Canadian Hockey Cards

THE BEGINNING I first started collecting hockey cards back in 1970 starting with the Esso Power Player's album.  The Esso gas stations would give you packs of six stickers with every fill-up, and in rural Rocky Mountain British Columbia you drove a lot.  Every kid in our school was collecting them, and every Monday morning there would be groups of kids out there in the cold with their Power Player's wallets looking to trade and finish their albums.  The collation wasn't that great, and I remember showing up one day with four Bobby Orr stickers.

That opened the door to wanting real hockey cards, and the next ones that came out were the good looking 1971-72 O-Pee-Chee set with the Dryden, and LaFleur rookies.  Although there wasn't enough money to pick up more than the occasional pack, I always knew hockey cards were a more fun way to buy bubble gum.

Then elementary school gave way to middle and then high school, and other interests and sports became my focus as the 70's wound down.  Adult life and a move to the big city of Vancouver started off the 80's.  Then came travel and marriage. 

THE REAL BEGINNING While visiting friends of ours in Seattle in the late 80's, he showed me his baseball and basketball card collection.  He had bought a case of 1986 NBA Fleer and had nine Michael Jordan rookies.  Learning that cards had value, I said we have hockey cards in Canada, I wonder if they're worth anything.  Going home, I did some research, and found out there was.  But not to the degree that baseball cards had, but there was some.  A mint Wayne Gretzky O-Pee-Chee rookie card was going for $100.  Steve Yzerman's O-Pee-Chee Rookie was going for $12. I discovered a couple of card shops around Vancouver and had a good look, and picked up a few cards.  But on a subsequent visit to Seattle, I dropped by a place called Pacific Trading Cards in Lynwood, Washington. I noticed one Gretzky OPC Rookie in their case for $200, a Robitaille Rookie, and nothing else.  So I asked if they had any other hockey cards.   The guys in there that evening said they had some boxes of them in the back.  So they brought out a bunch of 1971-72 Topps, 1981-82 O-Pee-Chee, and some 1983-84 O-Pee-Chee.  All these cards were mint, and it seems that they hadn't been picked over, or touched since the day they were opened.  All the players from the set were there in quantity.  I asked them how much they were.  They said five cents each.  And on the 71/72's, 25 cents each.  A business was  born!

DOING CARD SHOWS I had picked up about a dozen 71/72 Topps Bobby Orr cards down there in Seattle, along with a lot of everyone else, and I wanted to recover my investment, even though I had only spent about $500 in nickels and quarters. A card show was coming up in Vancouver, and so I rented myself one table.  My wife found it hard to believe that anyone would want to pay the prices I was saying these cards could go for, but she came along and helped me out.  I recovered my investment, and acquired some more cards as well. So, the pattern of going down to Seattle and cleaning out dealers who didn't want to have much to do with their hockey cards, coming back and doing shows in Vancouver continued for a couple of years, until Beckett came out with their price guides, and the big fun was over by about 1992.  By then I pretty much had the same stuff that everyone else did, and the over-production and greed of the card companies in the early 90's killed the hobby.  The bubble had burst.  And so I abandoned cards for a short time.

Me and Phil Kessel at the 2006 NHL Entry Draft card show in Vancouver.

Ray Bourque addressing the crowd at the Western Canada Sports Collectors Show in Langley, BC November 23, 2019.

THE INTERNET AND THE WORLD WIDE WEB By 1994 this thing called Compuserve and its rival America Online were becoming household names, and I found forums on there where people were starting to trade and deal in sportscards and memorabilia.  And so I put a webpage together on Compuserve and listed cards and food issues that were only available in Canada.  It caught on, and I was making regular trips to the grocery store and shipping boxes of Kraft Dinner, and Post Cereal, and McDonalds hockey cards to the U.S. That evolved into an actual presence on the World Wide Web in 1996, and that has now turned into what you see today.  

EXCLUSIVELY ONLINE Although occasionally participating in card shows in the past, we have not done so since around 2006. Managing inventory accuracy on the website while selling at a show proved to be unfeasible. As a result, we now solely conduct business online at CanadianHockeyCards.com. Our focus remains on selling Canada-exclusive cards, such as the exceptionally good releases by Tim Horton's. However, we also keep mainstream releases of Upper Deck Series One and Series Two cards in stock. Today the goal is to provide the cards that Canadians like to collect, and to try to keep them fully in stock, and to sell them at a reasonable price.  Notably, the website features McDonald's, Tim Hortons, Kraft, Post, Vachon, Canadian Tire, Gillette, and Esso.  We also prefer the person to person contact by email rather than the shopping cart technology.

Thank You to the thousands of customers who have made this journey a delight and I look forward to continuing with you for many more years to come.

Thomas Clemmer

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