Grab Bag - Hockey Refractors and Clark Relics

A week or two ago I found myself in a situation that may be familiar to some of you.  We were having some friends over for a party and I had quite a few stacks of cards laying around the house that needed to disappear.  I try to keep my collection contained within my office/card room but somehow these little pieces of cardboard end up migrating around from time to time.  Anyway, I was pressed for time and quite a few miscellaneous stacks ended up getting put in a small paper shopping bag in my office during the cleanup effort.

Some of these cards were recent purchases, some older stacks of cards that I haven't looked through in forever.  There are cards from the local hobby shop, trades, group breaks, retail purchases, eBay purchases...you name it.  Honestly I don't even know what made it into the bag for the most part.  Now that things have quieted down a bit, and I've got a vacation from work looming on the horizon, I am going to start getting through these cards, cataloging and organizing them.  There are probably 150-200 cards in the bag, far too many for one post, but I came up with an easy way to show some of them here.

As a kid, one of my favorite parts of a trip to the hobby shop was the grab bag.  You know, the brown cardboard bag taped shut and sold for just $1 or $2, filled with a few dozen cards that "could be anything!", but usually ended up being a bunch of '80s commons or some junk wax packs.  I don't recall ever pulling anything fantastic from one, but I guess I was a sucker for the intrigue of not knowing what awaited me inside.  Since I enjoyed these surprise packages so much, I figured the grab bag approach would be a good way to post some of these cards from my cleanup.  For each post I'll just grab a small handful of cards from the bag and throw them up here on the blog.  Here are 5 random choices to start things off...

First up is a 1994-95 Topps Finest refractor of Wade Redden.  A few years ago I picked up a single wax box of '94-95 Finest hockey.  I certainly could have done a little better with my refractor.  Wade did enjoy a decent career, but there are just so many better names on the checklist for this set.  I don't recall whether or not this was the only refractor I pulled in my box.

Like the early Topps Finest baseball refractors, there is no marking on the back of these to actually confirm that this is a refractor parallel, but it's very easy to tell in the right light.

Here's another Finest refractor, Chris Terreri from the '95-96 set.  I picked up a '95-96 Finest wax box right around the same time as my '94-95 box.  I ended up liking the '95-96 set a bit more, although they did this annoying thing with the checklist where they broke it down into bronze, silver and gold cards, with gold falling at just one per box.  End result is a set that's very tough to complete.  Chris here is a bronze refractor...

The refractors were also clearly labeled on the card backs in the '95-96 set, right above the card number.  You can get a sense of what I'm referring to with the complicated checklist on the back here too.  Is there a need for a "theme" number to go along with card number?  I don't think so.  Here's another refractor from that same box...

This is my personal favorite refractor out of what I landed in the two boxes.  Really nice looking card and Potvin was one of those players I was happy to pull back in the day.

For some reason, even though Potvin's card is identical to Terreri's, both are bronze refractors with the "Defenders" theme, his "theme" is listed as D32, whereas Terreri's was D25.  What does this mean?  I have no idea.  I guess I didn't read the wrapper closely enough.

Now for a couple of baseball cards.  The two that I grabbed both happened to be relic cards of Will Clark.

This one's from the 2005 Upper Deck Sweet Spot Classic set.  I am pretty sure this was an eBay win from literally years ago.  Not a bad card but not particularly exciting.  I probably only bid because it was dirt cheap.

The back of the card clearly states that this is a piece of jersey worn by Will in an actual MLB game.  I hate to nit-pick, but it specifies that it was worn during his time with the Giants, yet Will is depicted with the Rangers on the card.  Oh well.

Finally, we have another relic card of Clark, this time featured with the Giants, from the 2005 SP Authentic set.  I think this one looks nicer, and it's serial numbered to 199.

This card, unlike the one above, actually gets it right in that Clark's depicted with San Francisco and the jersey swatch was used in a Giants game as well.

So there you go, 5 random cards from the bag in my closet.  Do any of you gravitate towards the grab bag?  I guess maybe retail repack packs are pretty much the same thing nowadays...