- Welcome to Blue Bombers Forum.
Recent posts
#21
Blue Bomber & CFL Discussion Forum / Re: Wade Miller Recognized Wit...
Last post by Tecno - Today at 05:45:46 AMDitto. WM knows how to run a company and sell a lot of tix and merch!! And keep fans happy.
Most importantly might be putting the cream of the crop of the employees on STH duty. That's really appreciated.
Also, WM slimming down a bit lately? Looking sharp! Keep it up.
Most importantly might be putting the cream of the crop of the employees on STH duty. That's really appreciated.
Also, WM slimming down a bit lately? Looking sharp! Keep it up.
#22
Blue Bomber & CFL Discussion Forum / Re: Montreal vs Ssk Grey Cup w...
Last post by Tecno - Today at 05:43:28 AMQuote from: dd on November 16, 2025, 10:32:05 PMI binged watched the entire TSN telecast roday, never done that before for a grey cup ,some really good player features and our panel is hilarious , they love to talk about football but they really love to have a good time!
Ya, it's always worth a watch. Since I'm usually traveling to the cup (or in this case going to all the festivals) I PVR all of Sat & Sun and watch when I can in the off-season. The SAT stuff I did watch already was pretty good.
I don't know why, but I like hearing the player predictions. They are usually smarter than the panel people.
#23
Blue Bomber & CFL Discussion Forum / Re: RESULTS OF WEEK #24 (GREY ...
Last post by Tecno - Today at 05:41:00 AM
#24
Blue Bomber & CFL Discussion Forum / Re: Blue Bombers add to roster
Last post by Tecno - Today at 05:39:34 AMQuote from: Throw Long Bannatyne on November 17, 2025, 06:56:27 PMIt seems the O-line is a difficult position to jump the cue under the current regime, they have significant investment in Randolph, Lofton and Vanterpool, just can't see them throwing that away unless a rookie blows their doors off.
If Rand/Vant are coming off ELC then we could very easily cut bait. Neither has wowed anyone, though Rand was doing better in pass pro by year end. Vant was great at LG, but it seems we don't want to go 3 IMP.
We've let IMP 2nd/3rd year guys walk before. Many times. My hunch is 1 or both are gone. Look what a "real" RT can do for a team (see: SSK). I want to see at least 30% more spent on OL than last season.
Lofton was only a bit better than Rand, and if he's always hurt then we probably move on, too. He was always only ever a placeholder anyhow until we found the next Yoshi.
#25
Blue Bomber & CFL Discussion Forum / Re: Blue Bombers add to roster
Last post by Tecno - Today at 05:36:32 AMQuote from: Pigskin on November 17, 2025, 08:34:22 PMMcGhee at 6'2" 195 adds a little size to our DB group.
He was so-so in OTT. Name was mentioned a lot. Not always a good thing. However, I don't recall him sucking rocks. And he was on that sad sack team. Might be much better on a real team with real schemes.
#26
Blue Bomber & CFL Discussion Forum / Re: Extra security / restricti...
Last post by Tecno - Today at 05:33:25 AMQuote from: gobombersgo on November 16, 2025, 04:42:30 PMThere are s bunch of Als fans at the Cup. Lots of hard core regulars.
Not dissing the every-cup regulars! I saw some at the cup. It's the general lack of travel desire amongst the "normal" fans. Besides the "regulars", how many extra showed up? Probably a dozen at most.
I talked with my Frenchie (MB Frenchie) friend about it and he says the Quebecers are "insular" and don't like to leave Quebec. I'll take his word for it, he'd know better than me.
Quote from: gobombersgo on November 16, 2025, 04:42:30 PM@Tecno knows 1st hand how much last minute flights are between Montreal and the Peg.
...
There should be an agreement where the official airline of the CFL adds a couple of flights at reasonable prices from the 2 participating cities.
No kidding. The first cup I flew to (2019 CGY) I was shocked that no flights were added when they were all pretty booked. I bet you could easily fill 2 275-seaters in 1 week with ~ $750ish fares. Arrive Thu, leave Mon. Advertise it at the end of the DF games.
From my now 5+ year body of GC experience it's the return flights on Sun night or Mon that are the killer. Such that it is usually best to come back Tue or Wed. That's what I did in MTL. Just make plans to tour the city like you would if there was no game.
#27
Blue Bomber & CFL Discussion Forum / Re: Extra security / restricti...
Last post by Tecno - Today at 05:26:05 AMQuote from: gobombersgo on November 16, 2025, 03:10:07 PMI thought u can bring in up to 1L of water in a sealed container.
