1972-73 O-Pee-Chee Bob Charlebois #309 Ottawa Nationals WHA Card

Description

1972-73 O-Pee-Chee Bob Charlebois #309 Ottawa Nationals WHA Card Take home a tangible relic from the wildest year in North American hockey, with this 1972-73 O-Pee-Chee Bob Charlebois #309 single trading card, a deeply original example plucked from the inaugural World Hockey Association season. Bob Charlebois, an agile left winger born May 27, 1944, in Cornwall, Ontario, played his hockey across both the NHL and WHA during the late sixties and seventies, and this 1972-73 WHA Rookie-era card captures him at the precise moment he suited up alongside the Ottawa Nationals before the franchise's quick demise. The card is rendered in O-Pee-Chee's signature colour-lithograph fashion: a breathtaking pigment-rich red, white, and blue jersey pops against the cyan-green photo backdrop, while the orange and yellow team-name ribbon tags along the bottom and the vertical "OTTAWA NATIONALS" type design lifts the entire layout into a striking piece of graphic nostalgia. From a distribution perspective, O-Pee-Chee (a subsidiary long-running Canadian confectionery concern owned by the same parent publisher) had complete Canadian exclusivity on this card, which was not produced by Topps themselves in the United States—making the 1972-73 OPC WHA issue an exclusively Canadian hockey card set that is coveted by anyone who cares about the hobby's trans-border split. The reverse is the canonical O-Pee-Chee Canadian bilingual back, presenting the player biography in both English and French text, the standard copyright "© O. P. C." mark in tiny print, the iconic red italicized "O-Pee-Chee" wordmark in the lower-left, and the distinct "PRINTED IN CANADA" stamp that confirms the card was manufactured north of the 49th parallel. the front exhibits minor corner wear at all four corners, with the upper-left the worst of the group, expressing a soft rounding that has not yet compromised paper integrity; back corners match. Centring on the front runs a touch low, with the top edge margin slightly tightened compared to bottom; back centring is closer to bullseye with just a hair of pull-right. No surface scratches, scuffs, or press-induced wrinkles on the gloss face; the laminate is intact and shows even gloss under reflected raking light. One micro-chip is visible on the lower-left card edge. Conservative grade: EX 5 to EX-MT 6—the card has aged gracefully but does not quite hit NR-MT clarity. Grade Estimate: EX-MT 6