Black Friday binge: Brushstrokes

Some of the nicest autograph cards, at least that I've found in my hours of mindlessly browsing eBay and COMC, are the Brushstrokes inserts from the Upper Deck's 2008-09 Legends Masterpieces set. The main set itself, comprised of 89 painted cards of retired NHL greats, is one of the best looking hockey sets of the last decade (far, far better looking than the ugly Masterpieces set Upper Deck released last year). The Brushstrokes use the same painted look, but add paper-framing and big, on-card signatures. 

Just look at that card. It's gorgeous. The other nice thing about these cards is that some of them can be found fairly cheap on the secondary market. So I try to pick them up whenever I find them at a reasonable price (read: $5 or less). 

There appear to be more than 50 cards in the Brushstrokes set, including some fairly rare folks such as Vladislav Tretiak and Manon Rheaume. Most are and will likely always be beyond my price range. But there are a fair number of "rank-and-file" NHL'ers like Rich Sutter who collectors of a certain age all remember well from watching hockey games as kids. (It's almost like these card companies know what they're doing.)

MacLeish was key member of the Broad Street Bullies, the Flyers teams that won back-to-back Cups in the mid '70's. He was also the first Flyer to score 50 goals in a season. 

You might call Tkaczuk the Pete Best of Canada: According to Wikipedia, Team Canada invited him to its training camp for the 1972 Summit Series. But he turned down the invitation and was subsequently replaced by Bobby Clarke. 

I saved the best for last. Rod Langway  was past his prime when I started watching hockey. But the guy I knew as "the old guy on the Capitals" was better known as the "Secretary of Defense" and one of the top defensemen in NHL for years. He began his career with the Montreal Canadiens where he was part of the last Cup run of the Dryden-Lafleur dynasty years. Traded to Washington before the start of the 1982-83 season, (along with Doug Jarvis and others for Ryan Walter Rick Green), he proceeded to win two consecutive Norris Trophies and become the first American-born player to make the year-end All-Star team in more than three decades. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2002. 

A Hall of Famer, a fantastic '80s jersey and a large, almost-legible autograph. Cards don't get much nicer than this.