The GC guidelines I saw said no liquids of any sort. That may differ from normal PAS games. I thought the sealed water allowance was only for that one super hot 30C+ game...
They always make me empty my daughter's sippy cup every time I enter... Ya, because I'm using my young'n to sneak in clear water-smelling booze? We just refill it at the big water station in 200-level.
P.S. Really liked the GC Designated Driver program WFC did. Always easy for me!! It should be a year-round thing (the free pop I mean!).
#28
Blue Bomber & CFL Discussion Forum / Re: Your favourite Blue Bomber...
Last post by Tecno - Today at 05:21:33 AMWhat...? None of the "throwaway" RBs before AH arrived (after the greats left, of course)? 
Didn't we have a guy named Cotton for a season? Looked promising then poof, just disappeared. A lot of that going on in the Mafia years before AH.
Didn't we have a guy named Cotton for a season? Looked promising then poof, just disappeared. A lot of that going on in the Mafia years before AH.
#29
Blue Bomber & CFL Discussion Forum / Re: CFL Game Zone changes?
Last post by Tecno - Today at 05:18:16 AMOuch! You win again. MTL seriously underwhelmed. Mack with 0? That's simply insane for a top-5 paid REC. Remind me (and WFC) to pass on him when he's next in FA. Get Gino instead if we want a top REC.
See you again in fantasy next year Fox/Scout.
See you again in fantasy next year Fox/Scout.
#30
Offside Forum / Angelo Savelli (1937-16 March ...
Last post by Foxhound - Today at 03:58:14 AMAngelo Savelli who was perhaps Canada's most fabled card collector passed away just over a year ago in March. He'd been suffering from dementia for a few years but it was cancer that eventually brought his days on this earth to an end. This really saddened me because if I had to pick one person who inspired me to restart collecting cards as an adult, it would be Angelo Savelli.
As a kid in London, Ontario I collected all kinds of cards from 1959 to 1965. They all went by the wayside though when I went off to a boarding school run by Franciscan Fathers in Kennebunkport, Maine for grade nine. But the memory of the cards I'd once had never left me. I'd often think back to my collecting days and wish I still had my CFL and other cards even when I was in my late teens but I thought that there was no way I could ever reassemble what I'd had as a kid. I thought they were all lost forever and could only live on in my dreams. Then came an article in the Canadian Magazine supplement to the Saturday London Free Press in 1969 or 1970. It featured Angelo Savelli of Hamilton, who was described as the world's biggest card collector with every card ever produced. (Much exaggerated of course. He may have told the reporter that he had every Topps sports card ever issued.) Angelo had evidently started buying sports cards in 1948 and never stopped. The article filled me with an incredible longing for the cards I'd once had, cards that I thought were now lost in the mists of time. Nostalgia/curiousity prompted me to buy a few packs of the 1971 CFL, 1971-72 NHL and 1972 CFL cards at the News Depot on Dundas Street in London over the next couple of years or so. (I actually felt a bit sheepish and embarrassed buying little kids' cards at the time!)
Flash forward a few years to 1979. I had finished university and had been working in Toronto for a couple of years. I'd discovered that the big city had four comic shops, two of which carried old gum cards as well. I was an extremely self-assured young man by then and didn't give a tinker's **** what anybody else thought of me so I set out to reacquire the treasures of my formative years.
Dedicated card shows didn't make an appearance in Toronto (and perhaps anywhere in Canada) until about 1986 and they were then really low budget affairs held in less than first class halls/meeting rooms. It was at one of these card shows that I then met Angelo Savelli where he had set up to sell cards. Here he is with his son at a Scarborough(eastern Toronto) card show circa 1986:
We quickly became friends and a couple of weeks later I visited him at his home in Hamilton where I bought a set of the first series of the 1969 Topps Football cards from him. (This was back when I thought I could have every card Topps had ever issued!)
Just a few years later in the late 1980's newspapers and other media sources started running stories about the prices fetched by the T206 Honus Wagner and 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle cards and card collecting absolutely exploded in popularity with the general public. Meanwhile Angie did himself own a T206 Honus Wagner card. He'd bought it in the mid to late 1970's from a Hamilton coin and card dealer on the east side of James Street North near Barton Street East not far from the old CNR train station. He had sold the family car to raise the money for the purchase and his wife almost left him at that point! He also told me that he'd compare his Honus Wagner to the one owned by Bruce McNall and Wayne Gretzky any time because the latter was trimmed. And it was!
