2015-16 In The Game Final Vault Hockey Forum

This product gets a lot of hate and I do understand why in some regards. If you had a legitimate 1/1 card and all of a sudden you see another one for sale just with a red stamp on it, I could see how that would irk some people. However, as I understand it from Dr. Price's posts on the subject, these cards are leftover customer service copies and buybacks. If there were 20 of a particular card, there are still 20 of that card. The few from this set are technically different cards. I understand that some people aren't OK with the assertion made in that last sentence and I'll admit that I'm essentially one of them. I'll accept a Vault copy of a card as the actual card in my collection if I don't have the original card. I make a note in my checklist that it's a Vault card, but nothing else is different except seeing the V stamp on there when I look at that card with the rest of the set.

I treat the different colors like a serial number. From Dr. Price's post referenced earlier in this thread:

• Red 1/1 Foil Stamp means that there is at least one card in the product.
• Blue 1/1 Foil Stamp means that there are at least two cards in the product.
• Green 1/1 Foil Stamp means that there are at least three cards in the product.
• Silver 1/1 Foil Stamp means that there are at least four cards in the product.
• Gold 1/1 Foil Stamp means that there are at least five cards in the product.
• Black 1/1 Foil Stamp means that there are at least six cards in the product.
• Pink 1/1 Foil Stamp means that there are at least seven cards in the product.
• Purple 1/1 Foil Stamp means that there are at least eight cards in the product.
• Copper 1/1 Foil Stamp means that there are at least nine cards in the product.
• Teal 1/1 Foil Stamp means that there are up to ten cards in the product.

So if I have a red card, it is basically serial number 1. The 1 of 1 is referencing that there is only one card stamped with that color. Blue is 2, Green is 3, Silver is 4, and so on all the way up to 10. Why 10? Because notice that the description for Teal is different than the others. As I read it, the Teal stamp is 10/10 because there are up to ten cards in the product. So why not just serial number the cards? Because not every card had 10 extra copies in the warehouse. Much easier to just stamp them as you go than to inventory everything, determine print runs, and change the serial numbering /XX as it varies wildly for each individual card. This is obviously just speculation as to the reason why they wouldn't go with traditional serial numbering, but it seems like the easiest process to just get a strong product out the door considering how everything went down with ITG.

I actually did buy a card like the one I referenced earlier. I have a Broad Street Boys Orange 1/1 card with a red stamp on it. This seems to be a potential replacement card for the actual 1/1 that was then stamped with a red V because it is the only one. There is at least one card in this product, but in this case we know that there aren't any more (or at least there shouldn't be, two replacement copies of a 1/1 seems a bit strange). Now, this could have been a buyback, as Dr. Price indicated that he did buy back original product (I think at the Expo?). I feel bad for the person that has the actual Orange card if this wasn't a buyback and was indeed a customer service replacement. But at the same time, this card has a huge red V stamped on it and isn't the same card no matter what. I'm still very torn about how to treat these cards so I've decided to just treat them however is the most convenient for me to treat them. If I want them to be the actual card, they're the actual card. If I have the actual card, they're an addition that gives my collection depth and breadth. Basically, I treat them however I'm going to have the most fun because why am I collecting anything at all if I'm not having fun doing it? It's worked for me so far.

I have several Hextall cards where I have multiple colors of the Vault cards in addition to the regular card itself and I do really enjoy collecting them. In fact, I actually like that a lot of collectors seem to have rejected this set, as prices are generally low (except when people see 1 of 1 and think they're worth crazy $$$) and I've picked up some really cool stuff from across the spectrum of ITG releases that I might not have otherwise had an opportunity to grab.

