1972-73 O-Pee-Chee Mike Murphy #215 Rookie Card St. Louis Blues

Description

1972-73 O-Pee-Chee Mike Murphy #215 Rookie Card St. Louis Blues Here is a rookie card with a career attached that few from this set can match — the 1972-73 O-Pee-Chee Mike Murphy #215 Rookie Card St. Louis Blues collectors recognize as the cardboard debut of a true hockey lifer, offered by Alex Collect. The Toronto-born winger pictured in this striking green-background portrait led all Blues rookies with 20 goals in 1971-72 after winning Central League rookie-of-the-year honours, and O-Pee-Chee's own back copy declares him "headed for a prosperous N. H. L. career." They were right. Murphy played over 800 NHL games with St. Louis, the Rangers and Los Angeles, captained the Kings for six seasons, and then built an even bigger second act — head coach of the Maple Leafs, assistant on Cup-contending benches, and ultimately the NHL's longtime Senior Vice-President of Hockey Operations, the man in the Toronto situation room ruling on video reviews for two decades. Every controversial goal call you have ever argued about probably crossed his desk. The reverse is the genuine Canadian O-Pee-Chee bilingual back with English and French text, cartoon, and his complete early record, printed in Canada — a bilingual bio back, not a puzzle back. the front presents cleanly with strong lime-green color and sharp red nameplate print. Centering shows a slight shift toward the top with the bottom border a touch wider, left-right centering is agreeable, and the right edge displays the honest rough factory cut typical of OPC sheets. Corners are lightly touched at the tips with the upper right showing the most visible softening under magnification. We found no creases, wrinkles, stains or surface marks, and the bilingual back is clean, unmarked, with even vintage toning. Our conservative raw Grade Estimate: EX-MT 6