By about 1992 or so Angie himself opened a "King of Cards" store on Barton Street in Hamilton which I'd visit on occasion. His store was actually on the way (maybe a two mile walk) to Ivor Wynn Stadium from the GO train stop in the magnificent old Hamilton Harbour CNR station. After any Hamilton Tiger-Cats game I could then walk briskly to the old Greyhound station on Cannon Street and catch the last Lakeshore GO bus which would let me off after 45 minutes or so right in front of my house in SW Mississauga.
The store wasn't just a small cubbyhole. It was deep and roomy with the sales counter at the back. Neither was it overflowing with boxes of cards all over the place. Yes, he had packs of new product on his sales counter but what he was mainly selling was his doubles which were all displayed nicely by sports category in glass cabinets on either side of the store plus one down the middle front to back. These vintage doubles of his went back to the 1920's. More were Hockey than Baseball but he had a fair amount of CFL plus even some Wrestling as well.
I bought this unbroken strip of Hockey coasters that were included in El Producto Cigar boxes during the 1967 Xmas season at his store:
(Not one of mine.)
So cool! I just wish El Producto had issued several more panels.
I also bought a few 1954 Blue Ribbon CFL cards, 1956 Shredded Wheat CFL cards, 1959 Wheaties CFL cards and 1963 CFL Coins from Angie but don't ask me which since I no longer remember. Here though are some sample pics from my present day collection:
_Humpty_Dumpty_coin_5_7YZjJHVWtTJFkjEBpVcQLG.png)
_Humpty_Dumpty_1_97zmWCE3BPuySCw6f9AqZa.png)
Overall though it's funny the things I still remember about visiting Angie's store thirty or so years ago. I know I visited his store on 19 November 1994. I had passed up attending the Vanier Cup game at Toronto's SkyDome that day even though my beloved University of Western Ontario Mustangs were playing the University of Saskatchewan Huskies for the title. You see Western had beaten Saskatchewan handily every time they'd faced each other previously in the playoffs and I was confident Western would cruise to another victory. Well Western blew a seventeen point lead in the fourth quarter and had to march down the field with less than a minute to play to score a game tying field goal. Final score:
Western 50 Saskatchewan 40 (OT)
So I missed a great game!
I took my card collecting partner from 1963-65, Tony, to visit Angie at his store once or twice. On one of those occasions (perhaps the day before the 1996 Grey Cup game in Hamilton) Angie was dealing with a twelve year old kid who had $10 to spend on either a Pavel Bure or a Sergei Federov card. I clearly remember Angie saying to the kid "I'd go for Sergei Federov. Pavel Bure is up-and-down but you're not going to go wrong with Federov."
Tony and I of course kept straight faces and said nothing at all. When we left the store, Tony turned to me with a grin on his face and said "Yup! Old Ang sure can't go wrong selling the kid a Sergei Federov card for ten bucks!"
Then another time when I dropped in on Angie not long before he closed up shop, he suggested we go to Sam's Hotel & Tavern just a very few steps to the east so we could continue chatting about cards and sports.
Sam's was/is your regular working class bar and though it was rather early in the evening there were already two working girls in the bar one of whom was wearing a bright red dress. They weren't knockouts but they were alright. When it came time to order, Angie said to me "You know what beer I like these days? It rhymes with whores. It's Coors Light!" From his comment I drew two conclusions. Angie didn't like good beer. I mean I would have guessed he'd have ordered Labatt's IPA (my father's choice) or 50 Ale, Molson Export Ale or Carling Red Cap Ale but he opted for an American near beer instead. Secondly he didn't approve of the whores. (Being more liberal minded in such matters myself, their presence bothered me not at all.) So neither booze nor women tempted Ang. All he needed were his cards!
He regularly sneered at the frenzied collecting of the junk wax sets and some of the prices the manufactured "scarcities" fetched. He told me one time in 1996 or so that he did like the Hockey Pogs though! This was probably because Pogs targetted kids and not adult collectors.
A few years later circa 1999-2000 Angie told me about an incident where the cops had phoned him to leave the house because they'd got a tip of a planned home invasion. The cops then apprehended two armed thugs who had pulled into Angie's driveway! This understandably shook Angie up. He said they were planning to kill him for his collection!
It was also about then that I learned that he was keeping his T206 Honus Wagner card in his safety deposit box at the bank. When I asked whether he ever thought of selling it since he couldn't exactly derive any delight from owning it when it was locked away at the bank, he replied "Every day, Vay, every day." Within six months to a year, he had done exactly that with a sale of all his sports cards but Hockey, CFL and wrestling to a big California dealer.
