1969-70 O-Pee-Chee Mike Laughton #148 Rookie Card Oakland Seals VG-EX 4

Description

1969-70 O-Pee-Chee Mike Laughton #148 Rookie Card Oakland Seals VG-EX 4 Every expansion team needed a young centre to build around, and for the Oakland Seals that player was Mike Laughton, a smooth-skating pivot from Nelson, British Columbia whose first-year card appears here as 1969-70 O-Pee-Chee #148. The bilingual reverse frames him as a coming man, noting that Mike spent part of the last two seasons in the Western Hockey League and the American Hockey League and that coach Fred Glover feels this smooth skating centre will give his team added strength down the centre, with the identical text repeated in French for Quebec collectors. The cartoon panel highlights the number that got him noticed, celebrating 20 goals in 53 games the previous year, and the statistical block confirms it with a 1968-69 line of 53 games, 20 goals, 23 assists and 43 points. Laughton would remain a fixture of the Seals attack before moving to the World Hockey Association with the New York Raiders, making him part of that fascinating wave of players who helped legitimize the rival league in the early 1970s. As a card, #148 belongs to the O-Pee-Chee exclusive high numbers that run from 133 through 231 and were never issued by Topps in the United States, which is exactly why so many American set builders still hunt these Canadian singles decades later. The brilliant green and Pacific blue Seals uniform, the red hockey stick graphic and the bold red team name across the bottom give the design its unmistakable late sixties personality, and the franchise's short California life continues to make every Oakland single a target for defunct-team collectors. The reverse is the teal and gold 1969-70 O-Pee-Chee layout printed in Canada by O-Pee-Chee of London, Ontario. It is a bilingual back, not a puzzle back. this is one of the two best cards on the sheet, presenting with a bright, well-exposed photo and only light wear, corners show gentle rounding with the bottom left the softest of the four, edge chipping is minor and limited to a few small white nicks along the top and left borders, centering runs very slightly left but is otherwise pleasing top to bottom, and the front surface is entirely free of creases or wrinkles with only faint handling sheen; the reverse shows light border wear along the bottom and right edges with modest corner softening, even gold and teal ink coverage, and completely legible English and French text and statistics with no writing, stains or tape. A conservative raw grade estimate of VG-EX 4 rewards the clean crease-free surfaces and honest but limited corner touch wear on an issue where genuinely sharp examples are increasingly difficult to source. Grade Estimate: VG-EX 4