News & Views

6% of a 1979-80 O-Pee-Chee Set

Last month I purchased 25 cards–roughly 6%–from the 1979-80 O-Pee-Chee Hockey set. This brings me up to 177 out of 396 cards.

Of course, when you still require the Wayne Gretzky rookie card for your set, you can have 395 cards and still feel like you are about a thousand cards short.

Nonetheless, I now have the second and third-best cards in this set:
 

#175 – Gordie Howe

#185 – Bobby Hull

I got a few other key cards, including…

#161 – Mike Bossy (Record Breakers)

#100 – Bryan Trottier

#215 – Bernie Federko

#145 – John Tonelli (RC)

#164 – Brad Park (Record Breakers)

#225 – Jean Ratelle

#1 – Goal Leaders (Bossy/Dionne/Lafleur)

Another 218 cards–plus a Gretzky RC–to complete this landmark set. In the meantime, I’ll continue to chip away at it, a few cards here and there.

QUESTION: At what point do you “page” your sets? That is, when do you put a near-complete set into pages? Do you get a certain percentage, like at least half? Or do you wait until you have every single card? Or, do you not use pages at all…?

19 years later, this card is finally mine!

Nope, your eyes do not deceive you–I have been seeking this Mark Fitzpatrick card for nearly two decades. It is from the 1992-93 Fleer Ultra set–the height of the “Junk Wax Era,” though I prefer to call those years “Neo-Vintage.” Specifically, this was from the Awards Winners insert set, back when inserts were actually cool and made sense (All-Stars, Award Winners….uh, Russians….)

It is true that I could have had this card ten times over if I bought it online. It just seemed that whenever I bought a bunch of cards from an eBay or Beckett Online seller, they didn’t have this one. And we all hate the idea of paying $2 to ship one card if that one card is only “worth” a quarter.

There is also something rewarding about finding a card like this in the wild. I found this at a recent show in a quarter box from a dealer named Big Jon, who is an avid Red Wings fan. Upon finding out that it was the last card I needed to complete my set, he told me that the card had been accidentally put in the quarter box, and was actually a ten-dollar card. Ah, that joke is about as old as the trading card industry itself, and yet it still makes me smile a little bit.

Hell, I’m in such a great mood I’ll even scan and share the back of the card….

One thing I’ve learned about collecting is that it is a waiting game. Sooner or later, we all tend to find what we are looking for, no matter how way there out or insignificant.

Fifteen ’53-54 Parkies

Every so often, I’d find a 1953-54 Parkhurst card at a show for $5 or $10 and buy it. Then one day, I realized that I had 17 cards from the set–enough that I figured that I’d start pursuing this set as one I’d like to complete.

Nothing will trump the 1951-52 Parkhurst set in the mind of collectors for its significance as being the first, ahem, “modern” set and it’s plethora of rookie cards (Howe? Richard? Never heard of ’em).

But I feel that the 1953-54 set is when Parkhurst really started to hit their stride. The cards are bigger and the backs are more informative. The smaller Parkies feel more like toss-ins from a bag of tobacco (I know, they were gum cards), whereas these feel like hockey cards.

Last month, I purchased 15 more cards from the 1953-54 Parkhurst set, bringing me up to 34 out of 100 cards. Enjoy the scans:

18 – Dick Gamble

20 – Eddie “Sipder” Mazur

21 – Paul Meger

29 – Bernard (Boom Boom) Geoffrion

54 – Jack Evans

59 – Claude “Chuck” Rayner

72 – Lidio “Lee” Fogolin

75 – August “Gus” Bodnar

78 – Al Dewsbury

83 – George Gee

86 – Samuel “Sugar Jim” Henry

87 – Hal Laycoe

89 – Real Chevrefils

90 – Edward “Sandy” Sandford

91 – Fleming Mackell

Some Satire for Saturday

I found two funny, hockey-related satirical articles recently.

This one, from The Onion, makes fun of penalties in hockey and Brendan Shannahan.

NHL’s Critics Find No Evidence That Penalty Box Reforms Players

The second article is from a website called E-mails from an Asshole. Here, the guy pretends to be a minor league hockey player who wants to coach a youth team–this one is a bit off color, and may offend some readers:

Special Skaters

I hope at least one of you found these funny (or at least the Penalty Box Reform article).

Tomorrow, I will post a mega-update of some vintage cards.

Vintage Pickups: Two 1963-64 Topps Cards

Although I’m not really chasing after the 1963-64 Topps Hockey set, I couldn’t pass up these two cards. I paid $8 for the pair. Not bad for almost-50-year-old cardboard.

Here are scans of the back. These cards were in damn good shape for their age. No stains or creasing, just some soft corners.

More vintage goodness to come.

1957-58 Topps #6 – Larry Regan

I bought a lot of vintage hockey cards at the show last weekend. It’s been almost a full year since I last added a card to my 1957-58 Topps set. Larry Regan is my 14th card, bringing me one step closer to completing this 66-card set.

The front has a light crease and the corners are soft.

But the price? A whopping three-and-a-half bucks.

Set completion as of 11-25-2011:
14 out of 66 cards = 21.2%

Another RC for the PC

Michael Frolik hasn’t exactly been “tearing it up” this season with the Chicago Blackhawks–he’s scored 7 points in 16 games–but he seems to be fitting in on the Blackhawks. I guess I like Frolik enough that when I saw this card at a local card shop, I had to have it.

If you are going to get a rookie card, it might as well be an autographed one, right? That is unless, of course, it is a card of someone like Crosby or Ovechkin that will cost you thousands of dollars.

Anyway, next weekend, I will be going to the Sun-Times Sports Card Show in Rosemont, IL (November 18-20). Is anyone else going?

I’m back…and another Hockey News article

Hockey season is in full swing, and I’ve been too busy to enjoy it. My career transition from web designer to college teacher seems to have been a success, as I am teaching at three different schools now, as well as once a week at a grammar school.

The bad news is, I have less and less free time for blogging. But that should change, as I always seem to have tons of extra time once the semester starts winding down.

But onto some good news: my second article was published in The Hockey News, in their November 7, 2011 issue. Blink and you might miss it–it is at the bottom of page 11, and the article is smaller than the size of a hockey card. You can find the issue on the newsstands now.

Puck Junk is 4 today

October 5, 2007 to Present

Puck Junk is 4 today.

But October 5 is an important day for two other reasons:

Yep, both Mario Lemieux and Patrick Roy were born on October 5, 1965. Coincidentally, I recently purchased the two Topps Rookie cards you see above. I guess today was the “right” day to share them here. 

But getting back to my original point, four years is a pretty long time for a website to exist. How many sites and/or blogs have you seen come and go since 2007, card-related or otherwise?

In retrospect, I’m glad that I started this site for 3 reasons:

1. Having a blog about hockey cards has helped me keep up with what’s going on in the world of card collecting.
2. Maintaining this website has led to a lot of great opportunities–writing for Beckett Hockey in the past and The Hockey News this season, as well as appearing on The War Room radio program (I’ll be back on it again this season, too).
3. Best of all, having this website has allowed me to meet other hockey card collectors, either in person or via the interrwebs. Some of them I’ve traded cards with, while others have just sent me stuff out of the kindness of their hearts. Hobbies are fun, but they are more fun when shared with others.

With thousands of cards released over the past 100 years, and new cards coming out all the time, I’ll never run out of things to collect–or talk about.

So here’s looking to the next four years.