While individual 1982-83 OPC Hockey rack packs are some of the most common of those OPC released between 1979 and 1989, cases are rare. This one was offered for sale in April 2006.
Interestingly, OPC was the only company to make a major hockey set this year; Topps didn’t issue cards in 1982-83. Anywho, you can see on the case that it held four sealed 24-count boxes, each containing 51-card rack packs from O-Pee-Chee. The set’s key rookies include Dale Hawerchuk, Brent Sutter, Grant Fuhr, and Ron Francis.
The Baseball Card Exchange offered this sealed case for $3,375 at some point in its history (there’s no date online).
BBCE must have offered that case for sale quite a while ago because REA sold this single rack box for $5,040 in late 2023.
To round things out, here’s an example rack pack with Wayne Gretzky’s record-breaker card on top. It sold for $275 in April 2024.
I always feel bad for vintage hockey unopened collectors; finding these items is tougher than tracking down a unicorn. Here’s one of them, a 1961/62 Topps Five-Cent Display Box.
Mastro included this one in their December 2004 Sports Auctions of Distinction catalog.
During the early 1960’s, Topps Chewing Gum Company printed NHL hockey cards in the United States, and then shipped the vast majority of them to its Canadian subsidiary. There, O-Pee-Chee, the affiliate company, produced its own packaging for use in distributing the cards north of the U.S. border. Offered is an original 36-Count display box from the Topps/O-Pee-Chee series of 1961/62. The 8” x 3-3/4” x 1-7/8” box, with the issue’s scarce stamp insert prominently featuring in its front-panel graphics, grades at least NM with only very mild, natural handling faults. This scarce relic is a superb representative of a highly collectible U.S.-Canadia collaborative effort.
The minimum bid at the time was $200; that wouldn’t be close to enough today. In the fall of 2022, REA sold a display box, perhaps the same one, that they described as the first they had ever handled and the only example they had seen available at public auction in the past twenty years for $10,500.
Still interested in vintage hockey unopened? In the market for an authenticated 1961/62 Topps hockey wax pack? BBCE listed this one on their site in August 2004 for $25k. PSA has only slabbed seven.
Here’s an awesome summary of the Hockey Sheets that Upper Deck distributed at games during the 1991/92 NHL season, as presented in Allan Kaye’s Sports Cards in April 1992.
I had previously written a four-part series of blog posts related to Upper Deck’s commemorative sheets that I may republish here or via a magazine in the future, so if you’re interested in more about them, please contact me. In the meantime, here are a pair of examples from the 1991/92 distribution, as discussed in the article.
“How can you say you’ve got the whole set when you haven’t got what it came in?” Here’s Ed Henderson’s look at the collectibility of wrappers from the November 1992 issue of Baseball Cards Magazine.
PS: I’d love to see a resurgence of multi-page hobby writing like this today.
The June 1983 edition of The Trader Speaks featured this great piece by Robert Udelson, highlighting four great oddball sets, new for 1983!
You’ll find the first cards commonly called the 1982-83 Neilson Wayne Gretzky Hockey set. And while they’re pretty nifty, the coolest collectible from the set is the 25” x 33” store display sign featuring all 50 cards. Classic Auctions sold this one in November 2017 for $179.
Udelson wrote that the backs of the Gardner’s Brewers cards were very similar to that year’s Topps issue; well, that’s because Topps printed the set! So the hobby now calls the set the 1983 Topps Gardner’s Bakery Milwaukee Brewers cards. The cards remain cheap today. You can grab this pair of graded Yount and Molitor cards on eBay for $50 (July 2024).
The non-standard-sized 23-card 1983 True Value Chicago White Sox cards (2-5/8” x 4-1/8”) would have been tough to assemble in 1983, two at a time, but today, they’re pretty cheap. The Standard Catalog shares that the Sox could not distribute some of the cards because of rainouts, but they were smuggled out to hobby channels anyway; those three cards belong to Harold Baines, Marc Hill, and Salome Barojas.
