The What Was I Thinking Files - 1994-95 Be A Player Autos

Have you ever forked over your hard earned money for cards you don't even really like?  Odds are if you're a player or team collector you're familiar with this experience.  I fell victim to this just recently, when I stumbled across this Ted Drury autograph from 1994-95 Be A Player:

Ugh!  This has to be one of the ugliest autographed cards in my entire collection.  This hodgepodge of unlicensed crap is truly one for the player or team collector only.  Yes, the autograph is on-card, but does that even matter in this case?  There are only two reason I picked this up...

...as you can see the white box about 1/4 of the way down the back says 'Hartford', so this is technically a Whalers card.  The other reason I purchased it?  It set me back $1.29.  What can I say, I guess the team collector in me couldn't pass up an autograph I "needed" for around a buck.

The seller even had four other Whalers from the set, and they're all just as u-g-l-y!  These photos make it difficult sometimes to even tell where the player signed.

Five new Whalers autographs that set me back less than $7 total.  I've gotta look over the checklist at some point, but let's hope when I do that there aren't too many more of these for me to track down!

Whaler Ink - Daryl Reaugh

It's high time I published my first post of 2014 here at Whalers Hockey Cards.  Since I usually dedicate Sunday to featuring autographs on my other blog, I thought a nice large, on-card signature might be appropriate:

This Daryl Reaugh autograph hails from the 2012-13 Panini Classics Signatures set, specifically the Social Signatures insert set.  This is actually the second Reaugh auto I've shown here, apparently Panini is a fan of his as he was also featured in the Brass Bonanza autograph set from the inaugural Dominion release.  I like the bold colors, great photo, giant signature and Whalers logo, it makes for a very attractive card.

Unfortunately, I'm not big on the concept.  Apparently the idea is to showcase the Twitter handle of the depicted athlete.  I'm not a Twitter user, and the Whalers seem like an odd choice for this set given that AOL dial-up internet and Windows '95 were all the rage when there was last an NHL team in the city of Hartford.

Even the back of the card talks about how Dallas Stars fans clamored for Daryl to "take to Twitter", which I find hard to believe.  Oh well, they can't all be winners I guess, and at least I only shelled out less than $10 for this one...