Card of the Week

1993 World Cup Soccer #HC4
& 1994 World Cup Soccer #C8
Honorary Captain Wayne Gretzky 

During the 1990s, several spokesmen for trading card companies would sometimes promote cards of sports they did not play. You had Eric Lindros on a Score baseball card, Rocket Ishmail on a Classic hockey card and Wayne Gretzky on an Upper Deck soccer card.

Because nothing — and I mean NOTHING — says soccer like Wayne Gretzky. Continue reading “Card of the Week: Soccer, Eh?”

1988-89 O-Pee-Chee card #221 – Mike Krushelnyski

When Wayne Gretzky was traded from the Edmonton Oilers to the Los Angeles Kings, other players were also involved in that deal. We tend to forget that sometimes, as “The Trade” was really, more or less, a Gretzky-for-$15 million dollars swap. But several more guys changed teams too. One such player was Mike Krushelnyski, who went with Gretzky – along with Marty McSorley – from the Edmonton Oilers to the Los Angeles Kings. Martin Gelinas and Jimmy Carson – along with some draft picks and mad amounts of cash – in turn went to the Oilers. The trade rocked the sports world, and to a lesser extent a few hockey cards. Continue reading “Color Me Krushelnyski”

1988-89 Topps #120 – Wayne Gretzky

Wayne Gretzky lucked out on two counts after his trade to the Los Angeles Kings. First off, while Gretzky was sent to the team with arguably the worst uniforms at the time, he never had to wear them. Up until then, the Kings wore those god-awful purple and yellow uniforms. After “The Trade,” the team changed their uniforms to that stylish silver and black getup we all loved in the 1990s. No giant “Imperial Margarine crown” for Wayne.

The other lucky break for The Great One was that he was exempted from the time-honored tradition of the “airbrushed” hockey card. Continue reading “The King’s New Clothes”

1980 Kellogg’s Olympic Stick’r Trading Cards

Kellogg’s–the makers of cereals such as Corn Flakes–issued a set of smaller-sized, Olympic-themed trading cards. The cards could be peeled away from their cardboard backing and “stuck” to a flat surface-hence calling it a “stick’r trading card”. Released in 1980, these were most likely packed in boxes of cereal. One such card deals with our favorite sport: ice hockey! Here we see some sweet but random hockey action on the front. I’m not sure what teams these are, as the logos have been airbrushed off of the jerseys, but I guess we could assume that the players in white are from Team USA. Adoring the lower left corner of this card is a large and distracting Winter Olympics logo. Continue reading “Miracle on Cardboard”

1975-76 Topps card #244 – Ted Irvine

What’s wrong with this picture?

Obviously, this card has been painted over, to change the player’s uniform to that of the St. Louis Blues, mid-1970s. Whenever Topps (or O-Pee-Chee) spent time retouching a player photo, the final result ended up looking like a painting with a superimposed floating head.

The problem here is the floating head belongs to Ted Harris and not Ted Irvine. Continue reading “A Tale of Two Teds”

1991-92 Upper Deck card #76 – Jamie Matthews

Back during the “boom years” of hockey cards – that warm, fuzzy era from 1990 to about 1997 or so – many players appeared in NHL sets, but did not play in an NHL game. Sometimes, all you had to do was get drafted.

Former NHL prospect Jamie Matthews is one such player. Continue reading “Two, One, Zero”

1979 Panini Hockey Stickers #140 – Vladislav Tretiak

Any Canadian over 40 years of age no doubt remembers the 1972 Summit Series, which pitted Canada’s best players against the best players from the Soviet Union. It was a grueling, eight game series – the Canadian Team barely coming out ahead, winning one more game than their opponents. One big reason that the series was so close was because of the amazing play of the Soviet goaltender, Vladislav Tretiak. Continue reading “Super Soviet Sticker”

1990 Score Rookie & Traded Baseball card #100T – Eric Lindros

Spring is in the air. While we hockey fans in the U.S. of A start thinking about “Stanley Cup Playoffs” when the snow starts melting, the rest of the country thinks of another sport: baseball. Continue reading “Line-Drive Lindros”