Pushed Out

Often when I post a blurry scan or two of something here, I get an e-mail sending along better quality pictures.  A fairly recent post showing an uncut 1968-69 O-Pee-Chee Hockey Push Outs partial sheet garnered the attention of longtime Friend o'the Archive Bobby Burrell (who is pretty much the top authority on hockey cards and collectibles-check out his Vintage Hockey Collector guide!).  Bobby has provided a much better shot of this 55 card partial sheet, one that's actually complete!

Bobby had this to say about the sheet:

"The 1968 push out inserts were the very first insert for OPC in their stand along name being OPC away from Topps.

They were inserted into the second of this two series issue.

The insert sheets are always found cut in half, it would appear that the Push Out were more manageable cutting down due

to a large sheet handling would make some of them pop. Almost all have a pin mark, to hold the die cut in the process of

being done, almost every card has this small nick or pin hole, which doesn’t go through."

I think Topps and O-Pee-Chee had issues generally with die cut sets as you see a lot of partials like this from the era.  Those pinholes are also endemic on their earlier paper wrappers-the Topps Gum penny tabs that formed the first products of the company from 1938 had them as well.

The wax wrapper is pretty nice:

Puck or harmonica? You decide!

The box is pretty slammin' as well:

Thanks to 48 double prints, the 2nd series of OPC Hockey for 1968-69 indeed had 84 subjects, a very scarce number not divisible by the usual 11.

Ice, Ice Baby

It's snowing here outside the Topps Archives main research complex, so I am in a chilly state of mind and thinking about hockey right now.

After baseball, hockey probably has the most fanatical collector base in the hobby. I just picked up a great book called the Vintage Hockey Collector Price Guide, compiled by Bobby Burrell. It's a pictorial reference book covering about all you could think of when it comes to hockey cards and it is the best illustrated hobby reference I have ever seen-a true work of art with hundreds of wonderful color pictures. It has put me in a mood to go after some hockey types and I just picked up two nice cards.

The first is a 1954-55 Topps Hockey card. These were only sold in Canada it seems, probably hitting the market just after New Year's 1955 as Parkhurst used to release their cards first, in the late fall, when the season started. The cards, 60 in number, feature what I gather to be oil-painted photos and they are stunning. I chose this one as it has a cloud of ice being kicked up by Ray Timgren of the Chicago Black Hawks.



Pretty cool, huh?

The back is nice too.



Topps did not produce another hockey set until 1957-58. I am not sure why but Parkhurst missed a year in there too, so some kind of licensing problem may have played a part.

I also picked up a 1968 O-Pee-Chee Push Out along with Mr. Timgren. These were inserts in the 2nd series OPC hockey packs in 1968-69. Instead of being peel-off stickers, once you popped out the puck you had to moisten the back to get it to adhere to something.

This could only be improved if his nickname "Gump" was on it instead of his given name. What a classic shot of a hard-nosed goalie!



These are the first hockey cards I have bought in about 35 years!