LINDEN CARD OF THE WEEK - Brought To You By The Letter "N"

Last month when I learned that my guy would be included in ITG's Decades 90s "Nameplate" subset, my first thought was "It's about time!"

Nameplate cards have been around in the hobby for a few seasons now.  Some products use manufactured patches, some use the real deal.  I'm a real deal kind of guy.

ITG When the product went live, I was eagerly anticipating seeing what these new adds to the list might look like.  Six little letters....one big chase.

The "L" was first to pop up on ebay and my initial thought was "Sweet!", then...."What?", then "Aw man."

Any time a new concept is introduced into my player collection I get excited.  While base cards are fun (and so too are autos, jersey, patches, etc.), they can sometimes feel a little redundant.  Concepts like the Captain-C upper & lower half blew me away.  A quad auto with Lemieux, Yzerman and Sakic - dropped the jaw.  And a monster patch celebrating Trev's charity work...that's the pinnacle.

But is it just me or is something a little off when it comes to this nameplate card?

Yes, the "L" is off center, but that's kind of expected seeing as it comes from a gamer and the available jersey in between letters is scarce.  I'm more looking at colors.

The black and yellow of the "L" clearly indicates that the jersey it comes from is the black skate logo design.  The background of the card though...not so much.  Unless the blue and green are constant throughout the entire Nameplate run, I'd say it's representing the colors of Vancouver's current threads.

The contrasting hues are indeed eye catching.  Sadly, not in a good way.  Imagine for a moment that the colors were say yellow and red.  Or black and yellow.  Mmmmmmmmm.  One can dream.

The "L" went quick on ebay.  It had a BIN that was way over the top (at least twice what I was willing to pay for one) but somebody made a deal for it.  Good for them.  The dream of owning all six was quickly extinguished (actually, I wasn't holding my breath at all about that one).

The goal for me - own one of the six letters.

Well, a couple weeks ago I came across another letter.  A collector in Finland got it in a group break.  I quickly asked if it was available.  It was. And we soon agreed on a price (and a reasonable price at that).

The card arrived and it now sits in with the collection.

2013/14 In The Game Decades 90s

#NP-81 Nameplate "N"  1/1

Much like the "L", this "N" is a little lopsided...which is fine by me.  I know that it's the final letter in the name so why not utilize a little more jersey.

I'm even more curious to see what the middle letters look like.  Hopefully they don't appear too squishy in the window.


On a side note, I found out tonight that Upper Deck is going a second round with Linden in The Cup.  My initial thought was "S#&@!!!!", but after seeing the checklist I must say that I'm really impressed.

Nine cards.  That's it.  A base /249, a gold parallel /25, a black parallel 1/1 and four printing plates.  A patch gold /10 and a Brilliance auto.  This auto has me really excited.  A new subset in The Cup....hopefully they hit it out of the park with the design.  But a huge sigh of relief (and a quick bit of typing on my master list).