1971 O-Pee-Chee Tony Gabriel Rookie Card #71 CFL Hall of Famer Hamilton Tiger-Cats

Description

1971 O-Pee-Chee Tony Gabriel Rookie Card #71 CFL Hall of Famer Hamilton Tiger-Cats This is the Tony Gabriel rookie card, the 1971 O-Pee-Chee CFL issue of one of the greatest Canadian tight ends in football history, and it is the flagship card of this Tiger-Cats run. Burlington-born Tony Gabriel was a national treasure in the making when this card was printed: a Canadian who starred at Syracuse University, broke the school's receiving records, and came home to the CFL to become a four-time Most Outstanding Canadian and a Canadian Football Hall of Famer. For collectors of vintage CFL cards, the Tony Gabriel rookie card is an essential piece of the 1971 O-Pee-Chee set, with its full-bleed colour action photo and the classic bilingual O-Pee-Chee back. Card history: the 1971 O-Pee-Chee CFL set is a 132-card issue covering all nine Canadian Football League teams, with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats at numbers 61 through 75. O-Pee-Chee, Canada's legendary card brand out of London, Ontario, printed every back in English and French, and the bilingual design is the set's calling card. Card #71 is Gabriel's first O-Pee-Chee card, issued during his rookie season with Hamilton. The back notes that the 6'4", 215-pound non-import was a graduate chemical engineer and that he held the Syracuse records for most receptions among other marks, in both English and French, the kind of detail that makes these backs so charming. Player achievements: Tony Gabriel starred for Hamilton from 1971 to 1974, helping the Tiger-Cats win the 1972 Grey Cup with key catches on the winning drive, then moved to Ottawa where he made "the Catch," the game-winning touchdown in the final seconds of the 1976 Grey Cup. He was named the CFL's Most Outstanding Canadian in 1974, 1976, 1977 and 1978, won the 1978 Most Outstanding Player award, was a CFL All-Star seven times, and had five 1,000-yard receiving seasons. He was inducted into the Canadian Football Hall of Fame in the 1980s, and the Rough Riders retired his number 77. assessed from the high-resolution 1200-DPI scan of both sides. The card shows four sharp corners with no visible rounding or whitening, clean edges with no chipping or fraying, and a surface that presents free of creases, wrinkles, indentations or marks in the scan. The front photo is framed evenly and the back frame shows well-balanced centering with no obvious print offset. This 1971 O-Pee-Chee Tony Gabriel rookie card was scanned inside a protective sleeve, so fine handling marks can be masked by sleeve reflection; grading conservatively from the photos, the raw Grade Estimate: EX-MT 6