Chasing (& Finally Catching) Bobby Orr

I’ve been revisiting the “mass-produced era” of hockey cards and filling in the master sets of Score, Upper Deck, Pro Set, etc. from the early 1990s. 1991-92 was the exact time that I first gave up collecting. It was pre-Internet and the sheer volume of new releases was dizzying to keep up with, not to mention too costly for a 2nd-year college kid.

This was compounded by the introduction of “chase cards” like the 1991-92 Score Bobby Orr inserts. A completist by nature, it was frustrating to come to terms with the fact that it might be impossible (if not too costly) to complete a set. So I quit. It is what still bothers me today about the plethora of parallels, short prints and 1-of-1’s that dominate card collecting.

Skip ahead 25 years and overproduction has driven the price of cards from this era way down, and the Internet makes them very easy to find.

I picked up this six-card set highlighting the career of Bobby Orr for around $30. The cards were inserted in 1991-92 Score hockey poly packs. Cards 1 and 2 were inserted in both American and Canadian editions. Cards 3 and 4 were inserted in Canadian packs, while cards 5 and 6 were inserted in American packs. There were reportedly 270,000 of these unnumbered Orr cards produced, and Orr apparently signed 2,500 of each. Slightly different in design, the autographed cards are signed on the card back and not individually numbered or certified.

1991-92 Score was so mass produced that even with 15,000 Orr-signed cards inserted, they're still very tough to pull and carry asking prices of $200 or more.

1992-93 are the latest cards I’ll collect. I don’t love them like I do a 1954-55 Topps or 1972-73 OPC, but they’re from a part of my childhood I can clearly remember, and a guilty pleasure I can now easily afford.