This is all true, of course, of the 1 of 1 cards. There are autos that are stamped with a black V that have an unknown print run. The only other cards from this set that have an unknown print run are the Masked Men cards stamped with a Green V. However, those are relatively common cards without memorabilia of any kind on them (Masked Men Memorabilia cards are, as far as I've seen, stamped with 1 of 1s) and are not, I'd think, the source of the complaints I've seen about this set. Those cards also have silver (/5) and gold (/1) print runs. I have a few Masked Men cards with Vault stamps, including a gold /1. I just look at them like any other stamp (like a show stamp, for example). Cool to collect when I come across them but I'm not going to feel like my collection is lacking if I don't have every one of them.

I do agree that checklisting this product is difficult. Actually, wait. Difficult doesn't even begin to describe the herculean effort it would take to accurately checklist this product, much less provide print runs for everything. They were likely inventoried at some point even if it didn't lead to actual serial numbering. So it seems like something could have been released saying "hey, there are only six of this card" or whatever. I do completely agree that that kinda sucks. As it is, it seems like the only way to know for sure is if you've seen that a Teal V stamp exists and thus you can definitively stay that 10 of those cards exist in the Final Vault set. Because there's no way to be a set builder with this release, I don't think anyone is going to put in the work to try to do the hundreds of hours of research it would take to just try to determine what cards are out there on the market at this moment in time, much less historically. Even collecting the way I do, completely focusing on one player, I'm pretty in the dark as I only own/have seen one Teal-stamped Hextall card. So every other Hextall card I own with a Vault stamp has a print run of <10 for my record-keeping purposes because that's all I or anyone else can reasonably say about the print run for these cards without further evidence.

In short:

There are 10 or less of each card, each stamped with its own individually-colored 1 OF 1 stamp. The stamp acts like a serial number if you consider the serial number as 01/<10, 02/<10, 03/<10, etc.

All in all, Final Vault is confusing but not that confusing. It's kind of a weird release but unique and fun in a lot of ways that I appreciate even if I'm seemingly one of the few.

Now that's how you say HELLO!!!! =D

Thank you for that in depth post hextall. I actually agree with you 100% on the usage of the cards, the only issue is they can't be used as scanning cards for the originals because of the foil. Us goalie guys think alike I guess! Again thanks for the wealth of info and welcome to the boards / site.

Thanks for the warm welcome! I always liked Ranford. It's crazy how similar his and Hextall's careers were. Almost the same exact time frame, a Conn Smythe each, and similar numbers down to the fact that both played around 35k total minutes in their careers. Hextall had a couple of goals and a Vezina, Ranford had a couple of Cups. Both ended up as part of the Kings staff eventually (I live in LA, so that's perfectly fine with me). Guess we goalie guys do think alike!

In the spirit of this thread, here's a list of Ron Hextall Final Vault cards that I know to exist because they're in a box in my closet:

WOW that is very impressive!! I have the one I purchased a few months back and that is it. I have found out that there is a vrey RABID following of Ranford collectors as I rarely win auctions on the good stuff. There are more eager/rich collector's than I. So how did you aquire so many of the Vault cards? eBay? COMC? Or other ways?

As for our boys they did follow similar paths, just not sure that Bill has any GM potential. He seems happy with doing the coaching thing in LA. Poor guy got fleeced with several other players by that investment stuff, same one that almost bankrupted Modano if I remember correctly. Anyways feel free to talk away here on the boards, all of us here enjoy the chats. Avsbruins may pick your brain on the Vault thing as his collection is a HUGE project. One of every set made. YIKES lol.

I've mainly used eBay and COMC for those cards. I picked up a couple on forums from people who broke some boxes, but mainly those two sites. I know what you mean about eBay prices - people seem to be crazy for autographs in particular. I'm more of a fan of game used stuff so it works out sometimes.

Avsbruins' project is seriously impressive, but honestly I wouldn't say Final Vault is anything but 1 set. There are individual cards that span all kinds of years, but thankfully no parallels or inserts. I guess it all depends how you look at this set.

