 Raphael Diaz Montreal
222 Brendon Nash Montreal
223 Jonathon Blum Nashville
224 Blake Geoffrion Nashville
225 Craig Smith Nashville
226 Adam Henrique New Jersey
227 Adam Larsson New Jersey
228 Tim Erixon New York
229 Mika Zibanejad Ottawa
230 Colin Greening Ottawa
231 Patrick Wiercioch Ottawa
232 Erik Condra Ottawa
233 Stephane Da Costa Ottawa
234 Sean Couturier Philadelphia
235 Matt Read Philadelphia
236 Erik Gustafsson Philadelphia
237 Joe Vitale Pittsburgh
238 Harri Sateri San Jose
239 Alex Stalock San Jose
240 Brett Connolly Tampa Bay
241 Jake Gardiner Toronto
242 Joe Colborne Toronto
243 Matt Frattin Toronto
244 Ben Scrivens Toronto
245 Cody Hodgson Vancouver
246 Yann Sauve Vancouver
247 Carl Klingberg Winnipeg
248 Mark Scheifele Winnipeg
249 Paul Postma Winnipeg
250 Checklist (Nugent-Hopkins, Landeskog, Larsson) Edmonton, Colorado, New Jersey

Friday, October 21, 2011

Big Shea Weber pull at The IceBox!

Troy and Jasmine landed the 11-12 Artifacts Shea Weber patch/tag autograph 1/1 last night! Congrats to them!

 

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

We'll be open tomorrow!

If you were wondering, our new store will be open for business Thursday, July 28, at 11:30 a.m.! Come by and check out the new digs, but cut us a little slack -- we're still putting up slat wall and moving things around!

The new store hours are:

MON-THURS 11:30-7:30
FRIDAY 11-8
SATURDAY 10-6:30
SUNDAY 12-5

See you soon at 7975 Yonge Street in Stroud (Innisfil if you're looking to GPS it), in the plaza between the Rexall and TD Canada Trust!

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

2010-11 Upper Deck Ultimate checklist and odds!

Courtesy of our hard-working friend VodkaLodka on the Hobby Insider boards, check out his spreadsheet with the checklist and pull odds for Upper Deck's 2010-11 Ultimate Hockey:

VodkaLodka's 10-11 Ultimate checklist and odds

Many thanks to him, and drop by the store for yours today!

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

New at The IceBox!

Upper Deck Ultimate lands at The IceBox on Wednesday, with its standard awesome content of one autograph, one memorabilia and one rookie per pack, plus a numbered base card.

We'll have a case on hand by the afternoon, so stop in and grab yours!

Saturday, March 5, 2011

Customers Stu and Jeff went splits on a box of 2010-11 Upper Deck Series II and here's the big hit:
















That's a P.K. Subban Victory rookie magenta printing plate 1/1! Wow! Congrats, guys!

Friday, June 25, 2010

Just a reminder -- Johnny Bower is in the store from 1:30-3:30 p.m. tomorrow. Autographs are $15 with $5 going to our local chapter of Big Brothers Big Sisters!

For more info, check out our website!

Friday, April 23, 2010

Holy cats!

Has it been this long since we posted something here on the blog? We apologize -- you can come to the store to yell at us for it. ;)

Just got back from the Vegas Industry Summit and thought I would share this link to an interview with Chris Carlin of Upper Deck from Sports Card Forum. Chris is a good guy and cares about collectors, no matter what you might think of his employers.

Give it a read and stay tuned for more posts, box breaks, hit and opinions!

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

All the Hamilton news that's fit to print!

I was Googling us the other day (don't give me that look -- you do it too) and came across a mention of a card pulled in our shop a few months ago.

Turns out The Hamiltonian is your source for all things Josh Hamilton -- even word about his impending surgery for what may be a sports hernia after crashing into a wall in the process of making a great catch. Hopefully his recovery will be speedy and the Rangers will get him back right after the All-Star Break.

Hamilton's a great story -- you can read his own words here in an ESPN The Magazine piece -- and if you get some neat Josh Hamilton cards or stuff, I think you know who to talk to now!

Check out our web site at Hit The IceBox!

Saturday, January 17, 2009

Mark and John hit it big!

Photobucket

Mark and John stopped by before the spelling bee being held in the Kozlov Centre on Saturday and picked up a few packs of 08-09 UD MVP Hockey.

