Card of the Week: Season On Ice

2005 Topps Chronicles #TC8 – On Ice

In 2005, Topps released a set of trading cards called The Topps Chronicles. Each week during the 2005 calendar year, you could buy an exclusive card directly from the Topps’ website for $4.75. The cards were printed on plastic and had a shiny chromium finish.

The Topps Chronicles wasn’t so much a sports/non-sports hybrid set as it was a set about current events. Each card would focus on an event deemed by Topps to be the biggest news of the previous week. Some cards featured entertainment or political news, while other cards were about sports. This card, entitled “On Ice,” discusses the cancellation of the 2004-05 NHL season.

The front of the card has a photo illustration of a chain and a lock–emblazoned with the NHL logo–obstructing our view of the ice at Madison Square Garden. Not the most subtle point, but perhaps better than a picture of Mario Lemieux and Steve Yzerman picketing in front of Maple Leaf Gardens.

The back shows a Chicago Blackhawks’ ticket sign and gives more information about what went down that fateful day in February 2005:

The 2004-05 NHL season became the first in any major American sport to go completely unplayed when Commissioner Gary Bettman cancelled it on February 16. Despite s aeries of last-ditch meetings and concessions on both sides, the NHL and its Players Association could not agree on a new collective bargaining agreement that would provide the “cost certainty” the owners believed to be necessary to proceed.

Did you hear that? The NHL was the first major American sport to cancel an entire season. Suck it, Major League Baseball!

I also like the fact that Topps told it like it was, calling those final meetings “last ditch” and not some wussy euphemism like “11th hour.” Trying to salvage the season in February, when it is all but over, is truly a last ditch effort.

Topps’ license to make hockey cards expired in 2004. Technically, this is the last hockey card they ever made, though it is from a non-hockey set of cards.

2012-13 O-Pee-Chee Hockey Pack Rip

Even though I love everything about the new O-Pee-Chee set, I have yet to take the plunge and buy a whole box. Part of me really wants to buy a whole case, but in order to do that I need to accumulate a bit of disposable income (well, more than a bit actually). The summer months were rough for me financially, but now that I am teaching again (yay Fall semester!) I should have some funds to buy at least a few boxes next month.

In the meantime, I purchased a hobby pack to tide me over. It was not the pack to end all packs, but it was still a darn good pack. No, I did not get a Gretzky autograph or some 1-in-6400 deckle edge insert card.

Still, I think I got my money’s worth.

5 Base Cards

Let’s see…one Red Wing, one Flame, one Predator and two Sharks. Nice–none of those silly Eastern Conference teams!

1 Retro Parallel

One big reason that I am NOT buying retail packs is because you get a Retro Parallel in every other retail pack.. In hobby packs, the Retros are one per pack. Getting a Retro here is no big deal–because you are supposed to get one–but I enjoy the card nonetheless.

1 Rainbow Parallel

I can do without the Rainbow Parallels. These fall 1 in every 4 packs.

1 Sticker

Am I the only one who wishes that the sticker design was instead the base card design? I think the stickers look fabulous–a combination of old OPC hockey and old Topps baseball. Stickers happen at a rate of 1 in every 3 packs, so I think I did pretty good getting a 1-in-4 card and a 1-in-3 card in the same pack.

Contest Update
Twelve hockey card collectors have participated in the One-Card Challenge so far. As of this writing, Captain Canuck is narrowly in the lead with 5 points. Kazi is in 2nd place with 4 points, and Dave H is in 3rd with 3 points.

But it is still anyone’s game! There are 13 days left until the end of the contest. Give a card–or receive a card–to complete a set and get a point in the standings. Give me a card (hint, hint) and get TWO points in the standings.

Rules for the contest and a list of what “last cards” are needed can be seen here.

(And Jimmy, I have emailed you about that Arturs Irbe card you have for me–twice in fact.)

Review: 1997-98 Springfield Falcons

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”

Card of the Week: Mixed Messages

1978-79 O-Pee Chee #119 – Tom Edur

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.”

What happened? Did their proofreader call in sick that day? Continue reading “Card of the Week: Mixed Messages”

Review: 2012 L.A. Kings Stanley Cup Giveaway Set

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. Continue reading “Review: 2012 L.A. Kings Stanley Cup Giveaway Set”

2012-13 O-Pee-Chee “Fat Box” break

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?

Check out the One-Card Challenge contest, running from now until the end of September.

Card of the Week: My Newest Antique

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. ■

Follow Sal Barry on Twitter @PuckJunk.

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.

Review: 1988-89 ProCards AHL/IHL

A major league set of the minor league teams

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”