1969-70 O-Pee-Chee Bill Hicke #145 Oakland Seals EX 4

Description

1969-70 O-Pee-Chee Bill Hicke #145 Oakland Seals EX 4 Bill Hicke arrived in the NHL as the next great Montreal Canadiens prospect, a Regina product who had torn apart junior hockey and who skated onto Cup-winning Habs rosters at the tail end of the great five-in-a-row dynasty, and by the time this 1969-70 O-Pee-Chee card #145 was printed he had reinvented himself as the offensive engine of the expansion Oakland Seals. The bilingual back tells the story with genuine warmth, explaining that last season finally turned out to be the big one that had long been predicted for Bill Hicke, that it was his best ever, and that he is one of the NHL's fastest skaters, a right winger who shoots from the left hand side. His 1968-69 numbers of 25 goals, 36 assists and 61 points in 67 games back that up and remain the finest season of a career that spanned 574 NHL games and 321 points. The cartoon panel is one of the most memorable in the entire set, an Ah-Choo drawing noting that persistent allergies have hampered Bill's play, rendered in French as allergies persistantes nuisent a son jeu, a detail that has made this particular card a favourite among collectors who love the quirks of vintage Canadian issues. Hicke would later jump to the World Hockey Association with the Alberta Oilers, giving him a foot in two distinct eras of professional hockey. Card #145 sits in the O-Pee-Chee high-number range above 132, so it never appeared in the American Topps set, and the green and blue Oakland Seals uniform pictured here continues to attract collectors chasing defunct franchise material. The reverse is the teal and gold 1969-70 O-Pee-Chee bilingual back printed in Canada. It is a bilingual back, not a puzzle back. the front is bright and well struck with strong colour saturation and a clean, sharply focused action pose, the four corners show only light touch wear with faint softening at the top right, edge chipping is minor and confined to a few small white flecks along the top and bottom borders, centering runs slightly left with a marginally wider right border, and the surface is entirely free of creases, wrinkles or scuffing with only the faintest handling sheen across the pale background wall; the reverse presents cleanly as well, with light border wear along the bottom edge, gentle corner softening, even teal and gold ink coverage and completely legible English and French biographies and statistics, with no writing, stains, tape or pinholes anywhere on the card. A conservative raw grade estimate of EX 4 recognizes the crease-free surfaces, strong image quality and modest corner wear on a card that presents well above the norm for an issue where sharp examples are increasingly scarce. Grade Estimate: EX 4