They were glad they did, pulling the 2-On-2 quadruple-swatch game-used jersey of Sidney Crosby, Dany Heatley, Rick Nash and Jason Spezza. Congrats, guys!

Friday, January 16, 2009

Oh, MAN!

All I can say about this auction item is ... drool.

Friday, November 28, 2008

Bringing Henderson's goal home to the HHOF

Pat Stapleton recently finally admitted he has the puck from Paul Henderson's famous 1972 Summit Series goal. Of course, people are now going nuts about what Stapleton should do with it -- donate it to the Hockey Hall of Fame, selling it at auction, keep it.

I made a similar suggestion to the following for the Barry Bonds home run ball, and I'll suggest it now for Labatt's, Research In Motion or some similar Canadian company:

1) Determine a fair market price for the puck.
2) Labatt's writes a cheque in that amount to Pat Stapleton. They also write another cheque for the same amount in the name of every single player on the '72 team and give it to Stapleton's favourite charity.
3) Labatt's, Stapleton and whichever team members want to attend then hold a press conference and donate the puck to the HHOF.

Whatever Labatt's (or whomever) pays for the puck, the company will get 10 times the amount of positive publicity for the gesture, the puck ends up in the Hall of Fame where it belongs and everyone goes home happy.

Oh, and I'll promote the card show/autograph signing surrounding the '72 players being in town. :D

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

The Scourge of Pack Searching

Adam McFarland over at The Sports Lizard has an interesting article on pack searching where he used calipers to find the thick packs in a football box.

Adam actually picked a product that is a little weird in this respect, as Donruss tends to seed its autographs in packs that don't have a memorabilia card. Other possibilities for search were raised by readers, including weighing the packs.

And it's not even that tough. There are any number of products that come out every year that can easily be searched. 2007-08 Upper Deck SPx, for example, generally contains four jersey cards per 18-pack box. It's very easy to feel which packs have the jerseys in them because UD doesn't put decoys in the other packs.

There are tons of other examples, and they are the reason we don't allow customers to pick their own packs.

The more insidious problem, however, is store owners searching the boxes. I pledge to you that we don't, and here's why -- we have a reputation to maintain. We have a large enough number of regular customers that even if we decided to go the dishonest route, they would quickly ascertain that we were searching our boxes and stop frequenting us.

We also regularly tell our customers to be careful purchasing from retail outlets because no one at Wal-Mart is watching for searchers. Of course, there's already so few good cards in most retail products, it's tough to pull anything great even if you aren't cheating.

As for eBay, caveat emptor is the best policy. It's possible the best boxes have been pulled from cases, or boxes have been opened and resealed -- and I would never purchase a single pack on line, period.

If you have concerns, ask us, whether you're buying from us or anyone else. We're here to help. But as for us and pack searching -- never have, and never will.

There are also a couple of other blogs linked in Adam's article -- be sure to jump over and read those also.

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Welcome to our newest collector!

Big Mike Jenkins, one of our best customers and a big baseball guy, has a new addition to his family -- 8 lb, 2 oz Chelsea! Congratulations, Mike!

The IceBox II -- The Empire Strikes Back!

Okay, so it isn't that big a deal, but we're in our new digs! The store is more than 2,000 square feet, with a big pack wall (and only getting bigger), plenty of singles, NHL RBK replica jerseys, gameworn items, replica masks, autographs, framed pieces, custom framing ... well, you get the idea!

In addition, we now have The Brick Collectible Comfort Zone ready for your viewing and relaxing pleasure! Thanks to the fine folks at The Brick, we now have:

* A 52-inch Samsung plasma screen HD TV
* An 11-foot leather sectional couch with a pair of recliners
* A full wireless surround-sound system and DVD/iPod/CD/XM receiver
* A nice foldout coffee table for breaking boxes!

Stop by and check us out, and we'll post pictures soon!

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Say hello to Mario in Sweet Shot!

We just picked up a few more tins of 2007-08 Upper Deck Sweet Shot Hockey, and Clarence stopped by to pick up a card and decided to try his luck with a tin with oddball numbering in relation to the others on the shelf.

As his reward, he nailed the Sweet Show Stick Signatures Mario Lemieux autographed stick card numbered 12/15. Nice pull, Clarence!

