Favorite Years of Hockey Cards

[ronduguayshair]

What are your favorite years of hockey cards? I didn't collect them because they were so rare where I grew up. The history museum here has one Pittsburgh Pirate card for every year. I always thought that would be cool to put on the wall for the Pens.



My favorite year of Baseball cards is Tops 87.

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[Thenameless]

78-79 O-Pee-Chee

 

[ronduguayshair]

78-79 O-Pee-Chee

Nice

 

[NyQuil]

 

[Pominville Knows]

All Panini years.

 

[ted2019]

51-52 Parkhurst

 

[pappyline]

54-55 Topps

 

[SealsFan]

I go with 68-69. The design is poor with the player pictured on the right side of the card with a big space revealing the faded background of anonymous skaters. But I just love the quirky look of the cards plus the fact that it has the western expansion teams wearing their first-year 67-68 uniforms, so you get the rare one-year Penguins design plus the early Seals and the bright satiny Blues jerseys and Minnesota and the Kings as well... not to mention some of the hilarious "photoshops" of players' heads stuck onto another player's body! (Frank Mahovlich, Dave Balon, maybe a few more I'm not remembering)

 

[seventieslord]

Definitely 90-91

 

[sr edler]

It appears Otto and Forslund bought bubble gum from the same dealer.

 

[NyQuil]

One of my favourite hockey cards that really managed to encapsulate a player was the Score 1990-1991 card for Brett Hull:

My brother and I had collected O-Pee-Chee cards pretty much since the early 1980s, but I have to admit that it was an exciting time when trading card competition came about in hockey and the quality of the cards and images improved.

Among the 1980s O-Pee-Chee designs that I liked, I have to say that I liked the Yzerman/Lafontaine rookie year, 1984-1985:

I liked the corner picture of the face of the player. Often with low-def TVs and helmets, you never really got a good view of the player's face depending on the angle of the hockey card.

 

[NHL WAR]

One of my favourite hockey cards that really managed to encapsulate a player was the Score 1990-1991 card for Brett Hull:

My brother and I had collected O-Pee-Chee cards pretty much since the early 1980s, but I have to admit that it was an exciting time when trading card competition came about in hockey and the quality of the cards and images improved.

Among the 1980s O-Pee-Chee designs that I liked, I have to say that I liked the Yzerman/Lafontaine rookie year, 1984-1985:

I liked the corner picture of the face of the player. Often with low-def TVs and helmets, you never really got a good view of the player's face depending on the angle of the hockey card.

84-85 OPC is an awesome set/ design.

 

[Pominville Knows]

Many of the recent Upper Deck Masterpieces are nice.

 

[tony d]

Pro Set 1991-1992

Used to love collecting hockey cards as a kid. My nephew is 9 now(My age in 1991-1992), don't think he collects them.

 

[sr edler]

Pro Set 1991-1992

Agreed, such a nice and simple set with all the new stars of the early 90s (Jagr, Hasek, Fedorov, Mogilny, Bure, Roenick, Sundin, etc.).

My favorite card from that set is probably the Fedorov card because its failure to show anything of what Fedorov was as a player. His speed, or his shot, or his back-checking. No, it's just a guy holding a puck with his left hand, looking at it curiously, while holding his stick with the other hand, with his legs in a peculiar knock-kneed position.

This card also plays on your imagination if you know the story about a puck disappearing in Fedorov's pants in an international game against Sweden (was it World Juniors perhaps?), a game which the Soviets won on a goal with two pucks in play. Looking at this card, you wonder if he's thinking "Should I try to put this one in my pants also? Perhaps no one will notice...."

 

[FerrisRox]

Among the 1980s O-Pee-Chee designs that I liked, I have to say that I liked the Yzerman/Lafontaine rookie year, 1984-1985:

I liked the corner picture of the face of the player. Often with low-def TVs and helmets, you never really got a good view of the player's face depending on the angle of the hockey card.

