How did you start collecting, and what was your first hockey card?

[Leafsman]

Hi folks,

Here’s a story that I don't tell very often, but I enjoy telling it. It is the story of how I got into collecting. Hope you enjoy:

I got into card collecting by accident. I liked hockey since I was five (which was during the 1983-84 season). I have cerebral palsy and there are no sledge hockey programs in the area where I live. I didn't have a favourite team back then, but I watched Hockey Night in Canada every Saturday. The Oilers were in their heyday then, so many of the games featured the Oilers. A couple of years later, I saw a man on Toronto that liked to hit anything that moved in an opposing jersey, who could skate well, score, shoot hard and hit hard. That man was Wendel Clark. He fought anyone, and more often than not, came out on the better end of the fight. Simply put, Wendel Clark is the reason I became a Leafs fan.

My parents found a store that sold the Panini sticker albums. The first album I got was the 1988-89 album. You can bet that every time I went to that store I bought a few packs. I completed the album too! I did the same for 1989-90, and 1990-91. My first experience with cards was with the 1988-89 Esso NHL All-Star Collection. They were cards that you stuck into the appropriate place in the album and it included cards with facsimile autographs of each player. Looked like this:

Esso Album.jpgessocards-88-89.jpg

The cool thing is, I still have that album. I still have those Panini sticker albums too (although a pet rabbit we had during that time chewed the corner of one of the Panini albums, but the collection of stickers in the album is not compromised). They are packed away in a box somewhere.

In the 1989-90 school year, my two-room school closed down (YES, I went to a two room school with two teachers, where in one room, one teacher taught kindergarten to grade 5 and the in the other, the second teacher taught grades 6-12 ALL AT THE SAME TIME). We all went to a school about a half an hour away. Of course, this lead to meeting new people and making new friends. One of the first people I met was a boy whose parents ran a general store in my hometown (he started out as a Montreal Canadiens fan but was teased so mercilessly that he switched to Toronto and has been a Leafs fan ever since LOL). The day before we got out for Christmas a couple of years later, we had our annual class Christmas party. Everyone had drawn a name a few weeks prior and you had to give that person a small gift. Who got my name? The store owner's son. What did he get me? Two packs of hockey cards. The first one I saw upon opening the first pack was this one:

First Card.jpg

This was the true beginning of my collecting career because it was the first cards I got from an officially licensed product. I decided almost from day one that I wanted rookie cards only. I deviated from that a couple times, experimenting with collecting autographed jersey cards, but when it dawned on me that the card companies were slicing and dicing jerseys of well-known current players and hall of famers simply to make a profit, I developed a disdain for autographed jersey cards. I have very few in my PC - limited to female players (who I feel are sorely underappreciated and undervalued in the hobby) and one of Vladislav Tretiak with the Russian national team. Most others are for trade.

SP Authentic didn't come along until 1997-98 and cards were not signed or serial numbered back then, but I liked the set right away. From that point on, I decided on SP Authentic as my go-to set, but I would only collect key players for each team, whether the card was signed or not.

As the years went by, my disability began to hinder my enjoyment for the hobby. My cerebral palsy affects my entire right side, so I only have full use of my left hand. Sometimes people would send multiple cards in one toploader to save on shipping costs. I hated that practice immediately because I have only one fully-functional hand and I find it extremely difficult to transfer cards into their own holder without causing damage (I often drop the card(s) when transferring them). I got so fed up with this practice and my inability to handle cards without damaging them that on February 15, 2015 I decided to focus on collecting BGS 9.5 copies. This way I could handle the card and not worry too much about damaging the card if I dropped it. I had some before that date though.

The first graded card I got was the BGS 9.5 Martin Brodeur Score RC which I got over ten years before in 2004, I think it was:

NJ - Brodeur BGS 9.5 Score RC.jpg

My collection now stands at 1,111 rookie cards (183 are BGS 9.5, including incoming cards).

So, there's my "collecting origins" story, and the first cards that mean something to me.

What's your collecting origin story, and what was your first card?

Tony

[MR.M's Cards]

this is an awesome read !!!!!!!!!!!! should make for a great thread !!!!!!!!!!!!

[opulent jupiter]

What an amazing story! Thanks for sharing Tony....

[opulent jupiter]

For me it all started in around 1977. Not with hockey but Star Wars.
Like many of us, Star wars was the first real big picture movie we saw. I was hooked from the start. I collected everything stars wars. I still have my original sets that I collected. It was pretty easy for me to get cards as all the kids at school would buy the O-Pee-Chee surprise packages that were sold in and around London, ON. Each bag contain a crap load of candy and a pack of cards- Happy Days, James Bond, Elvis, and Star Wars! The kids would eat the candy and grab the gum from the packs and leave the cards on my desk. I still have them.