A kind word to the folks at Inkworks!

Just a shout out to the folks at Inkworks, makers of fine non-sport cards such as Family Guy and The Simpsons, among others. I was fortunate enough to meet Inkworks owner Allan Caplan at a distributor's day a few years back, and he is a super-nice guy.

One of our customers, Chris, picked up a box of Scooby Doo 2 and cracked it with his kids. They were fortunate enough to pull the redemption for an autographed Alicia Silverstone card.

Unfortunately, the redemption expired September 30, 2004!

Both I and another of my customers advised Chris to send in the redemption anyway, just to see if there was any chance of getting the autograph. Lo and behold, in his mailbox this morning:

Photobucket

Thanks, Allan, and everyone else at Inkworks!

Saturday, April 26, 2008

Kane do!

We've blown through more than a case of the new 2007-08 SP Authentic since Thursday! Congrats to Marty, who nailed the Patrick Kane FW authographed rookie card in the last pack of his box!

Of course, he also pulled the die-cut HoloFX Sidney Crosby in the first pack -- nice box!

We're out temporarily, but we will have boxes back in stock on Monday! Grab them before they go even higher!

Friday, March 28, 2008

A little insight into our autograph business

We've recently had a discussion over on the Spawn boards about bringing in players for autograph signings. Rather than rehash everything here, here's a link to that conversation.

If you have any questions, feel free to make a comment here or send me an email.

Friday, February 8, 2008

What's up with this year's SP Game Used?

Every year I'm a huge fan of Upper Deck's SP Game Used. Even two years ago when the player selection for the base jerseys was awful, I cracked boxes and wholeheartedly recommended it to my customers.

This year, the cards are fantastic. Dual jerseys as the base memorabilia cards, lots of interesting patch inserts and autographed cards -- UD really could have hit a home run here.

Instead, there are tons and tons of damaged cards coming out of packs. Take a look at the people breaking it on the Beckett Hockey forum -- complaints galore. I have pulled two patch cards and both of them have had huge chunks out of the sides.

When will this stop? It's annoying for me, because by the time I get these cards back from UD, the resale value will be half of what it is now. For customers, it's frustrating to pony up big $$$ for a box and then get cards that look as if Richard McWilliams has been tap dancing on them.

I also don't know if this is substantiated or not, but I've heard the reason SPGU was delayed was so Upper Deck could work on quality control in these cards. I hope that's not true.

I trust Upper Deck to make good on these cards -- they generally do. I also understand damage will happen (despite the fact I mailed out an entire box of damaged cards last year for a customer and never received anything back from Upper Deck). But there's no excuse for the frequency with which these cards are coming out trashed.

This product will still sell and sell well. Heck, I'm still going to crack another box. But come on, UD -- pick it up a little. This is embarrassing.

Wednesday, December 26, 2007

A golden oldie from this year's O-Pee-Chee!

People have been raving about this year's O-Pee-Chee, and I don't blame them. A nice low price point, tons of RCs and a shot at pulling out a quad jersey or something even cooler.

Customer Stewie's definitely raving after nailing this beauty out of a box purchased from The IceBox on Christmas Eve:

Photobucket

That's right -- a 74-year-old card! When the redemption comes in, we'll put up a scan for you! Congrats to Stewie!

Sunday, December 23, 2007

A customer goes Bolland in UD Ultimate!

Okay, it was a lousy pun, but Adam's not laughing. He's now pulled these two beauts from packs of 2006-07 Upper Deck Ultimate:

Photobucket

We're still carrying Ultimate at $369.99 per box or $94.99 per pack. Stop by and try your luck!

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Crosby Ice RC /99 BGS 9.5 on eBay!

Just for fun, you might to keep your eyes on this beauty. I think it could hit $4K easily, and I wouldn't be surprised to see someone hit the BIN.

We had two of these bad boys last year -- man, do I miss them!

Thanks for the head's up, Big Bob!

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Gretzkymania runnin' wild!

Chris stopped by this afternoon and busting a pack of our newly cheaper 2006-07 UD Ultimate at just $99.99 a pack, and pulled a Wayne Gretzky autographed jersey out of 50!

Not to be outdone, Adam dropped in just a few minutes later, bought a box of Ultimate (for just $369.99!) and pulled a Gretzky Ultimate Signatures autographed card!

