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1953-54 Parkies – 4 Hawks and a Hab

Last weekend, I attended a card show and was able to chip away at my 1953-54 Parkhurst Hockey set. For some reason, I always seem to buy these cards in multiples of 5–5 in March, another 5 in July and 15 last December. Here are my latest additions: 4 Chicago Black Hawks and 1 Montreal Canadiens.

76 – Bill Gadsby – This was the best card in the group, in regards to the player and the condition. Gadsby is in the Hockey Hall of Fame, and this card has minimal corner wear.

69 – Jim Peters – On the other hand, this card is in not the best condition. The corners are worn, and it appears that the printing registration was off. This is particularly noticeable if you look at the Black Hawks insignia on his sweater.

84 – Gerald “Doc” Couture – The 1953-54 season would be Couture’s last in the NHL. He won the Stanley Cup with the Detroit Red Wings in 1950.

74 – Larry Wilson – Wilson also won the Cup with the Red Wings in 1950. He is the brother of Johnny Wilson and the father of longtime NHL coach Ron Wilson

33 – Ken Mosdell – He won 4 Stanley Cups with the Montreal Canadiens and the last active member of the Brooklyn Americans–an NHL team that folded after 1942, reducing the team to its “Original Six” teams.

These 5 cards put me at 47 out of 100, so I have this one almost halfway completed. I also need the variation of Fleming Mackell (#91) that has the bio on the back. I have the one without the bio. In the unlikely event that anyone has 1953-54 Parkies for trade, I have added what I need to my Want List.

Card ‘Toons

NOTE: I am happy to introduce a new author on Puck Junk. Steve Galvao is, in his own words, “a good old Canadian kid” who grew up loving hockey and collecting hockey cards. He recently merged his love of hockey, card collecting and cartooning, and will be contributing his ‘toons to Puck Junk every week or so. – Sal

To see more of Steve’s work, visit his website, the Shoebox Collection.

1963-64 Parkhurst #99 – Cesar Maniago

Card #99 in the 1963-64 Parkhurst Hockey set is special for a few reasons. It is the only horizontal card in an otherwise vertical set. It is action-oriented and the only one in the set to feature a goal net.

It is also the last card in the set. Usually, the first and last cards in vintage sets carry a premium because they were susceptible to rubber band marks or wear from being the “end cards” when stored. It is a rookie card and a card of a goalie–two other reasons that make it desirable. After Gordie Howe, this Cesar Maniago card is the second-most expensive card in the set.

I had only seen this card once before, about 3 years back, and it was priced at “full book value” of $175. I passed on buying it, partially because I could not afford it (always a good reason), and partially because I have this foolish notion that if I wait long enough and keep my eyes open, I can find any card I want at a price I want to pay. Within reason, of course. But I always wondered if I made a mistake by not buying it; by not trying to work out something with the card dealer.

I did not make a mistake.

This past weekend, I found this beautiful card at a show near Chicago. A dealer who specializes in vintage hockey cards had it in a box of “lesser grade” cards. It was tagged at half of “high book” value because of some corner wear, but it looked pretty darn good to me. I bought another old Parkie, too, and he knocked off an additional 10%. All said and done, I got this card for $80–which sounds steep until you consider that $80 is far less than $175.

No creases. No stains. Just a little corner wear that I can live with. My patience has paid off, and this puts me one large step closer to finishing the set I started 4 years ago. I am 2/3 of the way there.

Parkhurst Percent Counter: 66%

I bought a case of OPC

That is, I bought 12 boxes–or 384 hobby packs–of 2012-13 O-Pee-Chee Hockey.

Crazy, right?

I’ve never bought a case of cards before. But yesterday, the 22-pound behemoth you see above was delivered to my front door.

I had to rationalize this expense–as most collectors would. I did put in some OT at my job last month, so these cards are paid for. I waited and waited and found the best available online price from a retailer who offered an additional $25 off. Plus, no tax and no shipping costs.

But I also had to come up with numerous good reasons why I should buy a whole freakin’ case, and not just a few hobby boxes.

I will get a complete base set (and then some)
I will get 192 Short Prints–hopefully one of each of the 100 possible
I will get 384 Retro Variants
I will get roughly 128 Stickers–hopefully at least one copy of 1-100
I will get 24 Pop Ups, which I’ll probably want to keep too
I will get 4 patch cards, and can probably sell those and make back a good portion of my money
I will get the 2 OPC Signatures cards. I do enjoy autographs.
I will get the case hit Team Canada autograph. I would like to have that card too.
I will get all of the box bottom cards, and have more left over to trade
I will have 384 wrappers leftover that I could potentially trade to a Canadian collector for Upper Deck’s “Canada Only” OPC promotion
I will have 96 Rainbow Parallels that I could potentially trade for the Retro Variants or Pop-Ups I still need.

