Nice design, two future stars, make for a worthwhile set
Not everyone who laces ’em up in the minors will make it to the NHL, but it is always cool to see the players who do at a point in their career before they become famous. For me, a minor league team set is worth picking up if it has just one player in it who goes on to NHL stardom.
The 1997-98 Springfield Falcons team set features cards of not one, but two players who would go onto NHL stardom–Shane Doan and Daniel Briere. And the design isn’t the usual over-designed nonsense of the late 1990s. Continue reading “Review: 1997-98 Springfield Falcons”
O-Pee-Chee always tried to make their hockey cards as up-to-date as possible back in the 1970s and 1980s.. When a player was traded, the card company would communicate this fact on the front of the card. Sometimes they would have the photograph altered, and sometimes they’d add a line of text explaining the player’s whereabouts. On the 1978-79 O-Pee-Chee card of Tom Edur, it gave two contradictory explanations of the former Penguin’s current status.
Near the bottom-right corner of the card, it states “Now with Blues.” This is reinforced by the fact that the Pittsburgh Penguins logo and team name have been replaced by that of the St. Louis Blues.
But in the lower-left corner, the card simultaneously states “Retired from active playing.”
The special hockey card treatment Stanley Cup-winning teams have gotten in recent years makes this Blackhawks’ fan jealous.The ‘Hawks won the Stanley Cup in 2010, but no commemorative sets or arena giveaways marked the occasion. A year later, the Boston Bruins got their own 30-card commemorative set, while Los Angeles Kings fans received this 6-card giveaway during the 2012 Stanley Cup Finals.
Wow…Kings’ fans got to go to a Stanley Cup Finals game AND got a special set of hockey cards. The only thing that would make that scenario better is free nachos at the concession stand.
The cards are printed on thinner stock than normal Upper Deck hockey cards. They are devoid of gloss or foil. For a freebie, though, that really does not matter.
The set came sealed in a cellophane wrapper.
Player Selection
Six cards of the Kings’ best players during the first two rounds of the playoffs are in this set. The players included are Anze Kopitar, Mike Richards, Jonathan Quick, Dustin Brown, Drew Doughty and a second card of Dustin Brown. So, while this isn’t a comprehensive team set, each card has relevance.
Front Design – 3 out of 5
The design of these cards is a bit confusing. The cards have a Stanley Cup Final logo on the front, but the photos used are either from Round 1 or Round 2 of the playoffs, and not the finals.
Also confusing is that the last card in the set–the second card of team captain Dustin Brown–lacks the Stanley Cup Final logo and the little black diamonds, and instead says “Stanley Cup Memorable Moments.”
Card #6 does not have the Stanley Cup Finals logo on it.
Why the last card looks different is anyone’s guess. My theory is that all the cards were originally supposed to say “Stanley Cup Memorable Moments,” but a decision was made to use the Finals logo instead.Given the fact that this set was produced rather hastily, I think the last card somehow got overlooked during production.
Back Design / Stats & Info – 3 out of 5
The design of the back of cards 1 to 5 looks very sharp. The white text against the black background is very easy to read, and explains a particular feat the pictured player accomplished in the playoffs. Below that are the player’s stats for the 2011-12 regular season and their career totals. Season stats seem unnecessary here, as the focus of this set is the playoffs.
The last card is a mess, though–black text superimposed over a gray background with the Stanley Cup ghosted behind it. It is an unnecessarily complicated design that is hard to read.
The set is a unique collectable for Kings fans who like hockey cards. Putting the Stanley Cup Final logo on cards that were given out at the Finals–but actually have nothing to do with the Finals–is a bit of a misguided design choice.
BONUS
Here are images of the entire set.
SC-1 – Anze Kopitar – Kopitar is included because he scored 2 goals in Game 2 of the Western Conference Semifinals. (back)
SC-2 – Mike Richards – He had a Gordie Howe Hat Trick in Game 3 of the Western Conference Semis, scoring the game-winning goal. (back)
SC-3 – Jonathan Quick – The Kings ace netminder had a shutout against the Vancouver Canucks in Game 3 of the first round. (back)
SC-4 – Dustin Brown – Scored the game-winning–and series-clinching–goal against the St. Louis Blues in Game 4 of the second round. (back)
SC-5 – Drew Doughty – Doughty had 1 goal and 2 assists in the third game of the Western Conference Semifinals. (back)
SC-6 – Dustin Brown – Brown scored 2 shorthanded goals against the Vancouver Canucks in Game 2 of the first round. (back)
What the heck is this? I found it at my local Target, but have never seen anything like it before. It has a hang tab, but it’s not a fat pack. We all know what fat packs look like–they’re tall, they’re fat, they have a lot of cards and they cost five bucks.
No, my friends, this is a FAT BOX. For $9.99, you get 42 2012-13 O-Pee-Chee Hockey cards. That’s not really a bargain, considering that two fat packs (at $10) would yield you 64 cards. This equates to about half of a blaster box, in both price and quantity of cards.
What intrigued me about this is that it promises 1 Marquee Legends Gold card, which I think you can only get in these particular fat boxes.
The 42 cards came wrapped in a cellophane wrapper. Here is what this “fat box” got me:
39 Base Cards
Other blogs have already posted their own review of this set. I’ll withhold doing a review until I have the complete set. But my overall impression is positive–at least for the card fronts. The photos on many of the cards are action-oriented. And the O-Pee-Chee logo is a whisper–as it should be–and not a yell.
Here are a few more base cards that had appealing photographs.
