Old surprises, Part 1: Vintage hockey

A few months ago I made a quick trip home for a family birthday. My mom has been asking me for years to go through all my old hockey and baseball cards, because she and my father have been lugging them around for about two decades now and I imagine they'd like to finally be rid of them. But, being the great parents they are, they don't want to give them away until I've had a chance to go through them at least once as an adult. I've always said I would eventually get around to it.

Well, I finally did. And it was awesome. There were thousands upon thousands of cards, some in boxes, some in binders, all sealed away for years in two giant, plastic tubs that were hard to carry more than about five feet a time without throwing out my now-old-man back. Of course, most of 'em were late '80s, early '90s Score and ProSet and other all-stars of the Junk Wax Era. But there was quite a bit of really cool stuff -- way too much to feature in one post. So I'll start today with five of my favorite cards from a random assortment of vintage hockey.

1974-75 O-Pee-Chee Stan Mikita

By far the oldest card I found was this 1974-75 O-Pee-Chee of Chicago Black Hawks star and Hall of Famer Stan Mikita, posed with his trademark oversized helmet. I have no idea how I came to own this, since it was produced about half a decade before I was born and I wouldn't have had much money to buy vintage stars as a kid. But there it is. What's especially cool is that it's in fantastic shape -- at least excellent condition, to my untrained eye. That makes it something of a rarity in the vintage collection I assembled as a kid.

1981-82 O-Pee-Chee Jari Kurri (RC)

When I was about seven or eight and still living in Toronto, my best friend was a kid by name of Markus whose family was Finland. Markus taught me all about the Finnish stars in the NHL at the time and I've had a soft spot for the country ever since. The biggest Finnish star of all, at least before Teemu Selanne came along, was Wayne Gretzky's long-time wingman, Jari Kurri. So this Kurri rookie card would have been one of my most prized posessions as a kid, even if it has a dinged corner or two. This one of a handful of rookie cards of semistars I found while digging through those plastic tubs, including, including a badly worn Doug Wilson from 1978-79 O Pee Chee, Dave Andreychuk from 1984-85 O-Pee Chee and Mike Vernon from 1987-88 O-Pee Chee. There were even a handful of early cards of a few Hall of Famers, including third-years of Mark Messier, Ray Bourque and Denis Savard. Not bad for a kid who would have been building his collection through a weekly allowance of maybe $20.

1983-84 O-Pee-Chee Denis Potvin (Highlights)

The highlights cards from 1983-84 O-Pee-Chee are some of my favorite hockey cards from the 1980's, because there a bunch of stars and/or players who I liked as a kid and some really cool photos. The two best, at least in my opinion, are this one, which commemorates Islanders defenseman Denis Potvin scoring 20 points in 20 playoff games and leading the New York Islanders to their fourth consecutive Stanley Cup, and #23, which shows two young Edmonton Oilers stars -- Wayne Gretzky and Mark Messier -- celebrating a goal and commemorates the Oilers setting a new NHL record for most goals in a season. I actually found both (along #183, which celebrates a four-point game for Montreal Canadiens legend Guy Lafleur). But I chose to highlight this one because A)it's in much better shape than my well-loved Gretzky/Messier and B)it's a cool glimpse of the greatest trophy in sports.

1986-87 O-Pee-Chee Kelly Hrudey

This has to be the most 1980's hockey card ever. I'm not 100 percent certain of this, but I believe this card captures Kelly Hrudey just arriving to Islanders practice after a Flashdance rehearsal. This is one of about 50 or cards I found from 1986-87 O-Pee-Chee, a stack that included several big stars but, alas, no Patrick Roy rookie. Probably the second-best card of the stack is Cam Neely's first card as a Boston Bruin. I thought about showing that one off instead but it has a rather unfortunate stain of some kind on it. And Neely isn't wearing a headband.

1988-89 O-Pee-Chee Mike Krushelnyski

This card is important for two reasons. First, it's one of the best so-bad-it's good airbrushing jobs ever. Mike here looks more like a comic book superhero than a hockey player. Second, and more seriously, that the understated little stamp, "Traded to Kings 8-9-88," doesn't just mark a trade. It marks The Trade. The one in which the Edmonton Oilers sent Wayne Gretzky (along with Krushelnyski and longtime Gretzky bodyguard Marty McSorley) to the Los Angeles Kings in exchange for Jimmy Carson, Martin Gelinas, three first round picks and $15 million. It's the most important trade in hockey history and maybe in sports history (though off the top of my head, Babe Ruth to the Yankees and Herschel Walker for a Dallas Cowboys dynasty might be in the conversation, too.) So this is actually a historically cool card. And I think it's the only one to have that little "traded" stamp