Hockey cards, collectibles and culture
Just wanted to give a quick “thank you” to Mike W. of Quakertown, PA for sending me TWELVE assorted Jeremy Roenick rookie cards.
In 2013, I set a collecting goal to accumulate 1,000 rookie cards of Jeremy Roenick. Sometime that year — I’m not exactly sure when — I hit that mark, so I decided to up the ante to 2,000.
Mike’s generous donation to my cause brings me 12 steps closer to my ridiculous lofty collecting goal.
Normally, I am not a fan of jersey cards, but once in a while one comes along that blows me away.
Now that Panini’s hockey license has expired, expect their 2013-14 retail products to be heavily discounted. Continue reading “2013-14 Panini Hockey Products on Markdown at Big Box Retailers”
Chris Chelios is my all-time favorite hockey player. I try to collect all of his cards. But I may have gone too far with this one. Continue reading “And Why Did I Buy This Hockey Card?”
In The Cards is a short, hockey card-related article that I write for The Hockey News each issue. Starting this month, THN will publish In The Cards on their Post-to-Post blog as well as in the pages of their magazine.
You can read my latest In The Cards article, which is about a nice deal that Topps offered hockey fans way back in 1975, here.
My girlfriend has been watching Shark Week on The Discovery Channel pretty much nonstop the past week. That, of course, gets me thinking about the San Jose Sharks, and what a cool logo they have.Then I started thinking about some of the other teams that use a shark as their logo. Here’s a look at five of the coolest logos inspired by everyone’s favorite underwater predator. Continue reading “Hockey logos inspired by Shark Week!”
I was cleaning out my filing cabinet and found some old drawings I did in high school. Art was always my favorite subject, and I took it all four years. I would try to draw or create hockey images whenever possible. During my junior year — right around the time of the 1992 Winter Olympics — we had to make a few blended colored pencil drawings for an assignment. I made three, using hockey as my inspiration. Continue reading “My attempt at hockey artistry, circa 1992”
Feel the vintage! I picked up eight cards from the 1965-66 Topps Hockey set. I need a ton of cards from this set, so eight really doesn’t bring me that much closer to completion. Still, vintage is vintage, and these are in pretty decent shape. Anyway, enjoy the images.
Milt Schmidt
Doug Mohns
Bob Woytovich
Bobby Rosseau
Billy Harris
Murray Oliver
Al Langlois
Claude Provost (…and that’s a square jaw if I ever saw one.)
Topps released its 2014 Baseball Archives set this week, and usually I don’t pay attention to baseball cards. But Topps did something with this set that really annoyed me: they used a classic hockey card design in the new Archives baseball set — specifically, this design:
Yes, that is the classic 1971-72 Topps and O-Pee-Chee design, re-purposed for a 20-card insert set of baseball cards — cheapening it in the process.
Everyone who reads this blog knows how much I love the 1971-72 design. It is the best hockey card design from the 1970s. (If you don’t believe me, read this first and then we’ll talk.)
Using this design for a baseball set would be like putting Sidney Crosby on a 1952 Topps Baseball card, or Alex Ovechkin on a 1989-90 Hoops Basketball card.
Inconceivable!
Five years ago, In The Game created a set of trading cards called 1972: The Year In Hockey which was reminiscent of the 1971-72 Topps/OPC design. I don’t know the full story, but I understand that In The Game got into a legal entanglement with Topps for making cards that also used ovals, bright colors and puffy letters. As if Topps invented — or outright owns — any of those design elements.
The 1972 set by In The Game was a hit with old school collectors who either bought cards in 1971-72 (that was before I was born), or collected that set later on. Making a new hockey set look like an old hockey set makes sense — especially when done right.
Anyway, would the type of collector who buys Topps Archives Baseball cards really give a damn about baseball cards that look like old hockey cards? I think they’d be more excited about new baseball cards that look like old baseball cards. Or the insert cards based on the Major League movie. I’m not even a baseball fan and I want those cards!
But these cards…irritate me.
Frankly, I”m tired of card companies re-using old designs because they don’t even do it right anymore.Think about Upper Deck’s half-hearted release of Fleer Retro last year. Some of the “retro” cards were great, but many of the inserts were dumb because they weren’t even based on hockey designs, like Intimidation Nation (based on a football set) and the God-awful Noyz Boyz (based on basketball cards).
Yes, Topps made hockey cards in 1971-72, and can use that design all they want. They can use it on baseball cards or FIFA World Cup cards or Spongebob Squarepants cards or whatever the heck they make these days.
But just because they CAN doesn’t mean they SHOULD.
Steve Galvao is a good old Canadian kid who grew up loving hockey and collecting hockey cards. To see more of Steve’s work, visit his website, the Shoebox Collection. You can see his earlier blog posts here.