1970 O-Pee-Chee Harry Olszewski #108 Montreal Alouettes VG 3

Description

1970 O-Pee-Chee Harry Olszewski #108 Montreal Alouettes VG 3 This is the second of two 1970 O-Pee-Chee Harry Olszewski card number 108 examples offered from the same nine card sheet, listed separately so set builders can choose exactly which flaw profile suits their collection and budget. The 1970 O-Pee-Chee CFL issue is legendary among Canadian collectors because it resurrected Canadian football cards after more than five years without a domestic set, and because it was printed and distributed solely in Canada, giving it a much smaller surviving population than the parallel Topps American issues of the era. Olszewski himself is a wonderful footnote in football history: an All-American guard at Clemson University who entered professional football with the Cleveland Browns, played in the Continental Football League in 1969, and then found his true home with the Montreal Alouettes, where the 250 pound blocker helped clear the road for a backfield that would carry the team to the 1970 Grey Cup championship. Any card tied to that title season carries extra meaning, because the Alouettes' 1970 comeback, from a 2-8 start to a championship, remains one of the great stories in CFL lore, celebrated alongside the franchise's mythical 1949 Dust Bowl Grey Cup. Compared with the first Olszewski copy in this lot, this example offers noticeably sharper corners and a cleaner black reverse, but it carries a crease that must be disclosed and priced accordingly, which is precisely why both copies are available rather than only the better one. The reverse is the authentic Canadian O-Pee-Chee bilingual back, carrying his biography in both English and French above the olive green All-American cartoon panel, and it is explicitly not a puzzle back. light creasing runs through the top border and upper sky area of the front, most visible when the card is tilted under light and subtle at first glance, the corners are otherwise sharp to lightly touched with only trace whitening at the top, the edges are clean and straight on the sides and bottom, the front retains vibrant colour and strong gloss in the field and sky imagery, centering sits slightly to the right of the frame, and the black reverse is glossy and unmarked with light corner touches only. Because visible creasing caps a raw card below the VG-EX tier no matter how well the rest presents, we assign a conservative raw grade of VG 3, an honest floor that lets the sharp corners and clean reverse surprise the winner in hand. Grade Estimate: VG 3