1969-70 O-Pee-Chee Lou Nanne #198 Rookie Card Minnesota North Stars VG 3

Description

1969-70 O-Pee-Chee Lou Nanne #198 Rookie Card Minnesota North Stars VG 3 This is the card that starts the Lou Nanne story, his 1969-70 O-Pee-Chee rookie issue at #198, and it belongs in any serious collection of Minnesota hockey history. Born in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Nanne became an American citizen, starred at the University of Minnesota where he won the WCHA scoring title and Most Valuable Player award in 1963, and captained the United States Olympic hockey team, an achievement the bilingual reverse celebrates with a cartoon of Nanne holding the American flag under the caption that Lou starred for the United States Olympic hockey team, repeated in French as la vedette de l'equipe olympique de hockey des Etats-Unis. The written biography notes that he played part of the previous season with the North Stars and that coach Wren Blair believed he could tighten up their defence, with a 1968-69 line of 41 games, two goals, 12 assists and 47 penalty minutes. What followed made him a Minnesota institution, as Nanne played his entire NHL career with the North Stars, moved directly into the general manager's chair, ran the club through the 1981 Stanley Cup Final run, served as general manager of the United States team at the 1976 Canada Cup and was later inducted into the United States Hockey Hall of Fame. Very few rookie cards in this set carry that kind of long-term institutional weight, and because #198 sits in the high-number range above 132 it was never issued by Topps in the United States, making this Canadian O-Pee-Chee printing the only mainstream rookie card of one of American hockey's most important figures. The reverse is the classic teal and gold 1969-70 O-Pee-Chee bilingual back printed in Canada. It is a bilingual back, not a puzzle back. the front shows the effects of handling, with several fine surface wrinkles and light scratch lines running through the pale grey background at the upper right, rounded corners at all four points with the top right the most frayed, white chipping along the top and right edges, and centering that runs slightly high and right while keeping the full image and both text bands intact; the green North Stars sweater and the portrait itself are unmarked and the colour remains strong. The reverse shows edge chipping along the top and left borders, softened corners, light toning of the gold panel and faint teal ink wear at the upper edge, with all English and French text and the full statistical lines clearly legible and no writing, tape or pinholes. A conservative raw grade estimate of VG 3 accounts for the front surface wrinkling and corner wear on a rookie card that still displays well and represents strong value against graded examples. Grade Estimate: VG 3