Anyway. This lead me into hockey cards. Being a rambunctious , hyper kid my parents saw that collecting cads kept me calm and focused. I think they call it ADD know lol. My Dad, who himself collected and still has Sherrif coins of all types (A whole other story), decided that he and I should save our change and every hockey season buy a couple boxes of O-Pee-Chee cards from the store that we lived 4 houses away from. Back them you could buy one box and get a set plus! We did this every year together until about 1990 when things went a little nuts in the hobby. I continued on my own paying for packs and boxes where I could. As I got part time jobs it got easier.
The only real beak I have ever taken was when I was in college and sadly had to sell some of the sets off to pay for other recreational activities (Not the illegal kind ;).
I have since a massed a pretty nice collection. I have almost all the complete the OPC sets back to 1972 and some partial sets from the years prior. And thanks to many of you I am a little closer to completing some!

That's my story in a nutshell,

Happy Collecting!

[creasecollector]

Great read, Tony! Thank you so much for sharing how you started to collect hockey cards. That Esso NHL All-Star Collection is very impressive and I love the look of those cards.

I had no idea your rookie card collection was that large. An incredible feat for sure to track down over 1,100 total rookie cards for your collection. Here's to 2,000! Do you have a specific type of rookie card that you collect? Young Guns only, or any type of 'true' rookie card?

As for me, I started collecting when I was a kid like most people. I presumably started later then most on here, and I'd place it somewhere in the late 90's or earlier 00's, but sadly lost my collection binder in a move (it was originally a photo album that I stuck these really sweet NHL stickers on and scribbled "Hockey Cards" in Crayons on the front & back covers. A true gem). After losing that small collection, I stopped collecting for a few years to be a kid and further develop my mini stick skills. I did eventually find that binder and still have the cards inside. And of course, in true 90's fashion, all the cards are worthless :)

Fast-forward to around 2005-2006, and I found myself stuffing my pockets with change to walk to the variety store to buy packs of cards for a couple bucks each. I was bit by the bug once again and there was no stopping me. Ahhhhh, those were the days. I never hit anything memorable, but I would always keep the Brodeur's, Belfour's, and random goalie cards I liked. Plus trade with my friends if they had anything cool from their packs.

Once I got deeper and deeper into this cardboard addiction hobby, I signed up for eBay a year or so later to buy singles I liked and start to build up my collection even more. Though I still pickup random cards I like here and there, I really decided to focus my collection down to a few select goaltenders to base my main collection around. This was around 2010-2011.

As for my first card, I have no idea what that was, however, I have amassed many more since then and I will continue to appreciate these cards and the stories that go along with them.

[piper1]

A cousin gave me a stack of old Parkhurst cards so no one player was my first card. I recall that the first pack of cards my dad bought me was 62/63 Parkhurst but I didn't start doing multiple packs until four years later.

[Rraincock]

I got started around 1989... maybe early 1990. My cousin Tim gave me a mit full of cards. Sometimes I remember there being ProSet in it... sometimes it was just 1989-90 OPC. Either way, I remember the first significant cards in my collections being a Theo Fleury RC, a Joe Sakic RC (which I traded for a Wendyk Clark RC)... soon it was the UD rookies of Belfour, Fedorov, Roenick and the "Canada's Captains" card where Lindros was/was not supposed to be featured.

I do remember the bubble gum days... but the highlight of my first collecting days was trading right in the thick of the 1990 insanity. I still HUNGER for a Pro Set Stanley Cup Hologram....

My first autograph (in pack) was a 1994 (?) Classic Brian Savage Team Canada. My first memorabilia was a Steve Shields goalie pad card from Black Diamond (99-00 or thereabouts).

[Stryfex]

I have so many fond memories of being a kid getting into hockey cards. I don't unfortunately have great clarity on exactly what was first.

I know I collected the ESSO book set just like OP and I loved that thing. I remembered that as stickers though? I didn't complete the whole thing but that was okay to little-kid me. I believe the first set that I collected alot of volume of was 90-91 pro-set which has a very fond place in my heart. I loved how colorful those cards were and the error variations being trackable and how there were cool subsets for all-stars and referees and coaches and even the puck had it's own card haha. I LOVED that set and still love looking at it to this day. It just sucks that so many cards come out of packs damaged - this didn't matter as a kid but bothers me today as an adult.

90-91 Proset, 90-91 Upper Deck were big starts for me...the ESSO book as well as any other promotional type cards that I could get access to.

[jogesc2]

1986/87 O-Pee-Chee Lanny McDonald was the first one I can remember getting. My uncle took me to the corner store to buy some packs and I was hooked. I still love the design of that set, I kept them in a Pot of Gold chocolate box my mom had given me. I loved drawing the goalie cards from that set, especially the Patrick Roy rookie card!! I still have a lot of those original cards just not the Roy rookie. I've since bought the set and still enjoy going back and looking at those cards.

[subban7677]

I first started ripping packs in 1985-86. Still remember the first card pulled from my first pack of OPC. No idea why I remember it, but it was Mark Napier. Saw the Oilers jersey, only to be disappointed it wasn't a Gretzky.