1971 O-Pee-Chee Ken Sugarman #34 All-Star BC Lions

Description

1971 O-Pee-Chee Ken Sugarman #34 All-Star BC Lions The 1971 O-Pee-Chee Ken Sugarman #34 BC Lions card is a testament to longevity, featuring an offensive tackle who was already in his eighth season with the club when this card was printed, a run of durability that dated all the way back to 1964. Sugarman came out of Whitworth College in Spokane, Washington, and he had been good enough to catch the attention of the NFL's Baltimore Colts, who selected him in the seventh round of the draft, yet he chose to make his career in British Columbia and became one of the most reliable blockers on the roster through the late 1960s and early 1970s. The card back highlights his selection to the 1970 All Star game, proof that his peers around the CFL recognized the quality of his play even when the highlight reels belonged to the ball carriers. The 1971 O-Pee-Chee CFL set remains one of the most collectible Canadian football issues ever produced, a 132 card release with bright red borders and bilingual backs that was printed only in Canada, and the BC Lions section of the checklist is particularly popular with West Coast collectors who remember the Empire Stadium era. Linemen like Sugarman are frequently overlooked when collections change hands, which means clean examples are genuinely scarce compared to the star skill position players, and that scarcity quietly rewards patient collectors who know the set. The 1971 O-Pee-Chee CFL design borrowed its bold red border treatment from the era's Topps releases, but the Canadian cards are entirely their own animal thanks to the bilingual backs and the PRINTED IN CANADA stamp, details that set them apart for the serious collector. Sugarman's card anchors the BC Lions run in the checklist and is a natural companion piece to the Jim Evenson and Lefty Hendrickson cards from the same team section. the surfaces are clean and free of creases, wrinkles, and surface marks at scan resolution, the red border remains vivid and evenly applied, and the corners and edges show no chipping visible in the scan, with centering that appears well within the normal tolerances for this frequently off centre issue. The reverse is the classic Canadian O-Pee-Chee bilingual back with the biography printed in both English and French and the PRINTED IN CANADA line at the base, and this is not the puzzle back variation. Whether you are completing the 132 card checklist or adding a BC Lions original, this 1971 O-Pee-Chee Ken Sugarman #34 card is a clean, honest vintage piece. Grade Estimate: EX 5