1971 O-Pee-Chee Terry Evanshen #109 Hall of Fame Montreal Alouettes

Description

1971 O-Pee-Chee Terry Evanshen #109 Hall of Fame Montreal Alouettes The 1971 O-Pee-Chee Terry Evanshen #109 Montreal Alouettes card is one of the most emotionally resonant pieces in the entire 1971 O-Pee-Chee CFL set, because Terry Evanshen is remembered for far more than football. On the field he was one of the premier pass receivers in the country, a shifty Montreal native out of D'Arcy McGee High School who starred at Utah State before returning home to star in the CFL. He was named the league's Most Outstanding Canadian in 1967, a season that announced him as one of the best homegrown talents of his generation, and he went on to be a spark in the Calgary Stampeders' 1968 Grey Cup run before joining the Alouettes in 1970 and helping restore Montreal to the top of the Eastern Conference. The card back even notes that qualified observers claimed he could play in the NFL, high praise in an era when Canadian receivers rarely earned that kind of respect. Off the field his story became legendary: in 1988 a devastating car accident left him with amnesia so severe he did not recognize his own family, and his painstaking recovery was later dramatized in the television film The Terry Evanshen Story, making him an inspiration well beyond sports. He was inducted into the Canadian Football Hall of Fame in 1984, cementing a legacy that this card captures at its peak. Evanshen captured the league's Most Outstanding Canadian award a second time in 1971, the very season this card was printed, which makes it a snapshot of a homegrown star at the absolute height of his powers. The 1971 O-Pee-Chee CFL set remains one of the most collected Canadian football issues ever produced, a 132 card checklist organized by team and sold almost exclusively north of the border. 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. For the CFL collector, the Hall of Fame collector, or anyone who admires a comeback story, this 1971 O-Pee-Chee Terry Evanshen #109 card is a clean, meaningful original that belongs in a serious collection. Grade Estimate: EX 5