But it was at the big semi-annual Toronto Sport Card and Memorabilia Expo in 2005 or so where I saved one of his binders full of expensive hockey cards from the 1920's and 1930's from a thief. I noticed that a tall young fellow at the other end of Angie's table had scooped up what appeared to be one of Angie's binders and walked off briskly down the aisle. Angie himself was on the other side of the table and was in no position to give chase so I set off after the fellow myself. I caught him before he got to the door of the hall and said "Excuse me, but is that your binder?" Much to my surprise, the fellow just said no and shoved the binder into my hands. While I stood there gawking for a second or two, he swiftly made his exit through the door. Oh well. I'm not in the business of apprehending thieves anyway, but I'd managed the most important detail which was getting Angie's binder full of Hockey cards back for him. Angie though thought I should have somehow detained the guy as well!
Here's a picture of Angie in his declining years surrounded by his sports memorabilia:
Angie is much missed by many. May a good friend and great Canadian collector R.I.P.
As a kid in London, Ontario I collected all kinds of cards from 1959 to 1965. They all went by the wayside though when I went off to a boarding school run by Franciscan Fathers in Kennebunkport, Maine for grade nine. But the memory of the cards I'd once had never left me. I'd often think back to my collecting days and wish I still had my CFL and other cards even when I was in my late teens but I thought that there was no way I could ever reassemble what I'd had as a kid. I thought they were all lost forever and could only live on in my dreams. Then came an article in the Canadian Magazine supplement to the Saturday London Free Press in 1969 or 1970. It featured Angelo Savelli of Hamilton, who was described as the world's biggest card collector with every card ever produced. (Much exaggerated of course. He may have told the reporter that he had every Topps sports card ever issued.) Angelo had evidently started buying sports cards in 1948 and never stopped. The article filled me with an incredible longing for the cards I'd once had, cards that I thought were now lost in the mists of time. Nostalgia/curiousity prompted me to buy a few packs of the 1971 CFL, 1971-72 NHL and 1972 CFL cards at the News Depot on Dundas Street in London over the next couple of years or so. (I actually felt a bit sheepish and embarrassed buying little kids' cards at the time!)
Flash forward a few years to 1979. I had finished university and had been working in Toronto for a couple of years. I'd discovered that the big city had four comic shops, two of which carried old gum cards as well. I was an extremely self-assured young man by then and didn't give a tinker's **** what anybody else thought of me so I set out to reacquire the treasures of my formative years.
Dedicated card shows didn't make an appearance in Toronto (and perhaps anywhere in Canada) until about 1986 and they were then really low budget affairs held in less than first class halls/meeting rooms. It was at one of these card shows that I then met Angelo Savelli where he had set up to sell cards. Here he is with his son at a Scarborough(eastern Toronto) card show circa 1986:
We quickly became friends and a couple of weeks later I visited him at his home in Hamilton where I bought a set of the first series of the 1969 Topps Football cards from him. (This was back when I thought I could have every card Topps had ever issued!)
Just a few years later in the late 1980's newspapers and other media sources started running stories about the prices fetched by the T206 Honus Wagner and 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle cards and card collecting absolutely exploded in popularity with the general public. Meanwhile Angie did himself own a T206 Honus Wagner card. He'd bought it in the mid to late 1970's from a Hamilton coin and card dealer on the east side of James Street North near Barton Street East not far from the old CNR train station. He had sold the family car to raise the money for the purchase and his wife almost left him at that point! He also told me that he'd compare his Honus Wagner to the one owned by Bruce McNall and Wayne Gretzky any time because the latter was trimmed. And it was!
By about 1992 or so Angie himself opened a "King of Cards" store on Barton Street in Hamilton which I'd visit on occasion. His store was actually on the way (maybe a two mile walk) to Ivor Wynn Stadium from the GO train stop in the magnificent old Hamilton Harbour CNR station. After any Hamilton Tiger-Cats game I could then walk briskly to the old Greyhound station on Cannon Street and catch the last Lakeshore GO bus which would let me off after 45 minutes or so right in front of my house in SW Mississauga.
The store wasn't just a small cubbyhole. It was deep and roomy with the sales counter at the back. Neither was it overflowing with boxes of cards all over the place. Yes, he had packs of new product on his sales counter but what he was mainly selling was his doubles which were all displayed nicely by sports category in glass cabinets on either side of the store plus one down the middle front to back. These vintage doubles of his went back to the 1920's. More were Hockey than Baseball but he had a fair amount of CFL plus even some Wrestling as well.
