Complete Hall of Fame PC - Paul Coffey

Given this size and this scope of this PC. I want to try and formalize how I present it. This is my first attempt and I am hopeful that I get it right the first time and don't have to tinker with it too much. As some of you know, my plan is to get at least 2 out of 3 key cards in a HOF player's career. My plan is to try and own a rookie card, an autographed card and/or a game used card. In some cases a rookie card might be too far out of my reach so I will gladly settle for an auto and a game used. In other cases, an autograph might be nearly impossible so I will have to chase a game used and a rookie. 

With many of the modern players (1980 to present, I will do everything I can to try and go 3 of 3). 

While I have a number of these "done" I am planning on starting from scratch and sharing them in a common format.

What is complete: In the case of Paul Coffey I was able to go 3 for 3.

Card 1: 1981-82 OPC Rookie

This is a card I had for a while, mailed it away to be signed TTM and never saw it again. I was able to buy another to replace it and I just tried to get one in the same condition as the last. Some day I hope to get the set and then maybe get a copy in better shape but for now this is more than fine for me!

Card 2: 2012-13 Artifacts Paul Coffey Auto Black /5

Currently this is my first and only Paul Coffey auto. I do plan on getting his 97-98 BAP one someday since I am working on that set but this is definitely a nice card to have as part of his PC. I am a little sad Upper Deck put a sticker meant for an Oilers card (#7) instead of a Penguins card (#77) but I guess the sticker monkey wasn't too concerned. 

Card 3: 13-14 Upper Deck Game Jersey Paul Coffey

Here is a nice solitary jersey swatch in plain white. It could have been from his Pittsburgh days, at least that is what I am pretending. Just a cool shot of him playing from the 91-92 season which was a Cup winning season if memory serves me right.

Card 4: Bonus! 10-11 ITG Decades 80's For Your Country Silver /30

The only card I actually pack pulled! This one is an Oilers swatch and an old one at that. Love the colour contrast with the other swatches on this one plus the low print run and the multiple HOF'ers. Safe to say this one card will be pulling more than double duty!

Paul's Career:

Paul had a fantastic NHL and International career which made him a shoo-in for the HOF. He has a number of NHL records and I like to think he was my era's Bobby Orr. He didn't change the game for defenseman because Bobby and others already did that but he did dominate his position and that was evident by his career totals, 3 Norris trophies and his many untouchable records for a defenseman. I like to think his 48 goals, 28 game point streak and 8 points in one game are probably records that will stand for a very long time or never be broken. 

Paul appeared in 7 Cup finals and won 4 times all with Edmonton. Paul also represented Canada a number of times as well and won 3 Canada Cups and was on the Silver medal winning World Cup team in 1996. 

Paul was inducted into the HOF in 2004 which I believe was his first ballot. Today Paul is coaching junior hockey in Ontario and running a car dealership. His cards are all relatively low priced and autos usually can be had for under 20 dollars. Game used cards due to the large number out there can be had for well under 10 dollars and his rookie card today books for 50 dollars with high graded ones often receiving a hefty premium. 

My thoughts:

I believe Paul is definitely one of the best offensive defenseman that I have ever seen play and when he was with the Oilers he did a lot of work for the forward and in many ways I like to think as dominant as Gretzky was, Paul did have an impact on the forward's offensive production thanks to his amazing skating and puck moving skills. Same could be true for the converse, Paul also benefitted from an amazing set of forwards. 

Career Regular Season Numbers:

Gm 1409 Goals 396 Assists 1135 Points 1531 Plus/Minus+294


Final Fact:

Currently Paul Coffey sits 5th in all-time playoff scoring with 196 points. The next nearest active player chasing him is Marian Hossa who is nearly 70 points behind.