Frankly, there isn’t much interesting to say about the 1983 L.A. Dodgers Police cards; however, it looks like the partnership to print cards between the Police and the Dodgers lasted a long time. The Standard Catalog lists a set for each year from 1981 to at least 2000, except 1985. This complete set of 1983 cards is available on eBay for $7 (shipped).
So many of us overlook card backs in this day of hard plastic card encapsulation and grading, so I was super happy to find an article dedicated to them while perusing the September 1991 issue of Baseball Cards Magazine.
Baseball Cards Magazine – September 1991
Jim McLauchlin penned an article titled “Card Backs,” in which he celebrated the reverse side of cards. He kicked it off by stating that he likes card backs more than he likes card fronts! Here are the first two pages of the article.
Card Backs – Jim McLauchlin
He talks about the plethora of data that has been included on them, chats about some growing pains in card back design in our hobby’s history before digging into the real story, the specific card back highlights over the past 50 years of sports cards that he jokingly called “the first quasi annual Sy Berger Awards for Card Back Excellence (or Lack Thereof).”
I thought the Set Awards were so well-researched and accurate that they deserved to be shared with folks who don’t have junk-wax-era card magazine back issues, so I’ll share a highlight card from many of the categories before sharing the rest of the article.
Best Cartoons: 1977-78 Topps Basketball
He noted their incredible variety.
1977 Topps Swen Nater
I’ll also note that Guernsey’s sold a lot of original card cartoon art in the 1989 Topps Auction.
Topps Basketball Cartoons – The Topps Auction 1989
Best Cartoon Theme: 1974 Topps Football
Leisure-time activities.
1974 Topps Ken Stabler
Best Back Photography
Anything by Upper Deck.
1991 Upper Deck Jose Lind
Best Narratives
1955 Bowman Baseball.
1955 Bowman Vern Law
Best Non-Use of the Word “Defenseman”
1990-91 Pro Set Hockey for using terms like rugged blue liners, crafty blue liners, veteran blue liners, and bruising blue liners.
Best Bios
1961 Fleer Football.
1961 Fleer Gene Lipscomb
Word Card Back Idea
Puzzles.
Worst Use of Stats
Classic.
Best Quote
1990 Score Football Johnny Johnson.
1990 Score Johnny Johnson
Best Trivia
1975 Topps Carlton Fisk.
1975 Topps Carlton Fisk
Best Prophecy
1958 Topps Sandy Koufax.
1958 Topps Sandy Koufax
Best Cartoon
1971 Topps Football Spider Lockhart.
1971 Topps Spider Lockhart
Best Overused Bio Material
He challenged readers to find a Joe Nuxhall card that didn’t say he was the youngest player in the majors.
Best Obscure Information
1990 Pro Set Football Chris Singleton.
1990 Pro Set Chris Singleton
Worst Use of Stats
1971 Topps Football Charlie Krueger.
1971 Topps CHarlie Krueger
Best Hobby
1958 Topps Stan Lopata.
1958 Topps Stan Lopata
Best Expansion of Standard Height, Weight
1963 Topps Dick Radatz.
1963 Topps Dick Radatz
Best Culinary Card
1974-75 Topps Basketball Louis Dampier.
1974 Topps Louie Dampier
Best We’ll Find Something Nice To Say About This Spud If It Kills Us
I love finding advertisements for items I have in the Hobby Library; here’s one such piece from Allan Kaye’s Sports Cards News & Price Guides April 1992 edition for the massive, 1000+ page Charlton Hockey Card Price Guide.
The advertisement mentioned the release of their third edition, but the photo is of the second, so I’m going to take that as “close enough.” Here’s the cover of my “hobby used” copy.
There certainly aren’t as many hockey guides as baseball ones in the hobby, so the fact that this one is so extensive makes it a must-have for collectors; look at the vastness of the table of contents.
A highlight for me is that the book contains more than sets; there are pieces related to card grading and counterfeits.
You also get a few nostalgic ads within the book; not much was “limited” in the early 90s concerning production.
Keeping the scans in numerical order, here’s an example of how they described counterfeits.
Of course, most of the book is the price guide; here’s how they showed those: the price movement chart was a nice touch.
The Charlton Hickey Card Price Guide also includes an excellent player checklist.
