1958-59 Parkhurst Rocket Richard

Card #38 Maurice "The Rocket" Richard came in the mail yesterday to complete my 1958-59 Parkhurst set:

This card is in pretty good condition and I paid about $90 for it. However, like many cards from this era, it suffers from being pasted in an album at one time and sports the proverbial glue stain on its backside:

Puck Candy by Pro Set

The 1991-92 Pro Set Puck set of 30 cards is not exactly difficult to find, but is scarce enough that you could overspend if you don’t exhibit a bit of patience and wait to find it at a reasonable price. I’ve seen them for as high as $30 and $40, and I’ve seen the #11 Wayne Gretzky single offered alone for the same price. I got my set for $12 after being declined on an earlier offer I’d made for $20…so I feel pretty good about this purchase.

Puck candy was a combination of chocolate, peanut, vanilla and caramel weighing in at 2.2 ounces. The black foil package included a three-card cellophane pack. The cards were never available in complete sets so had to be accumulated sugary piece by sugary piece. There were reportedly 1.5 million cards produced, so collectors could theoretically assemble 50,000 30-card sets. The product was probably a test, and distributed in the Northeast and U.S. markets where there were NHL teams.

I don’t ever recall seeing this product in the stores, and I can’t find a picture of the packaging.

August 2, 2017 UPDATE:

1991-92 Pro Set NHL 75th Anniversary Hologram

I bought this for about $18. I'm not exactly proud of it, but I felt compelled as I try and flesh out master sets from the early 1990s.

Mine is a very special hologram. There are many like it. But mine is #5575/10,000.

My favorite feature of this card, and maybe its only redeeming one, is that it is hand-numbered. Interestingly, you can find just as many NNO versions on eBay as numbered, and often for the same price or more.

PuckJunk.com has a nice YouTube video detailing this card.

The Pro Set hologram I'd really like to check off my list is below, but I can't come to terms shelling out $350 or more for something from the mass-produced era of the 1990s...even if it is somewhat rare with 5,000.

 Again, there's a great YouTube video from PuckJunk.com showing off this hologram.

Bob Turner's Fistful of Stanley Cups

Bob Turner walked on to the Montreal Canadiens midway through the 1955-56 season just in time to be part of their record-setting run of five straight Stanley Cups from 1956 to 1960.

Turner's #40 card from the 1958-59 Parkhurst issue cost me $6:

Not known for his scoring prowess, he potted just 8 goals in 6 seasons with the Canadiens. But the team reportedly paid each defenseman a $1,000 bonus if the team had the fewest goals against in the league.

After losing to them in the 1961 semi-finals, Turner was traded to Chicago for the 1961-62 season. He promptly doubled his career output by scoring 8 goals. If you know anything about the history of Chicago's owners, you can be pretty sure that neither Mr. Norris nor Mr. Wirtz slipped him an extra $1,000 for his increased output.

After his retirement, Turner coached his hometown Regina Pats for 10 years and won the Memorial Cup in 1974.

1984-85 Islander News Set

The New York Islanders were my team growing up and Mike Bossy was my favorite player. I can remember deciding to get a subscription to Islander News when you got the very first 1983-84 card set free along with it. Oddly, I've found the card sets online (this one was about $10), but I can't find any of the actual newspapers anywhere.

This "2nd Series" (as noted on the backs) contains 37 cards. It was again sponsored by Islander News and issued during the summer of 1985. The key card in the set was Pat LaFontaine as it was issued concurrently with his O-Pee-Chee and Topps rookie cards.

1972-73 OPC Park & Ratelle Errors

I paid a handsome sum for a very nice condition 1972-73 OPC complete set of 341 cards (actually 340 since #208 was never actually issued). This is my favorite hockey card set. I just love the vintage look of the design, and I actually admire the jagged cut you find on so many of them. They seems so "authentically old" while still being in pristine shape.

I found two of the corrected error cards from this set on eBay for just a few bucks each so I picked them up. Now I've got both the error and corrected versions of #48 Jean Ratelle and #85 Brad Park (both "NHL Action" cards) in my collection:

If I ever get the final corrected error card from this set it will cost more than just a few bucks. So for now I'm good with my third checklist (card #343) listing the last seven cards as "More W.H.A. Stars" rather than the corrected version that includes the specific player names.

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.

Five Times More Plante

I picked up a low-grade 1958-59 Parkhurst near-set a few days ago that was missing seven cards. As is usually the case when you acquire a partial set, those absent from the roll call aren’t necessarily going to come cheap.

One such card is #35 Canadiens on Guard highlighting the legendary Jacques Plante. One of the eight horizontal “in action” cards featured in the set, it cost me a shade under $20. For a set that contains just 50 cards, Jake the Snake is featured on five of them, or 10% of the issue.

How old is this card? Well, can anyone remember when the Canadiens only had 10 Stanley Cups to their name?

The Chief's Rookie Card

Johnny Bucyk #10 was the missing piece I needed to complete the 1957-58 Topps set of 66 cards. I had been holding off purchasing this final card because of the steep prices being asked for his rookie on eBay and other sites. (I'd also just spent a tidy sum on Glenn Hall's rookie from the same issue).

But I was alerted a few days ago about a new listing for this card at an asking price half of what I'd been seeing. It was in a condition and price range that matched my budget, tolerance and desire to get this set completed:

The other challenge I had in finding this card was the healthy number of autographed Bucyk rookies available on eBay. An autographed Bucyk rookie pushed the price even higher, and often represented a quarter to a third of the offerings up for auction.

A Canadian, Bucyk was a member of the Bruins' "Uke Line" with Vic Staskiuk and Bronco Horvath. My card, oddly enough, came from an eBay'er based in Germany. So go figure.

Coincidentally, the trivia question on the back of Bucyk's rookie card involved the Lady Byng Trophy. Bucyk would go on to win this award for "sportsmanship and gentlemanly play" in both 1971 and 1974.

Bucyk helped the Bruins win Stanley Cup titles in 1970 and 1972, retired with 556 goals and 1,369 points, and was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1981.