History of hockey cards

Way before the first baseball cards and football cards were produced in the US, hockey cards were already being made in Canada. Estimates peg the birth of the first hockey cards at 125 years ago.

Towards the final years of the 19th century, hockey clubs and colleges in Quebec and New England gained publicity through photos and cards. Gum packs nor snacks were not the sources of the first sets that featured named players; instead, these were available in cigarette packs. These now priceless treasures differed in size (at 1 1/2" x 2 ½") compared to our bicycle spoke-riding, glue swimming cards today. But they did feature colour portraits of the popular hockey players. Back then, teams that made the headlines came from Quebec, Ottawa, Montreal and Renfrew (Vancouver). Names like Georges Vezina, Fred Cyclone Taylor, and Art Ross were the titans of those days. World War One closed this early age, and one had to go south to the US for record of who kept the fires of hockey alive during those war years.

After the Great War and with the revival of interest in the game, the first National Hockey League set called William-Patterson appeared in 1923 carrying the names of players from Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto, Hamilton and Boston. The names of Howie Morenz, Aurele Joliat, and King Clancy were gaining ground at around this time.

The food and candy manufacturers got into the hockey card fray by gifting those who could mail back complete sets of the cards that were bonuses in their packages. The cards of the O-Pee-Chee Chewing Gum company would turn out to be the authority. O-Pee-Chee stopped production at the start of World War II. The stars to remember back then were Eddie Shore, Charlie Conacher, Ace Bailey, Turk Broda, Toe Blake, Elmer Lach and Syl Apps.

Prior to 1951, Parkhurst Products had enjoyed a three year monopoly of card production. Topps and O-Pee-Chee entered once more the business, and through more interesting and colourful cards edged out Parkhurst by 1964. By 1968 Topps and O-Pee-Chee were the top sellers of hockey cards in North America. Topps took care of the U.S. market while O-Pee-Chee promoted Canada. O-Pee-Chee continued as a major supplier of hockey cards until 1995 when they entrusted everything to Topps.

Things were not easy for Topps, competition from other brands being not the least among its worries, and what with card overproduction to spoil the spirit of collection. The top brands in 1990 were Upper Deck, Pro Set and Score. The rigors of card making forced Pro Set to leave the market by 1993. The reverse was true for Upper Deck, which wooed collectors with white stock paper and excellent photography. Upper Deck remained stable for much of the 1990s.

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Many marketing decisions in the 90s brought hockey card collecting to all time lows, such as the common use of insert and parallel sets, over production in the early 90's, more sets on the market, and frustratingly elusive inserts and parallel cards in the late 90's. Card companies jumped into action with more and more limited edition releases and products.

In the 21st century, many say the card companies' gamble paid off, that former card collectors are now indeed coming back. For example, many collectors have now narrowed their collecting to just a few players, or perhaps just one set per year. Some avidly follow the food issue releases of McDonalds or Kraft, while others go for "Hall of Fame" players, or all cards pre-1990. With all the changes in the hobby over the years, to not follow any rules or system is certainly at the heart of card collecting. How about you, are you interested in autographed cards? Or how about "game used" cards, with so-called equipment relics embedded in the hockey card? How about simply collecting to follow the careers of the greats like Wayne Gretzky, Patrick Roy, Steve Yzerman, Mario Lemieux, a simple Bobby Orr?