At A Premium

Here is my final look at the vintage years of Topps and O-Pee-Chee Hockey issues. This last look will focus on mail-in offers available from the wrappers and a sole insert offer.

In 1960-61 you could order a generic Topps Hobby Card Album, which Topps offered for years across various wrappers and product lines:

Before plastic sheets it was pretty much these or photo corners to display your cards:

I took a longer look at that album six years ago here.

1972-73 saw the first offer for the cardboard sports card lockers Topps (via OPC, there was no corresponding American offer) was famous for, now in a hockey only edition with only five wrappers and a buck standing between you and forever dinged corners on your cards:

The locker actually had some decent graphics, all things considered:

It was clear who designed this bad boy:

I think a few slight variations exist, as some seem to feature the hockey player with more shading.  1973-74 brought forth yet another locker, albeit with a bit of inflation factored in:

This one we have seen before as it covered all four major sports and came with the stickers to prove it:

 (Courtesy Harry Hoyle)

The parade of lockers is just beginning kids!

For 1973-74 you could order a nice NHL album as well. Do you think the kiddies were happy when they sent in $1.25 and got a 69 cent album in return?!:

Yes, that was from Dell in the U.S.  At a guess, O-Pee-Chee got them at retail prices!

1974-75?  Sports Card Locker.

The locker offered this season looked a lot like the one from two years prior but featured some updates to stay current and and featured almost the same front (four divisions now):



1975-76? Super Sports Card Locker:

Five bucks for a premium has to be some kind of record for the time! 

Snazzy, huh?  Topps offered these on a variety of sports product wrappers in the 1970's (and into the 80's, although the design changed). You can tell it apart from one offered in the early 80's by the curved Topps logo on top:

1976-77 ? Super Sports Card Locker (gotta be the same one, albeit two bits cheaper than last year's model):

You could also get an embroidered comic team patch (or crest) beginning in 1976, a promotion that like the lockers ran for a couple more years at least:

The patches are a bout four inches tall and all pretty much look like this:

Both the Super and regular locker premiums, plus even team apparel, would continue into the 1980's, although since we stop at 1980 most times here I'll leave those to the modernists as some of the premium daes are too far afield from the cards. I'm also not going to get into the remaining wrapper offers for these either as I feel like I'm just repeating things a bit too much, even by my standards.

As we saw a little while ago, there was an insert available in the 1978-79 O-Pee-Chee packs that pushed a product called Super Bazooka, with various premiums offered, the most germane of which was an All Star Poster:

Those last two scans are from Bobby Burrell's Vintage Hockey Collector Price Guide, which is THE hockey price guide as far as I am concerned. Bobby also runs the Vintage Hockey Forum, which I highly suggest visiting. The second edition is out now but I also recommend tracking down the first one as well as it's loaded with large color pictures of all sorts of hockey goodies. I use mine together as a set essentially.

That about wraps it up on the hockey frontier. I say "about" as there's a special treat coming up for you hockey fanatics.  Stay tuned.......

On Their Own

Our multi-part series on the Topps and O-Pee-Chee Hockey sets of the 50's, 60's and 70's almost concludes today with a survey of the secondary, standalone NHL sets issued by both companies.

Unlike the US Baseball issues, where Topps was (sporadically at first) issuing secondary sets from the mid 1950's and tertiary sets by the mid 60's, it took until the early 1970's for the hockey market to see such wonders. Certainly the reason was economic.  Their main hockey mad audience was primarily in Canada, with roughly ten to twelve percent of the population of the US. Now I'm sure interest was higher as far more kids watched and played (and lived and breathed) the game in Canada but realistically the market was probably about 20% at most when compared to how much baseball product was moved in both countries. So there wasn't a whole lot of dollars to be had and there was also a pretty weak exchange rate.

I briefly touched upon the lone Canadian Bazooka issue earlier in this series of posts and frankly, it's ridiculously scarce and also replicates the great card design in 1971-72.  Here is a nice panel:

The Bazooka cards are a bit smaller than the regular issue; the VHC Guide pegs them at 1 7/8" x 2 3/4" and the pictures remained the same.  It's hard to find these without tape marks on the end cards as if they weren't difficult enough.  I'm pretty sure that Serge Bernier is currently starring in The Americans alongside Keri Russell.

O-Pee-Chee really branched out for the 1971-72 season.  A standalone issue of 24 Posters came and went pretty quickly.  These actually came in attached pairs and included a shot of the previous season's champs.  Feast your eyes....

