Packing and Re-Packing

The holidays are finally over.  Christmas and New Years have come and gone and that means it's time to take down all the decorations.  Festive lights, colorful garland and penguin-shaped cookie jars now give way to bare walls and the bleakness of the rest of winter...

I'm such a joyful person, aren't I?

Regardless of my mood, that meant it was time to go to Target and buy some new plastic totes for storage, seeing as how some basement flooding ruined most of our cardboard boxes we had used previously.  Damn crazy, leaky washing machine.

As you can see, our mission was accomplished.  But, since I'm a child, I couldn't help but leave Target with some cards as well.  I needed a pick me up for taking down my beloved Christmas trees, after all.

Since Topps Baseball Series One isn't due out for about a month yet and none of the other baseball product was really needed, I opted for a nice, old fashioned Fairfield repack of hockey cards. Repacks are far more likely to yield needs for my budding Blackhawks collection than baseball anyway.

It's a jumbo box!  I have yet to actually see a regular-sized one though.  #MarketingGimmicks

So, what'd I get?

My first Keith Carney for the Blackhawks All-Time Roster Collection.  Unfortunately, it depicts him with the wrong team, but this'll do for now.  Carney played in Chicago from 1994-98; so, there's bound to be a few black and red cards of him floating around.

My first card of Andrew Ladd on the Blackhawks.  So, that's pretty cool.

This Doug Wilson card would have had the honor of entering into the All-Time Roster Collection if I had gotten it last week.  Unfortunately for this 1993 UD single of the Hawks' legend, Shane from Shoebox Legend took care of that for me already.  Still, always cool (and a bit foreign) to see people playing hockey without helmets.

Of course this was a re-pack, so it was jam-packed with prime junk wax, including some 1990 Bowman.  At least these pulls are of some of the bigger names of the era in Chicago.

Some former and future Blackhawks skating for different franchises.  One of these two men is much more significant than the other; can you figure out which one?

A cool card of Hall of Famer Dominik Hasek, who started out his long career backing up Ed Belfour in the Windy City.  Unfortunately, it dates from his time with the hated Red Wings.  Additionally, how did the, at that point, 16-year veteran end up in a set called "Hot Prospects" in 2006?

Fleer Ultra, no matter the year or sport, is always a pleasant set to look at; so I'll never complain about being able to fit more of that into my collection.  Emerson got into 27 games for Chi-Town in the 1998-99 campaign.

That about does it for the keeper cards - what else was there that was interesting?

These Western Hockey League cards threw me for a loop when I pulled them out in succession.  Of course, at first glance, they look like Blackhawks cards, or at least that of a minor-league affiliate.  Of course, we all know that looks can be deceiving.

The Portland Winterhawks are a junior ice-hockey team and have nothing to do with Chicago.  The reason that they're uniforms are so similar is that the jerseys worn by the first Winterhawks team were a used set of Chicago jerseys obtained through connections between the owners of the two teams.  Bargain basement shopping lead to tradition, I guess.

Ron Hextall looks like he's about to have his lunch money taken away from him.  Of course, I doubt his own teammate is about to fight him; but, the photo selection certainly gave me a chuckle.

Also, can we all take a second to sit back and appreciate Pacific brand cards.  How I wish that they still existed.

Meanwhile, Jaromir Jagr's mullet got a few cards in:

He really looked like he belongd in Motley Crue or some other hair metal band in his younger days.  Coincidentally, Motley Crue actually just played their last show ever a couple of nights ago.  Meanwhile, the now mullet-less 26 year veteran is still kicking around the NHL for the Panthers today.

Eat your heart out Vince Neil & Co.!

That does it for the 100 loose cards - however, I almost forgot about the additional pack, which is:

2011-12 Upper Deck Victory.  Not a bad inclusion for me, seeing as it will contain mostly names I recognize (I didn't really start paying attention to hockey until 2008 or so) and I have always appreciated Victory's baseball products.

Let's dig in:

Hmmm, the first three cards are pretty useless to me - that is, unless any of these guys eventually find their way to Chicago.  That said, getting any of these big names would be quite the coup.

It didn't look too good for this pack until...

The last three cards in a row proved to be quite the opposite.  I was able to land my first card of Michael Frolik, a member of the 2012-13 Stanley Cup winners and a new vertically-aligned Marcus Kruger to replace my sub-par horizontally-oriented inclusion.  I have this thing about horizontal cards - I don't particularly like them, which might be heresy to some of you fine bloggers.  Sorry, I just like my cards to be easily legible in a nine-pocket page and standard binder.

The pack closed out with Antoine Vermette, a hired gun for last season's NHL champions.  Not a bad way to punctuate this single pack and the re-pack.

All in all, not a bad bit of amusement for five bucks, it certainly brightened my mood after all that Christmas destruction and tear down that I had to do.  Not to mention, it provided some blogging fodder, which was admittedly needed.

That's about all you can ask from a re-pack, right?