1 Marquee Rookies
YAY! A “leftover rookie.” Tyler Cuma played 1 game last year for the Minnesota Mild, er, Wild, going scoreless but getting 2 penalty minutes.
1 Sticker
How about that? I got a Marquee Rookie (seeded 1:2) and a Sticker (seeded 1:8) in the same fat box. I like the design of these stickers better than the base set–they look like a cross between the 1982-83 O-Pee-Chee cards and 1975 Topps Baseball cards.
1 Marquee Legend Gold
For some reason, I thought that a “Gold” card would be like a gold foil card, or be somewhat shiny. This just replaces the tan ink on the borders with gold ink. While Patrick Roy was an amazing player, this card really isn’t reason enough to buy these fat boxes.
I am still debating if I am going to buy boxes and try to build this set, or if I am going to just buy it outright.I really want all of the stickers, and I want to build the Retro Set, so packs would be the way to go. Buying a set wouldn’t be much more than $120 or so, but I’d still want the retros and stickers, too.
What are your thoughts? Are you building this year’s O-Pee-Chee set? What about the insert sets?
1933-34 World Wide Gum Ice Kings #5 – Earl Robinson
I’ve collected hockey cards for over 20 years and never saw an original “Ice Kings” card until recently, when I found this one at a show for $20. Granted, you don’t just go to a card show and say “I’ll think I’ll buy some Ice Kings cards today,” unless you mean the ones of the Donruss variety.
But when a dealer showed this card to me…I hesitated. While I’ve never seen an Ice King in person, this card was in such terrible shape, I had to think if I really wanted to spend $20 on such a crummy-looking card.
Then I remembered some advice my Aunt Gayle once gave me when I was a kid–if you go to a card show, try to get something you won’t find anywhere else. Not counting the interwebs, I have never seen a card from this set.
Thus, I decided to buy this card of Montreal Maroons right wing Earl Robinson. It has clearly seen better days–those days being the 1933-34 season, when some kid bought a pack of World Wide Gum and got this card with it.
Some might say this card was abused. I say it was loved. The crease running vertically down the middle signifies that it was folded in half—-maybe to put in a pocket when taken to school, or tucked it in a sleeve to keep a teacher from confiscating it. It was folded so it could be put somewhere. Whoever owned this card circa 1934 wasn’t thinking of future value–they were thinking of keeping it safe.
Either that, or they were just clumsy.
The back of the card doesn’t look much better.
Did someone–GASP!–glue this card somewhere? Again, the owner of this card 75 years ago wasn’t thinking of maintaining its collectibility; they were thinking of putting it in a place they could see it, where it would make them happy. Maybe it was glued to their bedroom wall or in a scrapbook with pictures of other Montreal Maroons players.
The glue and paper loss makes the text hard to read, so I’ve transcribed it the best I could:
Earl began as a juvenile with the North Branch of the Montreal Y.M.C.A. only 13 years ago. He rose steadily, playing with the Strathcona High Squad, followed by the Royal Juniors, the Royal Bank and the Victorias. He turned “pro.” in 1927 with Philadelphia, came to the Maroons in 1928 and aside from a few trips to Windsor, has remained there since. He is 26 and weighs 153 pounds.
The season after this card was issued, Robinson led the Maroons in scoring, and the Maroons won their second and last Stanley Cup championship. Robinson also played for the last-ever Maroons squad in 1937-38
Condition-wise, this card is one of the poorest in my collection. It is also one of (but not the) oldest cards that I own. But it might be another 20 yeas before I come across another Ice King. ■
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…)
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.
In 1988, a trading card company called ProCards issued a large minor league hockey card set. It consisted of teams from the American Hockey League (AHL) and the old International Hockey League (IHL). Many players who would go onto NHL careers appeared in this set–including Ed Belfour and Mark Recchi. Continue reading “Review: 1988-89 ProCards AHL/IHL”
Upper Deck released a more affordable hockey card set in the mid-1990s called Collector’s Choice. At 99 cents per pack, the set was aimed at kids who weren’t mature enough to collect “grown up” Upper Deck hockey cards at $2.49 per pack. Since Collector’s Choice had to be “kiddified,” some cards included a crudely drawn mascot named Chippy.
No, no no…not CLIPPY….CHIPPY.
Both are pretty annoying, though what makes Chippy worse is that he looks like the fat kid that bullied me in grammar school.
In the 1997-98 Collector’s Choice Hockey set, the last 8 cards are checklists featuring Chippy. On each card, Chippy offers collecting advice. My favorite tip is on card #316:
Chippy on taking care of your cards…The better shape your cards are in, the more fun they are. It’s a good idea to keep your cards in clear plastic sheets in a binder. That way, you can enjoy your collection while keeping it in mint condition.
I did not know that keeping my cards in “mint condition”–as if there was truly such a thing–made my cards more fun. In my “pre-collector” days, I used to tape cards to my notebook, or play a game of “flips” with them, or throw them at my friends like Gambit throws playing cards in the X-Men comic books. That was way more fun than putting them in a binder…though in retrospect, I wish I didn’t tape that Brett Hull rookie card to my notebook. If only Chippy existed in 1989 to stop me from my fun.
And why can’t Chippy just cut through the B.S., level with us and say that keeping our 1990s hockey cards in mint condition will make them worth lots of money, while also making us smarter and more likeable to girls? Of course, I’d be happy if one of those things were true.
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.
Not everyone who laces ’em up in the minors will make it to the NHL, but it is always cool to see the players who do at a point in their career before they become famous. For me, a minor league team set is worth picking up if it has just one player in it who goes on to NHL stardom.