Each individual poster is about 10" x 17 7/8", printed on cheap stock but lots of them were cut apart so your experience may vary. In addition, a veritable plethora of folds makes minty poster impossible. Those are clearly patterned after the 1968 US Baseball Player Poster issue, packaging and all. Here is a look at the cutting lines in the middle; the waste area seems to be superfluous to me:

The 1973-74 OPC WHA Posters have also been looked previously at in this series.  Smaller than the 1971-72 posters , they are printed on thicker stock and look a lot nicer. VHC has them measuring 7 1/2" x 12 1/2" and I'll use that as I don't want to unfold and flatten my very nice example just to confirm. They were not paired but did come two to a pack:

The combo team/league logo is quite prominent:

Having gone big in Canada, Topps went small in the US the following year.  Their 1974-75 issue of Cloth Stickers featuring NHL team emblems is a real head scratcher.  Topps was experimenting with cloth stickers on the Baseball side at the time and I get that but these are just weird:

Very much in thrall of the 1973-74 Baseball Action Stickers, at least the cloth versions of those, you may notice the dimensions are a bit off. That's because they are a quarter inch short in both directions from standard size. I have no idea why Topps chose to do that. There are 19 large sticker subjects and 18 pennants (the NHL did not get its own pennant) and with mixing-and-matching  24 different stickers make up the full set.  The early 70's Topps sticker glue bugaboo also presents itself rather messily. Topps would not really figure out a proper glue and cloth material ratio until the 1977 Cloth Baseball set was issued.

The pack features a Boston Bruins logo; odd since they had lost in the cup finals to the Flyers to conclude the 1973-74 NHL season.  Maybe Topps only issued these in a select few cities; they are certainly hard to find, although I wouldn't call them scarce.

Now, while the NHL did not have its own pennant, it did have a larger presence. A checklist card had one of nine puzzle pieces on the front (yes, front).  Here's an uncut panel:

Maybe Topps issued a checklist to show there were no WHA cards in the set. Of course, it also helped stiffen the pack.

If you flip it, you get:

Things quieted down for a bit on the secondary issues front until 1979, when a tough to find little item came out:

Once again I had to nail scans from Bobby Burrell's Vintage Hockey Collector Price Guide (1st edition; he's now up to a 2nd edition).  Topps was experimenting with similar type pairings in the US across most of their sports lines (but not basketball). They would repeat the procedure in 1980-81 as well, although it's unclear to me if that was just a reissue of the blister pack.  I'm amazed it still has Topps as being in Brooklyn; they were pretty much using their Duryea, PA address from 1969 onward and I believe this is the latest date where I have seen such a thing. Here is how the interior of the wrapper looks:

For our last peek at secondary hockey offerings, here is a familiar looking Giant Photo as Topps issued similar ones for baseball and football in the US:

Hanlon looks like he should be on the bridge of Battlestar Galactica! The ginormous O-Pee-Chee logo on the reverse is absolutely killer:

At 5" x 7", these were pretty big, weren't they?

Back with a look at some hockey premiums next week.

More, More, More

Topps began a mostly uninspiring run of cards across all lines starting around 1974 that would continue through the end of the decade.  There were some exceptions of course but the painstakingly designed graphics of the previous quarter century were giving way to a more homogenized look once they became an established public company.  This of course was a look also shared by their Canadian partner, O-Pee-Chee. More subsets and more efficient packaging (more cards, less wrapper, less gum) were what Topps was moving towards as rising prices from the oil embargo had changed the economics of the time. Looking back on it, it's clear the second golden age of Topps (roughly spanning 1961-73), which was part of a lineage going back to the heady post World War 2 years, essentially ended within a year or so of their first IPO in 1972. That's OK though, we'll muddle through.

Finishing off our look at the 70's NHL regular issues (stay tuned for the WHA and standalone sets) brings us to 1974-75 and the first season both Topps and O-Pee-Chee both came out with one big issue all at once. Card counts:

Topps: 264
OPC:   396

There's not much to say on either front. The cards were pretty generic and only Topps had an insert (a reverse from the year prior):

This OPC card of Billy Smith looks like it was taken in his den-check out the baseboard heater in the background! Still, the card stock and sharpness of printing were much better in Canada:

The insert was a very basic scratch off game with no graphic elements to speak of.  Topps also issued similar inserts with their Football and Basketball sets this year as well.  Not many people seem to be aware of these:

The first standalone WHA card set came out for 1974-75 and will be looked at in an all WHA post coming next.

