Another Hockey Grab Bag

The NHL playoffs draw closer by the day.  It's a great time of year to be a hockey fan, and it also seems like the perfect time of year to enjoy another $1 hockey card grab bag picked up at a local hobby shop.  I've posted a couple of these before, there's a lot of content for the low price of a dollar.  Let's see what a crisp George Washington brought home to my hockey card collection this time...

Obviously at a dollar price point for anywhere between 60 and 80 cards you're going to get quite a bit of stuff from the junk wax era.  Doesn't bother me so much at less than 2 cents per card.  Besides, most of my childhood collection didn't survive the years so even though I may have owned cards like this Parkhurst Ron Hextall at some point in the past, it's "new to me" now.

No idea what's going on with this one.  I'm not a big fan of non-licensed/logo-less cards, and this specimen is a perfect example of why.

Tampa Bay's 1st round pick in last year's draft.  Played for USA during the World Juniors, and has been putting up decent numbers in the OHL.

Not a pose you see very frequently.  There seem to be at least a couple 2012-13 Upper Deck cards in every one of these that I've opened so far...

I love the '90-91 Pro Set release.  I don't care if there were approximately 14,000,000,000 of each card printed.  Combine that with the fact that I'm a Tony Esposito fan who loves old-school goalie masks and you've got a winner.  Is he really using tape to hold his blocker together in this photo?

Another great photograph, from the days before plexiglass.

Property of the Anaheim Ducks, selected 10th overall in the 2014 draft.

This Score Dmitry Kulikov was actually a glossy parallel, not that you (or I) care.

Francis Bouillon, not so glossy.

Mathew Dumba was selected 7th overall in the 2012 draft by the Minnesota Wild.  He saw action in 13 games with the team last year, and another 46 so far this season.

I believe this guy is with the Florida Panthers organization, and hasn't yet cracked the NHL roster.

I'm sort of slowly collecting the 2012-13 O-Pee-Chee set, so I was glad to receive a couple of new ones in this bag.

The less glamorous side of '90-91 Pro Set.  Still a nice retro Jets sweater though.

I don't have a lot to offer as far as commentary on a lot of these cards, but I feel like getting recent releases from the past few seasons for this cheap isn't too bad.

There was one Black Diamond card in this bag that I like much better than this one, but I'm saving it for the very end of the post.  Go ahead and scroll down now if you're already bored.  Otherwise here's some more for ya...

Property of the Coyotes.

There were actually a few Ultra Gold Medallion parallels in this particular bag, which I think is a first.  Any Islanders collectors (do they exist) who'd want this Chris Campoli rookie?  Anyone?  Bueller?

A couple of goalies from the '93-94 Leaf set.  Wish I would have remembered to scan in the backs since I like them even better than the fronts on these.

I definitely miss coach cards.  And the Quebec Nordiques.

Boy does this one scream mid-'90s.

A new Cam Neely card for a couple of pennies?  Sure!

Had never seen this Pacific Aurora set before.  A little "busy" for my liking...

I wonder if whoever made these grab bags was showing a sick sense of humor by placing Todd Bertuzzi's card right after Naslund's.  It immediately reminded me of this.

This Gold Medallion Chris Pronger was easily one of the better cards in this grab bag.  Originally a Hartford Whaler, Chris enjoyed a very long and successful NHL career.  Plus the Gold Medallion parallels match up quite nicely with the Anaheim Ducks uniforms.

Property of the Islanders, signed to a 3-year entry level contract at the beginning of this season.

I love these Crown Royale die-cuts, really sharp-looking cards.  Normally this would have won my vote for best card of the bunch, but in this case as I alluded to earlier I received a really great Black Diamond card that I had no idea existed.  Check it out:

Just awesome!  This Howie Morenz is a triple diamond, which I guess makes it harder to come by than a single or double, but not as rare as the elusive quad diamond.  I normally despise Black Diamond, but this one is a really great card.  It's not every day that I can add a new Morenz card to my collection.  In fact, this is just my second card of his, and my first modern-day Morenz release.

That's all for now.  If there's a way to have more fun than this in this hobby for a single dollar I'd love to know what it is.  Every time I open one of these it reminds me that I should go back and grab about 20 more while they're still around...