Alright, caught up again.
While I've got a couple minutes I wanted to share some info I realize now won't necessarily get widely disseminated:
The intent/point/backstory of the various sub-set themes. I include blurbs in the pack PMs with everyone's rare/uncommon avatars, but if you don't get one of those avatars you don't get to see that. Most of them are pretty obvious in terms of the theme, but not all of them are clear about some of the underlying criteria. Plus I have trivia and tidbits along the way. So I might as well share what they all represent for anyone who might be curious.
Young Guns (Uncommon) - Basically they're the equivalent to real hockey cards' Rookie Cards. I stuck to players who were under the GP threshold to lose calder eligibility (so no Gregor, except that I made myself a unique Gregor YG avatar because, y'know, perks) but I wasn't too concerned about age (so there are some guys in here who might be over the age threshold for true Calder eligibility but it doesn't matter. They get a Young Guns avatar.
Also these are the only avatars where I made a point of using officially listed accented spellings (Dahlén, Öberg, Émond, etc). not really relevant, just a fun quirk.
Shark Icons & Goalie Icons (both Uncommon) - Technically listed as two sets but they are functionally identical, just split between skaters and goaltenders. These are your long-term former members of the Sharks, consisting mostly of classic players who are a) no longer with the club, b) retired/out of the NHL , and c) played at least 500 games as a skater or 100 games as a goalie in a Sharks uniform. There are a couple of exceptions to b) and c) in there (Dan Boyle didn't make it to 500 games in teal, for example), but this was intended as the primary vehicle for big names you remember from the past.
The design itself is a take on a classic early 90s hockey card from, I believe, Topps. It was one of the first sets to feature San Jose Sharks players in it. The images are also mildly distressed and faded to make them look aged (it's hard to tell in a tiny avatar
)
Heroes of the Tank (Uncommon) - Shark Icons without the GP requirement. More classic players who may have had shorter or less impactful careers in teal, but who are fondly remembered for what they did in a shorter period of time. You can see what sorts of players we're looking at in the names revealed so far: Vincent Damphousse, Ray Whitney, and Mike Grier. It's short-term skill, hard-working lunchpail guys, high-energy sparkplugs, the kinds of players that endear themselves to the fanbase.
Shark "Icons" (Uncommon) - Guys who are icons for totally different reasons. Like being the mane of manes, or the greatest bench-door-opener in franchise history, or that guy I can't even mention by name without it resulting in a torrent of boos. This is the gag/fun set of guys who have passed through San Jose before.
It's still the Topps card, just gaudy orange and discolored a bit like bad 70s/80s photography.
World Jr. Passport (Uncommon) - current and former Sharks who suited up at a WJC while in the San Jose system. That's pretty much it. It's also pretty obviously meant to resemble elements of an actual passport including stamps for the years participated. Each one sports an image of that player suited up at one of those WJC tournaments.
This was actually supposed to be a rare set initially but I had to do some flip-flopping to make sure I had enough avatars at each rarity to be able to make as many packs as I possibly could.
Olympic Snapshots (Rare) - See above, except it's for the Olympics instead of the World Jrs. Years listed are just the years that the player was at the Olympics
while a Shark, so it doesn't include years where they represented their country but were part of another NHL organization (if that happened). It's obviously a film reel with images of the player from those olympic games on them (even though you can barely see 2 of the images on each avatar)
like the WJC passports, this got flip-flopped in rarity too. It started out as uncommon (and I think looked better with silver text) but got bumped up to rare because I needed more rares
Top of the Class (Uncommon) - 1st round draft picks. But not guys that were total busts. Made up of different historic elements of actual draft stage/boards (the background is like the current LED boards, the nameplate like the manual ones used in the 90s and early 00s) and featuring wherever possible a draft-day image of the player on stage with his Sharks jersey/cap. Only about 3 or 4 guys are included without such a picture, largely from the early 90s and oddly Marcel Goc from 2001.
Draft Gems (Uncommon) - Guys drafted in later rounds. I think the earliest represented is the 4th round, but it leaned heavily to successful NHLers from rounds 5+. I tried to go for pics of each player at their youngest where I could. The design is mostly an abstract one with gem-like qualities including a geometric, facet-styled background and a cut diamond bit of line art hidden in there too.
Premiere Pugilists (Rare) - fighters and tough guys. I believe I tended towards guys who have the most listed fights as a Shark on their dance cards. The design is fight-inspired with ring posts/ropes, boxing poster banner style names, and a ring bell.
Signature Sharks (Rare) - the largest rare set, it's essentially an avatar version of autograph cards in hockey card sets. It's a wide array of subjects too including past, present, and future Sharks. This is just an abstract design that I played around with because it looked cool.
Classic Avatars (Rare) - Avatars I made in the past, faithfully recreated (except for some gold elements) in the current HF size. Mostly just stuff I liked from the past.
Retro Styles (Rare) - avatars I made in the past, but featuring players from the present. It's fewer sets, repeated with different subjects a couple times apiece (so we've seen the 2011 prospect set in both Ryan Merkely and John Leonard so far).
HF Materials (Legendary) - the equivalent of real hockey card "jersey cards" where they have a little cut up piece of a game worn jersey in the card, these have little cut up pieces of popular and famous classic HFSJ photoshop works and are also signed by the author.
There are also 3 sets that have yet to be revealed because nobody's gotten an avatar from them yet.