That's right -- two Gretzky autos in five minutes! Top that!

Here are their smiling mugs, and the sweeeeeet cards!

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

Tuesday, October 9, 2007

Props to the Canadian dollar!

Thanks to the strength of the Canadian dollar, prices are falling on many products! Check these changes out:

* 2005-06 UD Series II Hobby -- was $4.49 per pack or $84.99 per box; now $3.99 per pack or $74.99 per box!
* 2006-07 UD Ultimate -- was $119.99 per pack or $429.99 per box; now $99.99 per pack or $369.99 per box!
* 2006-07 Fleer Hot Prospects -- was $9.49 per pack or $129.99 per box; now $6.99 per pack or $99.99 per box!

There are more great deals to be had! Call us for great case pricing with no-hassle CANPAR shipping inside Canada -- and no customs fees either!

Hello, Quad!

No scan on this one, but Dave opened the rest of a box of 2006-07 BAP and pulled the quad auto of Peter Forsberg, Nicklas Lidstrom, Daniel Alfredsson and Markus Naslund! Numbered 1/10, this one is a beaut!

Nice pull, Dave!

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

One nifty Ultimate pull!

Chris, one of our very best customers and a big help in the store, came in last night and pick up a couple of packs of 2006-07 UD Ultimate.

He did okay on the first break, pulling a Malkin Ultimate Signatures auto, but the second box had something a little juicier in it:

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

This card is listed on eBay and will close on Sunday, Sept. 16.

Nice pull, Chris!

Friday, July 27, 2007

A big hit in The Cup!

Mike came in last week and bought a box of 2006-07 Fleer Hot Prospects. It bore a serial number ending in "66".

Just to get people a little geeked up, I make a habit of looking at the last two numbers of the serial numbers on the boxes, and then mentioning a corresponding player. "Hey, it can't be Lemieux," I said, "but it could be Staal or Malkin, right?"

Well, Mike came in tonight and reported he had indeed pulled out a Jordan Staal patch auto.

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

Our attention turned to the two tins of The Cup sitting on the shelf.

A "98" ... and a "99".

That was it -- Mike was sold, and he opened his tin in the back of the store right before close. He did get a Gretzky base card, but both of us were just a little happier with his pull in the middle of his pack.

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

Look more closely -- Mike's son Liam has good reason to look a little shocked.

Here, I'll help with the optics:

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

That's right -- the dual NHL Shield 1/1 card of Toronto Maple Leafs Darcy Tucker and Michael Peca! AMAZING!!

Congrats to Mike and Liam, and we'll let you know right here if he decides to sell it!

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Photos from the Vezina Show!

Thanks to everyone who came by Shoppers World in Brampton for the Vezina Winners Show in Brampton! I know I'm a little late in getting these photos up, but hope you enjoy!

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

Tony Esposito is not only a friendly guy, but one of the snappiest dressers in the sports world!

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

Johnny Bower is always a big hit with the fans. He also said he approved the art work for his new McFarlane figurine due out in December, just in time for Christmas -- and The IceBox will have plenty of them!

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

Ed Giacomin chats with a big fan -- see more below! Giacomin was extremely personable and looks like he could hop back in goal right now (we hear Phoenix could be interested!)

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

This young lady had a Rangers jersey with "FAN" and "1" on the back, and said she had worn it several times to Madison Square Garden. Ed was so impressed he invited her around the table and we had to shoot pictures! If our Rangers fan will contact me through the web site or this blog, we'll get you copies of this photo!

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

Denis DeJordy was a big hit with fans. Here he signs a beautiful 16x20 piece for one of our best customers.

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

Not only did Charlie Hodge draw well, but he also was a real trooper at the end of his signing time! We had several people show up right at 1 p.m., but Charlie stuck it out and signed for everyone -- even a couple people who had to catch him having lunch!

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

Finally, Bernie Parent is always a favourite of ours and the fans too! Bernie signed, told stories and generally kept us all entertained through the afternoon. I understand he even made it out of the parking lot safely, even with Glenn giving the directions!

Thanks again to everyone who came out, and watch the web site for more big signings coming up in the near future! We also have plenty of signed photos and pucks left for sale, along with our gorgeous 11x14 Vezina Winners prints signed by all six goalies and limited to 100!