The 1975-76 sets are even more bland than their immediate predecessors:

Topps: 330
OPC:   396

That Topps count means double prints abounded, 66 subjects in all; a scourge that was spreading to their other sports lines as there is nothing more double printed than DP's from the mid- 70's and later! Copyright dates have been added for Topps (but not O-Pee-Chee) and also the NHLPA:

O-Pee-Chee's claim to fame this season was poor cutting I guess, I could not square this one up for the life of me:

For the first time since they both began co-issuing cards, neither Topps nor OPC had an insert this year, although a standalone cloth sticker set (look for an upcoming post) was issued in the US and O-Pee-Chee had their WHA issue.

1976-77 saw a bit of brightening and a reduction by Topps:

Topps: 264
OPC:   396

A much better design than those of the prior two years makes this much more appealing visually. Topps had some crazy cuts as well, check out the back of the Daigle card, which is squared up:

O-Pee-Chee once again with the better stock, which made things easier to read for sure. Look, you can even see they added their own copyright date:

Topps also included a nice Glossy Photo insert this year, 22 in the set, while OPC for some reason did not.  Note the copyright date, which is pretty rare on Topps or OPC cards of the era:

1977-78 was virtually a repeat of the prior season, even the inserts made a return (across both lines):

Topps: 264
OPC:   396

Here is Topps with its muddy reverse:

And the super easy to read OPC:

The picture quality definitely went up a notch this season.

The Glossy Photo inserts looked quite similar to the prior year's but here are some subtle differences (and player changes). In addition, each company offered inserts with both rounded and square corners, which is somewhat bizarre.  Topps first:

Not sure if the rounding machine went bust or not.  There seems to be very little difference in pricing though as squares just go for a hair more:

And now OPC.  Except for the copyright, they look identical to the Topps offerings:

1978-79 brought card counts of (wait for it):

Topps: 264
OPC:   396

This might be the worst design of the "bland era".  Look at this Topps version:

Stop me if you've heard this before but the O-Pee-Chee's are a model of legibility yet again. This Reed Larson card also displays a classic OPC rough cut along its top border:

Inserts prevailed on both sides of the border.  Topps had a nice "combo" white back sticker, 16 in all, that mixed a larger team logo with three smaller stickers designed to be stuck on a kid's helmet or stick. It's really quite a nice little set:

O-Pee-Chee had a two-sided insert of dubious collector value, namely six different premium offers and ads designed to push a product called Super Bazooka:

I like the way it was assumed you could navigate the French only text on one side and the English only on the other! How you feel about the poster premium being an official Topps/OPC product is entirely up to you. The non O-Pee-Chee address makes it a third party item to my mind and the five other inserts all had different premiums on them.

1979-80 is, of course, the most famous hockey set of its time thanks to the inclusion of Wayne Gretzky's rookie card. Once again we rest at:

Topps: 264
OPC:   396

The full bleed blue border and inventive reverse design make for a compelling set.  I'll use the great one to look at both Topps and O-Pee-Chee.  After all, it's the hockey card of the decade (and last 35 years):

That's also a much better design than the previous season's effort.  O-Pee-Chee brings the clarity but know this, that dark stain on the front of the Gretzky card (between the L & E in "Oilers") is a printing flaw that exists on a lot of his rookies and is often a lot longer than the one seen here:

Topps repeated their sticker inserts, even adding five more, while OPC demurred. Helpfully dated (as were the one issued the year before), these also have a premium offer that was being pushed by them across their sports cards lines this year:

O-Pee-Chee though, did offer a pack configuration with a stick of Hockey Bubble Gum that may or may not fall into the insert category but with a wrapper bearing team logos on the interior. This bubble gum was also issued on its own over a roughly two or three year period to boot and will be looked at in the upcoming "standalone" post I have planned.

I have remarked before that 1980 is the last year of the decade of the 70's (do the math) so the 1980-81 season's offerings will conclude my look at over 30 consecutive years of hockey issues (including a two season hiccup!).  Once again, no variance in the set counts:

Topps: 264
OPC:   396

The Topps cards had a scratch off feature on the front:

 

The scratch off overlays were not limited to the regular issue cards either. Yeccch!

O-Pee-Chee did not conduct this ill-advised experiment:

An insert from Topps gave us sixteen 5" x 7" team posters but was five teams shy of the full 21 in the NHL at the time! Check out the commodity number (product number) along the right edge:

The Whalers, Jets, Nordiques and Oilers all missed the cut. Those four teams were absorbed into the NHL when the WHA mercy killing occurred in 1979, while the Calgary Flames were also omitted, having moved from Atlanta before the start of the season. Topps either didn't have good team photos to use given all the merging and moving or just plain didn't care enough to provide OPC with production materials. The latter option gets my vote.

More hockey to come...hope all y'all are liking this lengthy look.