A Ten-Fold Increase

A couple of months ago, I posted about my good fortune to run across an Ebay vendor who was selling hockey cards with a starting bid of just one cent and free shipping.  The only catch was that the listings provided generic pictures and no team listings - just sets, player name and card number.  Of course, I did some research and went hog wild on that amazing deal and I'm sure I wasn't the only one who did so.

Consequently, I find it hard to believe that this particular business man was making any sort of profit on his online venture.  Therefore, it appears as though shortly after my shopping spree, he increased his starting bid to about 10 cents; however, he still kept the shipping as free and began to provide pictures of the actual card being bid on and even include some team listings this time through.

OK - so the cards might have jumped up in price ten times; however, when your starting from a copper Lincoln, that's still a great deal.

Therefore, I grabbed a fistful of dimes (figuratively) and, again, went all in on whatever Blackhawks I could find for my All-Time Roster Collection for the franchise:

Ryan's role on the ice was that of an enforcer - he even went so far as to end the career of Nick Kypreos in a pre-season game in 1997.  He found himself in Chicago from 1997-2004, racking up penalty minutes left and right.  

He had a hard time turning off that part of his brain during his past-playing days.  In 2008, he was involved in a bar brawl, where he punched a police officer in the face, threatened to kill another, and was tasered three times and pepper-sprayed before being subdued.  His lawyer successfully argued that his history of concussions rendered him a "non-insane automaton," and he was later cleared.

I was pretty sure that JediJeff had already sent me all of the 1990-91 ProSet that I could possibly need; turns out that I was mistaken.  

McNeil wasn't long for the NHL, playing parts of three seasons in the league, including 23 games for the Hawks in the same season this set was released.  He was somewhat of a local boy, having been raised in South Bend, IN and playing for Notre Dame in his college days.

Tyler Arnason was a member of the Blackhawks' youth movement that was attempted preceding the Toews/Kane era.  He was a member of the "ABC" line, along with fellow young guns Mark Bell and Kyle Calder.

However, the most notable event in Arnason's Chicago tenure was not on the ice.  In January of 2003, Arnason, Phil Housley and Theoren Fleury were leaving a strip club in Ohio when Fleury punched the club's manager in the face. Housley and Arnason had to step in to prevent Fleury from being beaten by the bouncers.

Considered to be one of the best face-off men in NHL history, Yanic Perreault had a prolific 13-year career on the ice.  Exactly one year of that tenure was spent in the Windy City and he was far from being the elite centre he'd once been.

Like many an aging-star during the Bill Wirtz-era, Perreault blew onto the Blackhawks roster for one final season in 2007-08.  During that campaign, Yanic only contributed 14 points in 53 games - his scoring skills had clearly diminished.  As such, he called it a career in a Chicago sweater, shortly before Rocky Wirtz's youth movement took over.

This marks the ends of the cards where I could find the player sporting the proper attire; that said, for ten cents, I'll take any card as a place-holder.

Nylander was a 'Hawk from 1999-2003 and, to be completely honest, I don't really have much to say about him other than I can now cross his name off of my "to-get" list.  After all, he played for Chicago during the darkest days of the Bill Wirtz era, a time in which I, like the rest of Chicago, paid very little attention to hockey.

Chris is a guy who bounced around an awful lot during his time in the NHL.  Over the course of eight years, McAlpine played for five different franchises - including three teams in the 1999-2000 alone.

The defenseman bounced into Chicago as a free agent immediately after that three-city excursion and stuck around through 2002, playing 90 games in a Blackhawks sweater.

Thus concludes my second-round of discount binge-shopping for Chicago hockey cards.  Nothing too notable after all; but, for the cost of some shiny FDR's, the price is most definitely right.

This guy must be really tired of me by now!