Let's Go Rangers!!!

Tomorrow morning I'm taking my two sons away from their fiancees and heading up to Dallas to watch the Rangers play the Dallas Stars. Only one of my boys has ever seen an NHL game live and neither has ever seen the Rangers.

I took my wife to a Rangers-Stars game a couple of seasons back and the Blueshirts won in overtime. I'm hoping for a similar result this time. They've now won 8 straight, I hope I'm not jinxing them. If the Rangers win I won't even care if the video board makes fun of me and my vintage Rangers' sweater.

The cards I've posted here are part of a much larger stack sent by Joe Shlabotnik. I'll have a bunch more to say about that box soon but in brief it had an interesting trip and contained a boatload of fine vintage football, hockey and miscellaneous other things.

Joe helped me knock out at least two years of Topps Baltimore Colts and I was able to upgrade quite a few more. More on that soon enough but today I have scanned Rangers from four different Topps sets.

As happened with baseball for at least a decade after the '94 lockout/strike I was out of touch with hockey for quite awhile. But the reasons were quite different. Moving down to Houston for good in 1970 took me away from the NHL. Trying to follow the Rangers was difficult with the nearly non-existent coverage NHL hockey received locally. I kept my subscription to The Hockey News for a year or two but many of the Rangers of the 70's and 80's are just names in the media guides. I turned into a Houston Aeros fan and that kept the hockey flame alive for me.

I saw a few Rangers games on TV and I knew the goalies and the stars but the day-to-day stuff was all lost to me. And my hockey collection pretty much reflects this. These four cards are among the first I have from any of these sets.

Each of these sets has the elements I like in card design. The colors ore those of the team and the team logo is shown. And how about the mask John Davidson is wearing in that second card of his? That sure takes you back.

Thanks again, Joe S. I'm certainly glad the box made it (though it was looking bleak for awhile) and I appreciate your thoughtfulness and help in knocking out some Colts cards.

Vending Machine Stickers

When my kids were younger we had a regular hamburger place we'd hit a couple of times a month. My boys loved it because not only were the burgers top notch but the place had some terrific vending machines. I dropped a ton of quarters into two in particular. One had the mini football helmets. Not the crappy little cheap ones that you had to apply the sticker logos to yourself, but a nice quality little painted helmet. I know that over time we put together the whole set. My boys had them displayed in their room.

The other machine pushed out the shiny sparkly stickers I have posted here. They came inside a folded cardboard 'pack' and ran a quarter or fifty cents apiece. The burger place always had NFL stickers and the two up top came from there. They are dated 1995 which would have made my boys six or seven when we picked them up but I'm guessing they were purchased a few years later than that date.



I don't know where the hockey one and the snazzy Colt sticker were obtained but I suspect some other place we came across in our shopping/eating travels. I used to be interested in goalie masks and I had a nice little stack of those stickers myself. That Colt helmet sticker is dated 2000.



I came across these when I was clearing out the binders that my sons kept their collections in. Makes for some fun family nostalgia. They had Mark Brunell and Junior Seau PCs along with tons of junk wax 'stars' (or guys they considered stars) and plenty of non-sports cards. I think I posted a Pink Power Ranger collection I came across on here some months ago. I couldn't argue with their taste if you know what I mean.