I bought this unbroken strip of Hockey coasters that were included in El Producto Cigar boxes during the 1967 Xmas season at his store:
(Not one of mine.)So cool! I just wish El Producto had issued several more panels.
I also bought a few 1954 Blue Ribbon CFL cards, 1956 Shredded Wheat CFL cards, 1959 Wheaties CFL cards and 1963 CFL Coins from Angie but don't ask me which since I no longer remember. Here though are some sample pics from my present day collection:
Overall though it's funny the things I still remember about visiting Angie's store thirty or so years ago. I know I visited his store on 19 November 1994. I had passed up attending the Vanier Cup game at Toronto's SkyDome that day even though my beloved University of Western Ontario Mustangs were playing the University of Saskatchewan Huskies for the title. You see Western had beaten Saskatchewan handily every time they'd faced each other previously in the playoffs and I was confident Western would cruise to another victory. Well Western blew a seventeen point lead in the fourth quarter and had to march down the field with less than a minute to play to score a game tying field goal. Final score:
Western 50 Saskatchewan 40 (OT)
So I missed a great game!
I took my card collecting partner from 1963-65, Tony, to visit Angie at his store once or twice. On one of those occasions (perhaps the day before the 1996 Grey Cup game in Hamilton) Angie was dealing with a twelve year old kid who had $10 to spend on either a Pavel Bure or a Sergei Federov card. I clearly remember Angie saying to the kid "I'd go for Sergei Federov. Pavel Bure is up-and-down but you're not going to go wrong with Federov."
Tony and I of course kept straight faces and said nothing at all. When we left the store, Tony turned to me with a grin on his face and said "Yup! Old Ang sure can't go wrong selling the kid a Sergei Federov card for ten bucks!"
Then another time when I dropped in on Angie not long before he closed up shop, he suggested we go to Sam's Hotel & Tavern just a very few steps to the east so we could continue chatting about cards and sports.
Sam's was/is your regular working class bar and though it was rather early in the evening there were already two working girls in the bar one of whom was wearing a bright red dress. They weren't knockouts but they were alright. When it came time to order, Angie said to me "You know what beer I like these days? It rhymes with whores. It's Coors Light!" From his comment I drew two conclusions. Angie didn't like good beer. I mean I would have guessed he'd have ordered Labatt's IPA (my father's choice) or 50 Ale, Molson Export Ale or Carling Red Cap Ale but he opted for an American near beer instead. Secondly he didn't approve of the whores. (Being more liberal minded in such matters myself, their presence bothered me not at all.) So neither booze nor women tempted Ang. All he needed were his cards!
He regularly sneered at the frenzied collecting of the junk wax sets and some of the prices the manufactured "scarcities" fetched. He told me one time in 1996 or so that he did like the Hockey Pogs though! This was probably because Pogs targetted kids and not adult collectors.
A few years later circa 1999-2000 Angie told me about an incident where the cops had phoned him to leave the house because they'd got a tip of a planned home invasion. The cops then apprehended two armed thugs who had pulled into Angie's driveway! This understandably shook Angie up. He said they were planning to kill him for his collection!
It was also about then that I learned that he was keeping his T206 Honus Wagner card in his safety deposit box at the bank. When I asked whether he ever thought of selling it since he couldn't exactly derive any delight from owning it when it was locked away at the bank, he replied "Every day, Vay, every day." Within six months to a year, he had done exactly that with a sale of all his sports cards but Hockey, CFL and wrestling to a big California dealer.
But it was at the big semi-annual Toronto Sport Card and Memorabilia Expo in 2005 or so where I saved one of his binders full of expensive hockey cards from the 1920's and 1930's from a thief. I noticed that a tall young fellow at the other end of Angie's table had scooped up what appeared to be one of Angie's binders and walked off briskly down the aisle. Angie himself was on the other side of the table and was in no position to give chase so I set off after the fellow myself. I caught him before he got to the door of the hall and said "Excuse me, but is that your binder?" Much to my surprise, the fellow just said no and shoved the binder into my hands. While I stood there gawking for a second or two, he swiftly made his exit through the door. Oh well. I'm not in the business of apprehending thieves anyway, but I'd managed the most important detail which was getting Angie's binder full of Hockey cards back for him. Angie though thought I should have somehow detained the guy as well!
Here's a picture of Angie in his declining years surrounded by his sports memorabilia:
Angie is much missed by many. May a good friend and great Canadian collector R.I.P.