Grab Bag - Vintage Baseball and a Hockey Auto

Here are five more random cards from the bag in my closet...

This 1959 Topps Ray Narleski came from the dollar box at the hobby shop, and is in well-loved condition.  I don't know much about Ray, but it looks like injuries forced him into an early retirement.  He never pitched in the bigs again after the '59 season.

This card's a little off-center and has plenty of wrinkles, but when you see a card you don't have that's over 50 years old for a buck you have to buy it.  It's one of the rules of collecting.

Here's a Rich Peverley rookie from 2007-08's SP Game-Used set, numbered to 999.  I actually ended up with this card long before Rich was dealt to the Bruins.  It came in a small lot of these that I purchased because I wanted the David Krejci.  I'm not particularly attached to it, so if anyone would like it this card is definitely up for trade.

Here's a Daisuke Matsuzaka rookie from the 2007 Upper Deck Goudey set.  This one's appropriate as Matsuzaka will be making his very first MLB start since last year's Tommy John surgery in about half an hour.  This guy can either be really effective, or absolutely maddening to watch.  As a Sox fan, I hope we get the former this afternoon.

These were actually the first cards I bought in pack format when I returned to collecting in 2007.  I think it's a great set.  I need to get around to organizing all of mine and getting my want list updated.  I'm fairly sure I have the entire 200-card short set and maybe half of the SPs.

My favorite card from this bunch is this 2008-09 Upper Deck Legends Masterpieces Richard Brodeur.  If I see these cheap I will always grab them.  I think this card only set me back around $5 shipped.  I love the framed look and the fact that they're all on-card.  That is one busy Canucks sweater right there.

Unfortunately, the backs of these are as atrocious as the fronts are beautiful.

Finally, we have a 1970 Topps Billy Williams.  This one came from the hobby shop as well.  I think I paid about $3 for this one, just couldn't leave it there at that price in this condition.

That's all I've got time for today, hopefully a more substantive post will be up soon...

Grab Bag - The Great One, The Hit King and a 50-Goal Scorer Auto

Here's another few cards pulled from the "grab bag"...

That's right, a basketball card here on Shoebox Legends.  True, most of what I buy is either hockey or baseball.  At the same time, I think spontaneity, variety and flexibility are some of the best aspects of collecting, so I'm not afraid to branch out from time to time when I see something that intrigues me.  This 1970-71 Topps Barry Clemens card is one such example.  I'm a sucker for tall boy cards of any kind, and I really liked the retro look of this card when I saw it.

I picked this one up at least two years ago at a local hobby shop, and it sat with some other cards on a ledge in my basement from that day on, until I threw it into the grab bag recently.  Never heard of Barry but it looks like he enjoyed a decent 11-year career, during which he played for 5 NBA franchises and recorded 5,000+ career points and 2,500+ career rebounds.

As you can see, this card isn't exactly in mint condition, with a dinged corner and a surface crease on the back, but those are the only real flaws.  Besides, I think I paid $1, and it's got a cartoon!

Next up is the Gretzky base card from the 1994-95 Upper Deck SP set.  Classic case of bad organization here.  I've been accumulating the 1994-95 SP set for a couple of years now and am pretty close to finishing it off.  I picked up this Gretzky at the local hobby shop at least 6 months ago, but totally forgot about it until now.  This was a pleasant surprise, as Wayne was the last big name I really needed for my set.  11 cards to go and I can mark this one complete...

A different photo on the back, how refreshing.

This '88-89 O-Pee-Chee Adam Oates is in great condition, but I've already got one for my set, so this one's destined for the doubles box and is up for trade if anyone's interested.

Here's my favorite card from this bunch, a 2011-12 Certified Throwback Threads Auto of Guy Chouinard.  I don't collect this set, I don't collect this team, and I don't collect this player.  The thing is, I won this for .99 cents plus a couple bucks for shipping.  I just couldn't pass it up at that price.  Besides being a nice looking card, and besides being an on-card auto, there was another reason I wanted this one...

Here's card #1 from the 1979-80 Topps hockey set, depicting the '78-79 season's top goal scorers.  Three Hall-of-Famers.  Three household names that the average hockey fan should recognize.  Three players who all tallied 50 or more goals in '78-79.  But there was a fourth 50-goal scorer that year...

Guy Chouinard of the Atlanta Flames.

Of course Panini recycles the photo from the front on the back, but I still like the card.  As you can see it's serial numbered to 100.

Finally, we have a 1978 Topps Pete Rose Record Breaker card.  Pete here came from the same hobby shop as the Gretzky card above, from the dollar bin.  I was unsure when I bought it, but it turns out I've already got this card.

Off to the trading block for Charlie Hustle.  More cards from the grab bag coming soon...

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...