Gordie Howe's final days as an NHL player saw the 52-year-old legend in a Hartford Whalers uniform and his last goal came 40 years ago this week. This monumental moment was not properly covered in the next season's hockey card sets, but there are still options out there for collectors to relive the end day of an incredible career.Gordie was already by far the NHL's all-time … [Read more...]
Glasnost on Ice: Collecting Rookie Cards of the NHL’s First Soviet Players
Heading into the 1989-90 season, hockey fans were intrigued by the arrival of talents from the Soviet Union, but hockey card collectors would have to wait a year - and for the hobby to boom - before adding most of them to their collections. All told, ten players from behind the Iron Curtain skated for an NHL club in 1989-90 and while some of them were bound for the Hockey … [Read more...]
Vintage Pack Facts: 1980-81 O-Pee-Chee Hockey
Coming off a wild season where Gordie Howe retired, Wayne Gretzky rose to prominence, and the New York Islanders won their first of what proved to be four straight Stanley Cup championships, Canadian kids were ready to bust open packs of 1980-81 O-Pee-Chee. No one could possibly expect then that this set would prove to be arguably the decade's best in terms of rookie and … [Read more...]
Elusive Ink: Missing Certified Autograph Cards for 10 NHL Greats
Certified autograph cards have been a part of the pack-ripping experience for collectors for 30 years and thousands of athletes have been asked by trading card manufacturers to sign for them. For hockey cards, these thrills started when Pro Set, Score, and Upper Deck had limited Patrick Roy, Bobby Orr, and Brett Hull autographs as part of their core 1991-92 releases. It was … [Read more...]
1959-60 Parkhurst: Two Solitudes on Cardboard
Back in 1945, respected Canadian author Hugh MacLennan wrote a novel entitled Two Solitudes and it addressed the tensions between French and English Canadians through a mythological lens. A decade-and-a-half later, those tensions were readily apparent on the ice as the Stanley Cup champion Montreal Canadiens and Toronto Maple Leafs battled for NHL supremacy - a rivalry which … [Read more...]
10 Underrated Hockey Rookie Cards of the 1960s
The game of hockey was aiming to grow in the 1960s and as the NHL was ready to move from the Original Six era to a 12-team league. Before expansion, it was tough to crack a roster and it was tough for a special talent to make it up - even for a few games. Sometimes, these players might have found themselves a hockey card, too. However, even the stars can become forgotten … [Read more...]
The Big Three: Collecting the Heart of the 1970s Montreal Canadiens
Throughout the 1970s, the Montreal Canadiens were the most dominant club in hockey. While the Boston Bruins and Philadelphia Flyers tried to wrestle that title away from them throughout the decade, the team's defense corps that featured the Hall of Fame trio of Larry Robinson, Serge Savard, and Guy Lapointe ensure that Lord Stanley's Mug was staying with the Bleu, Blanc et … [Read more...]
Mystery Solved: The Story Behind Cam Neely’s Rookie Card Photo
Before the age of online statistics databases for sports, there was a great deal of mystery surrounding the origins of the photos that appear on some of the hobby's greatest cards. Researchers are starting to scrutinize vintage cards more and more these days and the discovery of the exact date of a shot reveals an exciting story. In the case of Cam Neely's rookie card from the … [Read more...]
Taking A Bow: 10 Key Final Cards of Hockey Legends
In the modern world of hockey card collecting, the appeal of retired players within new releases practically ensures that many of the game's greatest legends will be discovered by new generations of hobbyists. However, there was a time where retirement often meant that a last card was exactly that, and there are plenty from Parkhurst, Topps, and O-Pee-Chee that deserve a second … [Read more...]
Best, Hottest Lamar Jackson Rookie Cards
He'd won a Heisman Trophy and earned plenty of air time for his electrifying play at Louisville but when the 2018 NFL Draft arrived, he wasn't the first quarterback taken off the board. Or the second. Or the third. Or the fourth. He may have slipped further had the Baltimore Ravens not made a deal with the Philadelphia Eagles to jump into pick number 32 and … [Read more...]