It seems like anytime I read about vintage cards on the net, in a book or a magazine I hear over and over about finds of vintage baseball, football, and or basketball cards. Huge finds giving the hobby some of the finest examples ever, Pristine 100 year old cards that were still in the original packs. How come I don't hear about vintage hockey? Has there ever been a really good find? Packs from 1930's? A box filled with 40's cards that were in an attic, Anything big thats given our hobby of hockey cards some new gems?
That's true. There hasn't been a really well publicized hockey find. I think the reason is that most decent hockey finds are in Canada and there just isn't anyone to tell. In the States there are a few different media outlets to get the word out ie: Beckett, SCD, Tuff Stuff. And since most quality finds end up in a major auction, the person that made the find and the auction house media machine go into high gear. There are guys like Al Rosen who advertise all they're finds so it will hopefully lead to another. In Canada, there were some pretty big deals made in the 90's but the same 2 dealers made 95% of the biggest deals. The same dealer had someone call them with a run of unopened material from the 50's and 60's, and then a few years later someone walked in with vending boxes of 58 and 59 Parkies. There just wasn't that much hockey made and a lot of it was concentrated in the Ontario and Quebec area. If there were 10% of the high grade buyers that there are in baseball, prices would be through the roof. Jim.
In reference to the 1950's - 60's unopened wax deal, I spoke to the dealer that handled that deal. There were 20 boxes of unopened hockey from both Parkhurst and Topps from the late 1950's and early 1960's. The dealer saw the boxes quickly many years ago and a couple of years ago the seller contacted him to sell. The dealer paid $100.000.00 or $5,000.00 a box and flipped them for $125,000.00. He never even handled them, he just had them shipped directly to the purchaser who is rumoured to be Orel Hersheiser, a big wax collector.
At first glance $25,000.00 seems like a nice profit for a quick flip but if those were packed out or sold box by box the price for the group would have been somewhere around 400 k. It still baffles me why a veteran dealer would do a flip like that but to each his own. Mike Q.
