Piggy banks are passe, but puck banks are awesome. This is a large plastic puck, hollow inside, with a coin slot on the top and two “feet” on the bottom so it can stand upright. It measures 5 inches in diameter and was made in the 1970s.
I found this at my local card shop last month. At a mere $3, it was begging to come home with me. My site is called Puck Junk, after all, and though I don’t really collect pucks, I do like odd hockey items. So I had to find out more about this one.
As you can see, the team name “BLACK HAWKS” is spelled with two words. The team was rather inconsistent on the spelling — sometimes using one word, sometimes using two — until 1986. But the logo is not quite right. It looks similar to a Blackhawks logo, but does not match any specific one. For whatever reason, a lot of hockey merchandise prior to the 1990s seemed to use an approximation of a team’s logo. Just think of how bad some of those logos looked on hockey cards from the 1970s and 1980s.
The bank splits open into two halves via a notch at the bottom that you can use to pry it apart. It has no copyright date, but was produced in the 1970s.
The bottom of the front half reads:
PRY TO OPEN
PHOTO-MARKETING, INC. ST. LOUIS, MO.
The inside of the back half has the following inscription:
SPORTS PROD. CORP.
A SUB. OF LAICH INDUSTRIES
CLEVELAND, OHIO
Sports Production Corporation was a division of Laich Industries that manufactured sports collectibles. They were probably best known for making mini plastic baseball and football helmets that we got our ice cream in back in the 1970s and 1980s at places like Dairy Queen. The company also made hockey puck banks. A lot of the banks that I’ve seen are either from the early 1970s or the early 1990s. The 1990s banks also have a “SPORTS FX” logo and use proper team logos instead of approximations. According to the MLB Souvenir Helmets website, Laich industries went out of business in 2005. ■
Nice one Sal!
Very happy to see this one.. I have the Montreal Canadiens one since I can remember… I was born in 1978. Still have it somewhere, this is a good souvenir!