A 62-year-old hockey card

I'm not sure what exactly prompted it, but I've found myself increasingly drawn to very old hockey cards lately. Don't get me wrong, I've always really liked any vintage cards I've happened across. But I've just generally been more interested in cards from the 1980's, probably because that's when so many of the stars I grew up watching had their rookie cards. (It doesn't hurt that cards from that decade are a heckuva lot cheaper, too).

Maybe it's the fun I've had working on the 1971-72 set. Whatever it is, I finally pulled the trigger on a card from much, much earlier than that:

This is from Parkhurst's 1953-54 set, which was the company's third and the first that used larger cards that are pretty close to the size of modern day ones. Aldo Guidolin is hardly a household name. A rugged defenseman who played just 182 career games in the NHL over parts of four seasons, all with the New York Rangers. He spent the vast majority of his professional career bouncing around the American Hockey League, before a mostly minor-league coaching career that included part of one season as head coach of tje Colorado Rockies in the NHL. What's most interesting to me is Aldo's minor-league roots: He played his junior hockey Guelph, with the fantastically named Biltmore Mad Hatters. He won a Memorial Cup in 1952 with the Biltmores, which was then affiliated the New York Rangers. The team eventually moved 20 minutes away to Kitchener, where it is now known as the Kitchener Rangers of the Ontario Hockey League. And that, it turns out, is how an OHL team in Kitchener ended up with the same name and colors as the New York Rangers.

This card is "only" graded a 2, but I think that's underselling it because the front appears to be, at least to my untrained eyes, nearly flawless. All four corners are very sharp. And the border is still white; it hasn't faded to gray or yellow like so many older cards. It really is nearly flawless. By the way, this appears to be one of only a handful of cards in this 100-card set that print the player's name on the front instead of using a facsimile of his signature. My guess is that Aldo was so obscure (I believe this is his only hockey card) that the designers at Parkhurst didn't know what his signature looked like.

The back is where you can see why the card was given a "2" grade, as there is some fairly significant staining going on. At least most of it is over the French half of the writeup. The back was part of why I decided I wanted this card, as it includes a mention of Aldo's time with Guelph. Thanks primarily to the low grade, this card only set me back $10, shipping included. Not bad for a card that is more than 60 years old!