74-75 OPC WHA Set Card by Card #1 - The Howes

The WHA was an interesting league to say the least, and what might have been more interesting was OPC's approach to handling its business with respect to the league. OPC had been making NHL cards for a few years before this bump in the road existed and with the WHA beginning their season in 72-73, OPC decided to include them in their NHL set. What OPC did was dedicated a series 3 to WHA players which was cards 280-341. The following season, OPC released a WHA Posters Set and then in 74-75 OPC released its own WHA set featuring 66 cards including a checklist. Here is OPC's inaugural WHA set card by card.  

74-75 OPC #1 The Howes/Les Howes

 This card is a very interesting one for a few reasons. It is the first "card" to feature Gordie Howe in his WHA uniform and it features him with two of his sons. Technically it is a rookie card for Mark and Marty as well but for whatever reason it isn't considered one by the Beckett Hockey Monthly. In baseball multiplayer cards are often considered rookies, just see Nolan Ryan for an example. Nolan's rookie also featured Jerry Koosman but I guess in hockey the rules are different. Mark and Marty get their rookies the following year when OPC released their much larger 132 card 75-76 OPC set.

The card itself, feature all three Howes in a studio shot with facsimile autos of all three on the front as well.

Here is the back of the card. Check out those stats! In all it is a very cool first card of the set and I like that OPC did the triple player card of the Howes and didn't feature them on any other cards in the set. Also neat to see that Mark started his career as a Left Winger before eventually making the move to defense. The 1973-74 WHA season was a fine one for the Houston Aeros with the Howe boys winning the Avco World Trophy aka Avco Cup. A 45 year old Gordie Howe lead the team in scoring with his 100 points and put up another 17 in 13 playoff games.

This card certainly is one of the more famous cards to come out of the mid-70's and I think is one of those cards that most Howe collectors and WHA collectors must have. Personally, I don't think OPC could have picked a better first card for their set.

Welcome to The History of Hockey Cards

Welcome to my new blog. Wax Stain Rookie will always be going but I want to focus on the history of hockey cards too. It has been a blog idea for many years and I started the blog a few years ago. I never posted anything because of time, and lack of direction. I think I have a little time now and I think I have an idea of what direction I want to take with it. With that being said, still going to be in my style of posting so I apologize for that but I am striving for quantity over quality. If I proof read everything I did I would have a 10th as many posts as I do because I tend to have a bit of a perfectionism in me so when I start to care about something I tend to over analyze. But if I attempt something without that exception of it being flawless, I have no problem just letting the grammatical errors flow. I still am going to stick to the facts however so what you read here will be true as far as I know the truth.

The design is going to be a work in progress to say the least. I have no idea of how I want it to look etc, but I thought I would begin with material and let it organically evolve. So those very talented bloggers out there with design backgrounds and programming skills will need to bear with me and endure some time of uncertainty.

I hope to look at sets, singles, inserts and the evolution of hockey cards from 1910 until current day. My first topic will be the 74-75 OPC WHA hockey set. I am going to break the set down card by card and allow those to have a chance to see it for the first time or find some appreciation for a set they already own. If you have ideas for my blog please share them with me but that is where I am going to start. So, next post, card number 1 from the 74-75 OPC WHA set.

I promise, my set will look better than this one I shared a while back from one of my mystery boxes.