1970 O-Pee-Chee CFL Jay Roberts #43 Bilingual Back Ottawa Rough Riders EX 5

Description

1970 O-Pee-Chee CFL Jay Roberts #43 Bilingual Back Ottawa Rough Riders EX 5 Some vintage cards are worth owning for the story alone, and the tall tight end holding a football against a twilight sky is one of them. The 1970 O-Pee-Chee CFL Jay Roberts #43 Bilingual Back Ottawa Rough Riders EX 5 presented here shows the man they called The Hawk in the final season of a seven year Ottawa career that produced two Grey Cup championships. Roberts was a three sport letterman at the University of Kansas, playing football, basketball and competing in the high jump, and he brought that athleticism to the CFL in 1964 at a time when the tight end was only beginning to emerge as a receiving weapon north of the border. His production climbed in each of his first five seasons and peaked in 1968 with 32 receptions for 566 yards, the same autumn Ottawa beat Calgary for the Grey Cup, and he repeated as a champion in 1969 when the Riders sent Russ Jackson out on top. A First Nations man from the United States, Roberts became a Canadian citizen, settled in Ottawa and worked for the federal government after football, and he remained a beloved figure in the capital until his death in October of 2010. The 1970 O-Pee-Chee CFL issue that carries this card contains 115 cards, was printed in Canada, and adapts the second series 1969 Topps NFL design with real stadium backdrops. The reverse is a Canadian O-Pee-Chee bilingual back, white text on black stock in both English and French, complete with the green cartoon panel explaining the Hawk nickname and his sure hands, plus the Printed in Canada line. It is not a puzzle back, and the panel lists him as an import at six foot five and 235 pounds out of the University of Kansas. the front is free of creases and wrinkles with only faint scratch lines visible in the dark jersey under raking light, the cream borders are clean with even light toning, the corners are lightly touched with mild fuzz at the lower left and upper right while remaining essentially square, edge chipping is minor with one shallow nick on the left border, and centering runs roughly 40/60 top to bottom with a thinner top border and a comfortable side to side balance, while the black reverse is solid and unmarked with modest whitening along the bottom edge. The conservative grade estimate of EX 5 accounts for the slightly generous bottom border and the light corner touches, since this copy could well grade higher in hand but is described cautiously here. Grade Estimate: EX 5