Design-wise, the '84-'85 set was also my favourite year. For a stretch of years in the '80's, including this one, O-Pee-Chee purchased their photography from a Washington-based photographer, so the players were always playing the Capitals and Washington was the only team depicted in their home uniforms.

There were a few exceptions, some rookies (like Steve Penney who only played four regular season games before starring in the playoffs) were added to the set along with some Olympians, like Pat Flately, who had pictures taken in other buildings, but for the most part, you were always seeing teams facing the Caps.

The one drawback from that era is O-Pee-Chee was often buying cheap photography so shots like the above one of Yzerman were the exception rather than the rule. Most of the pics they purchased were taken in warm up. It was not unusual to see shots of players and goaltenders skating without their helmets on, or, if they were in goal, there would be several pucks in the net behind him because it was from warm up. The 1982-83 set features multiple pictures of the Calgary Flames from practice, with MOLSON written across their jerseys.

My all time favourites though are the poorly done airbrush jobs that would place "traded" players in their new uniforms.

Good memories.

 

[McGuillicuddy]

To me the 84-85 set was the first year where OPC started using some good photography. The vast majority of photos were action shots and the goalies had many great ones (which was all I cared about as a kid ).

Some nice examples:

This is in contrast to previous years (and later as well, unfortunately) where there were a few to many "standing around during warmup" shots. Some unfortunate examples (poor Glen Hanlon):

and the piece de resistance :

And getting back to my point around quality of the 84-85 set, even the much-beleaguered Glen Hanlon got a reasonably fair shake in that set :

 

[Boxscore]

1987-88 OPC were my absolute favorite

 

[DowntownBooster]

My favorite was the 1972-73 O-Pee-Chee set of 341 cards as they also included the WHA as part of the collection. The main reason why I have always liked O-Pee-Chee is that each card will list the stats for all seasons played by that player whereas newer card companies such as Upper Deck only include the last 5 years or so (it could be more but definitely not all the years of that particular player).

 

[FerrisRox]

1987-88 OPC were my absolute favorite

I liked this set too, but my issue with it design-wise was the choice to to add the "wood" pattern to the name section. It can't be a hockey sick because both sections of exposed wood are too big to be the blade of a hockey stick, so it just seems odd to have the wood effect added to it.

 

[c9777666]

1992-93 Score Canadian

 

[Troubadour]

For whatever reason, this is is the very first card I have ever owned:

So I join the Pro Set club.

But I also loved some of the late 90s series. The can cards (which I think were Pinnacle Inside) and especially the 96/97 Pinnacle McDonnald's series which was quite possibly the coolest hockey card set ever, and I hate fast food:

 

[Troubadour]

Agreed, such a nice and simple set with all the new stars of the early 90s (Jagr, Hasek, Fedorov, Mogilny, Bure, Roenick, Sundin, etc.).

My favorite card from that set is probably the Fedorov card because its failure to show anything of what Fedorov was as a player. His speed, or his shot, or his back-checking. No, it's just a guy holding a puck with his left hand, looking at it curiously, while holding his stick with the other hand, with his legs in a peculiar knock-kneed position.

This card also plays on your imagination if you know the story about a puck disappearing in Fedorov's pants in an international game against Sweden (was it World Juniors perhaps?), a game which the Soviets won on a goal with two pucks in play. Looking at this card, you wonder if he's thinking "Should I try to put this one in my pants also? Perhaps no one will notice...."

I remember one hockey card (just can't recall the brand) from the late 90s which was the true opposite of this, I mean it was total Fedorov. He was slapshooting and he had those white Nike skates and it was a horizontal photo. Just can't find it.

 

[ted2019]

 

[sr edler]

I remember one hockey card (just can't recall the brand) from the late 90s which was the true opposite of this, I mean it was total Fedorov. He was slapshooting and he had those white Nike skates and it was a horizontal photo. Just can't find it.

Red Ace series is pretty nice. Front doesn't even look like a hockey card but just a photo with a discreetly printed name on.

Speaking of horizontal cards, in full flight, Alexander Mogilny.