Of course, I may not get a complete set out of the deal, might get shorted on an autograph and get the worst possible “hits” imaginable.

Then again, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Wish me luck.

Puck Junk is 5 Today

October 5, 2007 was the day I officially launched PuckJunk.com.

That doesn’t seem too long ago. But I feel like I got a lot accomplished in 5 years, including a Masters Degree, a successful career change and maintaining this website (and that other hockey website I also do). So I guess 5 years was a while ago.

Screen shot from 2007 — My first-ever article for this site was a review of 2007-08 Victory Hockey.

Five years! None of my previous “hobby websites” have lasted that long. My fansite about The Matrix movies lasted about 4 years, though I didn’t update it in the last year. My G.I. Joe fansite only lasted maybe around 2 years. My Transformers website never got off the ground. But my hockey card and collectibles site–FIVE YEARS AND COUNTING.

And counting! That’s the great part. I still enjoy collecting hockey cards and I still enjoy writing about them.

Why? Because of the rest of the blogosphere. My other fansites were islands unto themselves, while Puck Junk is part of a community that enjoys hockey cards. Thanks to everyone who has traded cards with me, and thanks to everyone who’s listened to me prattle on about old cards, new cards, good cards, bad cards, rookie cards and lost cards.

Here’s to the next half-decade.

FIVE YEAR ANNIVERSARY GIVEAWAY CONTEST

To celebrate Puck Junk’s 5th Anniversary, I am giving away a sealed deck of Hockey Hall of Fame playing cards, which uses photos of some of the greatest all-time players.

If you would like to be entered in the drawing, just post a reply saying so by Sunday afternoon.. I will do a random drawing on Sunday night.

ALSO…
Happy Birthday to these guys!

Roenick appeared in “Go On” this week

Matthew Perry and Jeremy Roenick — Former NHL superstar Jeremy Roenick (right) made a guest appearance on the TV show “Go On” earlier this week. (NBC/Universal)

Jeremy Roenick, one of my favorite former Blackhawks’ players, had a small guest role on the new TV show “Go On” this past Tuesday. The sitcom is about a smug sports radio show host named Ryan King, played by Matthew Perry. However, King lost his wife and is attending group therapy sessions to cope. (Yes, this is a comedy.)

In this week’s episode, King is invited to play in Jeremy Roenick’s weekly pickup hockey game. I won’t tell you anything else about the episode because you might want to watch it online. However, I will spoil the best line:

“Yo, Roenick! Get back on ‘D,’ princess!”

As a longtime hockey fan, it is awesome to see a hockey player–one of my heroes, no less–appear on a TV show. Whenever an athlete guest stars on a show in the U.S., it is always a baseball, football or basketball player. Nice that hockey is finally starting to get its due here south of the border.

If you want to see the episode, you can watch it at NBC’s website.

Did anyone else see this week’s episode of “Go On?” What did you think of it and/or Roenick’s acting?

Huge price increase for Beckett Online Price Guide subscription

My subscription to the Beckett Hockey Online Price Guide (OPG) has grown to become a valuable asset to both my collecting and to my writing. As a guy who blogs about hockey cards, it is great to be able to easily find out how many cards were issued of an obscure hockey player, or what the most valuable cards are in a set, or when a certain player’s rookie card was issued. It is especially helpful when I find some random card and have no idea what it is; I would just go to Beckett’s Online Price Guide, type in the player’s name, the card number, and the OPG would help me figure out what set the card is from.

Yes, the OPG is a great tool for collectors, but Beckett increased the yearly subscription rate from $54 to $81 and that pisses me off. Mind you, this is the yearly subscription rate for just their Hockey OPG, and not the price for “Total Access.”

That’s 50% price increase for what is basically a product that costs Beckett zero in printing and postage because it is a website and not a magazine.Yes, websites cost money to create and maintain–but jacking up the price 50% is some shit that we expect the oil companies to pull.

Or drug dealers. I remember when Beckett started “pushing” the OPG on us pretty hard a few years ago, trying to sell us a virtual price guide subscription while practically killing off their own printed magazine business.

Back then, the OPG was slow and unreliable. The site would be down for hours or even days sometimes. Often it was actually faster to look up card prices in the annual Beckett Hockey Price Guide book than search a computerized database. Go figure.