Final Vault has been an interesting thing in my collecting. I got back into the hobby this year and was initially impressed by the fact that they were 1/1, but saw immediately that there were three of the Between the Pipes Battles Jersey Duals cards with Potvin on eBay, all listed as 1/1. The only difference between them was the color of the stamps. So I knew something was up and 1/1 must not mean true 1/1, but what did it mean?

I always wanted a full set of Hextall cards, but that desire started building long before the days of three-color patch/auto black spectrum parallel blah blah blah with a Spring Expo stamp type cards that are prevalent today. The existence of 1/1 cards was something that drove me away from the hobby for of a lot of the same reasons you guys have expressed in this thread about this product. It felt like an intentional attack on the perfectionist/completist side of the hobby. So to have the opportunity to get a 1/1 card right away was kind of mind-blowing even if I knew deep down it probably wasn't an "actual" 1/1.

I came back into collecting with the idea that I would try to complete a full set of Hextall cards from his playing days (up to 1999-00 Pacific). That was going to be it, just pre-2000 cards. However, after realizing that I could get a game used jersey card for less than $5, I figured I'd buy a couple. I mean, why not? I'm sure you guys know how it goes, one thing led to another and upon getting my first 180pt card with a great-looking patch piece in it, I was hooked again and built a checklist for post-2000.

This is where the question of precisely what ITG Final Vault was really started to stick out to me. I'd already bought a couple of 1/1 cards knowing that they weren't true 1/1s but not really knowing what they were. I bought them anyway because the price was right and I liked the card no matter what it was. I figured I'd figure it out eventually. But I did still think it was weird that:

• a) They didn't seem to be on any checklist from 2015-16, the year everyone was claiming they were from.
• b) The cards were identical to cards that were on my checklist (and this site).
• c) They potentially seemed to only be 1 of 1 when it came to the color of the stamp.

I didn't know anything at the time about ITG except that they were responsible for a ton of awesome products. So discovering the fact that ITG was now out of business and the (to me) cool-sounding "Final Vault" series was its last hurrah was kind of a shock. I did some googling and found the posts that Dr. Price made explaining the series and the circumstances surrounding it and everything made sense at that point.

I'm still wrestling with how to classify these cards. But I kind of like that. I always thought that things were very set in stone and well-documented regarding how cards were produced, probably because I grew up collecting in an era in which the market for cards was absolutely on fire and surely big companies must be keeping super-accurate records, right? Coming back into the hobby and realizing the history of the last 25 years of sports card production is full of complexities as well as question marks about certain things like print runs that will never be resolved has made the uncertainties surrounding this set not feel so jarring.

I hate adding more fuel to this fire, just received 2 of 2012-13 In The Game Motown Madness  from the Final Vault series both being a Blue Stamp, so not sure where to place them. One is Autograph other is the Tough Material inserts. My understanding was these are left over from first run and repacked with V stamp

I have Vault card as well - I don't plan on ever cataloging it here. I think Admin has said that issues like this will not be listed here.

That sort of sucks, not on site part, but I bought as Bill Gadsby Autograph 2012-13 In The Game Motown Madness which is an SP card in itself. 

The card that I have there was originally 9 of them. Apparently, they took extras and stampd them with 1 of 9 different color foil "1/1" stamps, essentially doubling the population for that particular card. (When Star Company did somehting similar, the owner was called all sorts of ridiculously bad names, they just didn't foi stamp them. If only he had thought of that!)

The biggest problem with this, is since everything is a 1/1, there really is no way of checklisting it. And the info from the company is sketchy - at least 5 from this set, no more than 10 in this set, etc. what kind of info is that? Apparently, THEY don't even know what the heck they're releasing! If you want, go to the original set the ite came from, add that one to your collection, go to Edit Details for it and in comments, enter the color 1/1 that it is. That's pretty much the only method of cataloging them here. 

That sounds like the best plan of action, Its an awesome set of Just Red Wings that I have about 75 out 115 Autographs and thought I was a step closer but the V stamp ruined it.