Baseball has crowned the San Francisco Giants World Series Champions for the third time in the past five years, announced Mike Trout and Clayton Kershaw as MVP winners and the hot stove discussion is already on the front burner with a few big signings in Boston.  For many collectors, however, the baseball off-season is chance for a break to catch their breath and look forward to the next season while waiting for a sneak peak at the next season’s card design. For some, it is just the signal that it is time to move from one sport to the next.  A New Jersey collector recently returned to Just Collect, Inc. after having sold a smaller portion of his collection to us this past Spring.  The collector told us that he “began collecting back in the early ‘60s.  Mostly baseball cards, especially the Yankees.”  This would account for some of the vintage baseball cards he had collected over the past 6 decades, but doesn’t explain why the collector visited Just Collect again to sell another portion of his collection, his hockey cards.  His love of baseball found a Winter’s friend as the collector noted, “Having spent my high school years in Canada, I developed a love for hockey.  It was then that I began to purchase my O-Pee-Chee hockey sets annually and hockey cards became a large part of my collection, especially the Montreal Canadiens.” The collection consists of some very nice hand collated O-Pee-Chee hockey sets from 1974-75 through 1989-90, including several of the unique insert sets and WHA Sets that were issued by OPC only.  While not entirely inclusive, many of the fantastic sets and key rookies were present.  Mark Howe’s WHA OPC rookie card, Denis Potvin, Mark Messier, Ray Bourque, Jari Kurri, Paul Coffey, Dale Hawerchuk, Scott Stevens, Steve Yzerman, Mario Lemieux, Brett Hull and many other Hall of Fame rookies are represented in addition to the incredible star power of the likes of Plante, Howe, Dryden, Orr, Esposito, Gretzky, Robinson, LaFleur,  Bossy and many of the other greats. 

We used to find O-Pee-Chee hockey to be a far more common in our purchases, but lately, it seems to have become far less prevalent.  Much like vintage football and basketball, we are always excited when we see a nice run of older hockey cards. These great sets and the stars and commons will be broken up and most will be offered individually graded and ungraded via our eBay auctions in the coming weeks. We are always looking to buy fresh vintage hockey collections, so give us a call when you are ready to sell!