Like many other OPG subscribers, I was annoyed that I paid for something that didn’t work very well most of the time. I was going to bail out after subscribing to the OPG for a year, but Beckett Media auto-renewed my subscription (which is their default action for the Online Price Guide subscriptions), and would not allow me to cancel for a refund.

Beckett then had the OPG redesigned, but that made things worse, and not better like you would expect when a company redesigns a website. One thing the OPG did back then was use Flash to display checklists or search results–perhaps so you could not copy and paste text from the site.

This also meant that you could not right-click and open a link in a new tab/window. That is a functionality that most website visitors use regularly. It sucked to have to always view the site in the same tab, clicking on a link, determining it wasn’t the set you were looking for, clicking the back button, watching the “Loading” message for 20 seconds while your search results reappeared, then clicking on another link, rinse, repeat.

Subscribers continued to complain that the OPG was slow and hard to use. Beckett redesigned their website a second time–including the OPG–and finally got things right. For the past year or so, the Online Price Guide has been fast, reliable and intuitive to use. Qualities that paying customers would expect. Oh, and it supports multiple tabs and is easy to cut-and-paste from (so as to add to my want list).

It had its ups and downs, but I grew to love the Online Price Guide. Now that love costs me $27 more per year.

QUESTION: Do you use Beckett’s Online Price Guide for any sport? Please post a comment below and let me know your thoughts.

Also, contest coming on Saturday (if I can get it together in time…)

The Legend of the Seal (a.k.a. My Guest Post on Battle of California)

One of my favorite hockey blogs on the interwebs is called Battle of California. Maintained by Earl Sleek, Battle of Cali–as the cool kids call it–focuses on the San Jose Sharks, L.A. Kings and Anaheim Ducks.

What I love about Battle of Cali the most are these hilarious “Cartoon Explosion” stories, written and illustrated by Earl, that depicts personified mascots from each team battling for the Stanley Cup. Think “Muppet Babies” crossed with “Super-Friends” crossed with “Peter Puck”…but awesome-r.

Anything with silly cartoon animals amuses me–but these are silly cartoon animals fighting for the Stanley Cup. I love these stories so much that I collaborated with Earl in a new story called The Legend of the Seal. It recounts the tumultuous existence of the Oakland Seals / California Golden Seals…but with silly cartoon animals.

Lies! Intrigue! Cannibalism! Spray paint! The Legend of the Seal has it all. Check it out, and please leave a comment and let me know what you think.

Another five ’53-54 Parkies

Anyone who has seen my hockey card collection knows that it is a pretty equal amount of both order and chaos. I have neat, orderly shelves filled with binders, and then I have random boxes and piles of cards everywhere else. I bought these five 1953-54 Parkhurst cards way back in March, but they got filed into a box with other cards I wanted to blog about–and then completely forgotten until I “found” them last week.

So here are the cards that I’ve had since March but finally got around to putting away:

14 – Fern Flaman – “Fernie” passed away earlier this year. He was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1990.

19 – Bert Olmstead – Another Hall of Fame player, Olmstead played with Chicago, Montreal and Toronto.

7 – Theodore “Teeder” Kennedy – Yet another Hall of Fame member! Ted Kennedy, as he is best known as, broke into the NHL at age 18 and was the first player to win the Stanley Cup five times.

22 – James “Bud” MacPherson – MacPherson played 6 seasons for the Montreal Canadiens and won the Stanley Cup with them in 1953.

12 – Harry Watson – Watson played 14 seasons in the NHL. His rookie season was spent with the Brooklyn Americans in what was their last season (1941-42) before folding. He was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1994.

These 5 cards bring me up to 42 cards in this set, or 42% since it is a 100-card set.

Two Sets Completed!

Today, I completed my 2008-09 Victory Hockey Set. Claude Giroux was the last card needed to finish this one off. I did not start building this set until April 2010, when I found a 36-pack box for dirt cheap. Since then, I’ve picked away at it here and there. I won this Giroux card on eBay for $1.78 and did not get hosed on shipping because I bought a bunch of other cards from the same dealer.

I also finished my 2007-08 MVP Hockey set. This one was five years in the making, and was quite a challenge. In addition to the short-printed rookie cards, there were other rookie cards that you could get only through redemption.

Nick Foligno and Devin Setoguchi were two of the “redemption rookies” that eluded me the past five years. I acquired both of these in a trade.

Like I have said all along, collecting is a marathon and not a sprint. Sooner or later, I find the cards I need, either for trade or for a price that is reasonable.