This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 11/12/2021
Vintage sportscard hobbyists are well-schooled on Bazooka baseball cards that were cut from the sides of the Bazooka box, but most will just shrug their shoulders at the mention of this collection. Well, it does stand to reason that Bazooka would change direction for our friends north of the border, where hockey is the primary sport. Unlike the American baseball series, which had its own unique design from year to year, the 1971-72 Bazooka hockey series was patterned as a smaller sized, blank-backed version of 1971-72 O-Pee-Chee cards and distributed in a limited area of Canada for only a very brief period of time. Thus, the 36-card 1971 Bazooka series is one the rarest of all hockey issues ever produced. Hand-cut individual cards have surfaced from time to time, almost exclusively in low grade, but this is the first time that we've ever seen a complete hand-cut 36-card set. Included in the collection is the single most elusive Bobby Orr card ever produced (EX/MT) with the large majority of cards carefully and conservatively cut slightly outside the dashes to "err on the side of caution." Since it is a hand-cut series, there is no fixed standard as to the exact size of the card or if the dashes are to be visible or not, but we would call the overall condition in the EX/MT to NM range as it stands, with some slightly higher or lower. A fantastic and extremely rare collection that has Orr joined by the likes of P. Esposito, Hull, H. Richard, Mikita, T. Esposito, Mahovlich, Ullman, and many other stars.