It's Olympic hockey time, and Tim Hortons has done their usual Team Canada themed hockey card release. It's the first time NHL players have been back in the Olympics in I dunno how many years, and Tim's has certainly taken advantage of the opportunity to release a card set.
If you don't know what Tim Hortons is, it is more or a less a coffee shop chain on the level of Dunkin Donuts that is themed around Canadiana. It was originally started by the hockey player Tim Horton, but has since been sold multiple times and doesn't even have Canadian ownership now. The feeling among most Canadians is that it used to be a good brand, but now it sucks. Tim's mostly exploits its Canadian roots as a marketing tool rather than being an authentic Canadian company.
Nevertheless, they usually do a couple hockey sets a year. Usually one that has an NHL theme and another with a Team Canada theme. Up until about a decade ago, McDonald's always did an annual hockey release in Canada. I liked the McDonald's cards a lot. Canadian Tire, which is a department store chain, also did hockey cards a few times and they were really nice. Of course, all of these cards were made by Upper Deck.
The Tim's cards are probably the most popular cards of the year when it comes to broad public knowledge. Like, even people who don't know about hockey cards know about Tim's hockey cards. These cards are just kinda everywhere for a few weeks.
I do get annoyed, however, that all of these Canadian companies focus solely on hockey. I'm more into baseball and basketball, and I know so many other people in Toronto who prefer those sports over hockey. I feel like with how popular the Blue Jays are, that these companies are missing out on partnering with Topps on a Blue Jays themed release. Topps seems completely disinterested in the Canadian market, though, which is so frustrating if you are a baseball fan north of the border.
The Tim's Olympic cards are nice. Sometimes in the past Tim's cards have been a bit cheap, with crappy card stock. These are decent, at about the level of Upper Deck Series 1. It's about what you expect in terms of player selection and inserts. A mix of current and retired players, all pictured in a variety of Team Canada jerseys.
I bought a bunch of packs, and they actually sold out quickly at the Tim's closest to me. I live in downtown Toronto, however, and there are Tim's on every single block, so it wasn't difficult to walk another three or four minutes and find more.
The cards are three in a pack for $2, or only $1.50 for the first pack if you also buy a coffee. You get an insert in each pack, and they printed a ton of these cards, so these inserts tend to drop off in value rather quickly as people complete the set in short order.
Here are some highlights of what I pulled. All of it is for sale or trade.
These Maple Leaf Immortals are 1:100 packs. I definitely did not buy 100 packs, so I got pretty lucky here, especially considering Mario Lemieux is an all-time great. It's a pretty nice looking card that I will flip on Ebay. If I get a decent price for it, it actually means I'll end up making more money than I spent buying these packs. Wow, that never happens. It also means I'm not buying anymore of these packs because I won't get this lucky again.
This is a Duos card featuring Brendan Shanahan and Steve Yzerman. They both played for the Red Wings. The card has a lenticular design similar to old Sportsflics baseball cards. This card was about 1:20 packs, I think. Despite its rarity, I'm not a fan of this card because I never liked the lenticular design gimmick. I always thought it was trashy and gives the card a cheap feel. Obviously others disagree because companies continue to make these as inserts.
Some Northern Stars inserts. The best one is the Patrick Roy. The rest are kind of whatever. This is where you get into the cheap inserts that end up being about as worthless as base cards because millions upon millions of these cards are printed. They look okay. I don't feel one way or another about them.
Four cards from the Program of Excellence insert set. I mean, I feel the same way about these cards as the Northern Stars inserts. A lot card companies make these repetitive insert sets that have such a vague theme as to be almost meaningless. Like, really, what's the difference between 'Northern Stars' and 'Program of Excellence' here? Not much.
These are the Gold Medallion inserts. They are the lowest level inserts in the set, I think 1:2 packs. That means for the people who are buying like a hundred packs, they end up with stacks of doubles for this set. I dunno how I feel about landscape cards. I think they only work if the photography is awesome. Hockey is a hard sport to photograph because if you take pictures from too far away, it's difficult to see the player with all their gear on. But if you take a photo too close to get a good shot of the player's face, you can't really see much else. Plus, almost half of this card is dominated by the medallion design, which to me adds nothing. So I don't think the landscape design here is a winner.
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