Back Checking - 1981-82 OPC Reggie Lemelin Rookie

Remember back to a time when you used to scour your collection to try and find those "rare" error cards? Errors that were caught very early by the manufacturers could be worth hundreds of times more than their corrected counterparts. For example, Mike Krushelnyski's 90-91 Pro Set card is hardly worth the paper it is printed on. However, his error card, that is a completely different story. There are none of them for sale on eBay as of now, but I have seen some in the past listed for well over $50 dollars which is a fair bit more than the book value of 5 cents for the corrected version.

Other errors are very common and sometimes the errors are never corrected. Recently I was thumbing through rookies and I gave Reggie Lemelin's an extra close look.

1981-82 OPC Rejean Lemelin Rookie

 Here is the front of the card. I promise not to go on about how awesome 81-82 OPC cards are, but they are pretty great. Reggie looks like he is taking a lap or two around the rink before he is finding a comfy spot on the bench.

Here is the back side of the rookie. Lots of neat and strange things back here. First off, Reggie didn't get a rookie card printed until he was 27 years old! I find that really hard to believe and if you see the back, he played in 3 part seasons before he was granted number 44 in the 81-82 OPC set. His FTC (first Topps Card) wouldn't happen until 1984-85. If I were to guess when he SHOULD have had his rookie printed I would have figured 79-80 OPC given he played in nearly a 1/4 of the NHL season but alas with many changes going on in the NHL with that set, it is easy to see how he was overlooked.  After you get past his age and his stats, I did find a small error in the bottom facts. The problem isn't statistical but rather a small "typo" with the word "clubb". Very easy mistake to make and very easy to overlook. Now the Beckett doesn't list this as an uncorrected error (UER) but without having another copy I really don't know if there was a corrected version or not.

If you happen to have a Reggie Lemelin rookie and a free moment, take a look. I am curious if OPC ever caught the error and fixed it or if it remained as a typo for all to observe.

1981-82 OPC Jari Kurri Rookie

Back in the early spring I wrote a very short post about one of my favourite cards. I do want to point out that I have lots of favourites and they really are in no particular order. In fact that list could be as high as 40 or 50.  Not more than a week or so after that post my LCS had this card in via a large collection and it was priced to sell.

81-82 OPC Jari Kurri Rookie

This card is in great shape and well centered as far as OPC goes. Clean cut and that upper right corner is likely odd looking because of the penny-sleeve / top-loader combination. The corner actually looks near perfect in person. The surface is also in awesome shape with a nice gloss and no creases.

The back scanned a little oddly, I assure you the white isn't that white it is mostly due to the photo software. I should really use Photoshop it is just sometimes I don't have time to correctly enhance them. You can see a little loss of blue on the back which is pretty typical, but in all a pretty solid Nrmt-mt card in my non-professional opinion.

While this card books for more than 6 times the Topps version, I do like them nearly equally. I do have a slight preference towards to the OPC and I am not sure if it is because I have bought into the OPC snobbery that goes around or being Canadian I feel my cards need some French on them. Either way, glad to have the pair now and who knows maybe someday the full set.

Fixing a small mistake and learning from it too

In my first few TTM requests, I was feeling like a risk taker and I sent away some cards that I thought would come back and I would certainly miss if they didn't come back (I know you warned me Sal). Well, it turns out not many of those came back...Is it because the players are thinking, "Hey these are nice I want them" or do they think someone willing to send me my rookie is likely just trying to turn around and sell it?

The one I missed the most was my Paul Coffey Rookie. Of course many of you are now questioning my intelligence etc. for mailing away a Paul Coffey rookie card, but even though it was a Coffey rookie, it was VG at best and I felt it was maybe a 10 dollar card. However, I still liked it.

Well it has been over a year and a half since I mailed that card out and nothing has come back yet and I have given it up for dead. So, with my collection missing a Coffey rookie in it, I decided to watch countless auctions on eBay to see what ones are selling for. After I determined what I think they are worth in various grades I landed the one below for under 10 bucks with shipping. The condition is every bit as good as the one I mailed away, possibly even better.

So what did I learn? The obvious of course, but I still can't help but think what that Coffey rookie would have looked like with his signature on it, in my house, in my collection, in my hands. 

