what does refactored mean on a baseball card ?

Answer 1

"Refactored" is a term used by the Topps company to describe paralleled versions of cards they produced. The cards feature a special printing that when help at an angle in good light, create a "rainbow" effect upon the card. It started in 1993 with the Topps Finest set, still one of the best baseball card sets ever produced. These cards were rare enough, but then Topps decided to make limited paralleled versions of the cards. In Beckett, the cards are worth good money. Because of th success, Topps to this day makes these parallels in addition to versions of Stadium Club, Chrome, and other sets.

Answer 2

You probably mean "refractor". Circa 1993 Topps pioneered a new cardmaking technique (licensed from another company) -- metal foil cards covered with a thick, transparent laminate. Refractor versions of these cards have a special layer within the laminate that refracts incident light, giving a "rainbowy" effect to the card image. Seeing a refractor card in person is much more telling than looking at pictures (which cannot do justice to the effect, as it manipulates light phase as well as amplitude, and photographs have difficulty capturing phase) or reading about it.

Answer 3

the card was republished, so it's not an original thing