81/82 OPC Paul Coffey Rookie

This isn't my first as you know, but it currently is my only. The seller listed it as near Ex, but there are some damage on the corners as well as a tiny crease just about his head. I am going to be hanging on to this one for a while, and maybe some day work on upgrading to a near-mt to mint one. In the meantime, there is one less hole in my collection and I am a tiny bit more cautious too.

Andy Moog Rookie

File this card under the heading "Childhood wishes". Much like the MacInnis rookie I grabbed a while back, this card for some reason was one I always wanted as a kid. Unlike the MacInnis, I did see this card around a bit as a kid, but never saw one in decent condition or for a price I would pay.  Luck should have it, both factors came together and I snapped it up for under a sawbuck shipped.

81-82 OPC Andy Moog Rookie

This card is another case of an Oiler rookie being missed by Topps. The card is in awesome shape, and Andy Moog was one of those goalies from the 80's and early 90's that never seemed to lose much. From 82-86, he only lost 34 games in those 4 seasons. Even for his career for as long as it was, he only lost 209 games which is impressive considering he played 713 games. Just for comparison, Luongo has already lost 283 games and Lundqvist 155.

During my undergrad degree, I met an Australian exchange student ( I called him Ziggy) who learned everything he knew about hockey thanks to NHL 96. His favourite player was Andy Moog (and team Dallas), and when we first met and were talking about hockey, the first question he asked me was if Andy Moog was any good? I told him, that he had been quite good in the 80's and I really respected him as a player. Funny how cards remind you of things that have nothing to do with collecting, as I write this, that is probably the first time I thought of Ziggy in a few years.....

Glenn Anderson Rookie

Since I only own the Topps version of this set, that means I have a few key rookies missing from this year and Glenn was one of them. In fact, there are quite a few Oiler rookies that didn't end up in the Topps set but were in the larger OPC release. Love this set, so this rookie was a must have. The LCS had this card priced right for its condition and I snapped it up.

Glenn scored 498 goals and 1099 points in his NHL career. He actually joked once on the show Off The Record that he should come back for those two missing goals but of course that never happened. I doubt he would have scored that many if he spent his whole career in Toronto, but he was a talent nonetheless. Another great card from one of my favourite sets of all-time.

Dale Hawerchuk

Well if Doug Gilmour was not enough positive reinforcement to keep me on the TTM train then certainly HOF'er Dale Hawerchuk must be! I couldn't believe when I came home from work to find a second TTM in as many days. I opened the package and found these two cards signed. First off, I chose these two cards because they are 2 of the 3 cards that were released of Hawerchuk from his rookie year. I elected not to send his RC just in case I didn't have success. But the neat treat from this success is how he chose to sign his IA card with his number 10 and the team leader one he just signed with his regular signature. I had mailed these out on Dec 22 and received them back on Jan 20. An amazing turn around time and he signed both cards I sent out with a blue sharpie.

I have been a Hawerchuk fan as long as I have watched hockey. I always seem to be a fan of the players who quietly go about their business in a dominating fashion. Dale definitely fits that mold. Had he been drafted a year earlier he would have been a Montreal Canadien, and a year later would have been a Boston Bruin. Either team would have resulted in much more fan fare for Hawerchuk but instead he was a Winnipeg Jet which for some people made him invisible.

From the onset he was a star, rookie season numbers were 45 goals and 103 points, not too bad for an 18 year old. Then for the next 9 seasons he was a dominant player in the NHL averaging 42 goals and 102 points as season on a team that could never get out of the second round of the playoffs. He turned guys like Laurie Boschman and Andrew McBain into 30 goal guys! Probably the brightest point in his career was the 1987 Canada Cup where he, Wayne and Mario beat the Russians on their own. It was on that stage where Hawerchuk showcased his immense talent to the world.

Not long after, Dale was traded to Buffalo where he continued his strong play and then finished his career with stops in St. Louis and Philly. He unfortunately never won a cup, but he did win the Memorial Cup twice and the Canada Cup twice and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2001.