1972-73 O-Pee-Chee Chris Evans #236 Rookie Card St. Louis Blues

Description

1972-73 O-Pee-Chee Chris Evans #236 Rookie Card St. Louis Blues Long before the name belonged to a Hollywood superhero, Chris Evans was a hard-hitting NHL defenseman, and this 1972-73 O-Pee-Chee Chris Evans #236 Rookie Card St. Louis Blues delivers his cardboard debut with a wonderful full-length pose, offered here by Alex Collect. The Toronto-born blueliner — described on the card back in both English and French as "a hard hitting defenseman" — broke in with a single game for his hometown Maple Leafs before establishing himself with Buffalo and then St. Louis, where he scored his first NHL goal and played in the 1972 playoffs. He went on to appear in over 240 NHL games with the Leafs, Sabres, Blues, Red Wings and Kansas City Scouts, a genuine journeyman of hockey's raucous expansion era. The card front is a beauty: Evans stands with his glove and stick raised against the set's radiant green background, the famous Bluenote crest front and centre on his white sweater, framed by the tan border and yellow nameplate that make this issue instantly recognizable. The flip side is the authentic Canadian O-Pee-Chee bilingual back, printed in Canada with dual-language biography, cartoon, and NHL career record — a bilingual bio back, not a puzzle back, as with all cards in this 341-card issue. the left edge shows the strong rough factory cut characteristic of O-Pee-Chee's cutting process, with visible paper fibers that confirm the card was never trimmed. Centering is shifted slightly downward, with the bottom frame line running closer to the border than the top, and left-right centering is reasonable. Corners show light wear with gentle rounding at the lower left; the other corners hold decent points. Surfaces are bright and clean on both sides with no creases, wrinkles, stains or handwriting found under angled-light inspection. Weighing the low-shifted cut and corner touches, we assign a conservative raw grade of EX 5, an honest number that leaves room for a pleasant surprise rather than a disappointment. A fun name, a true rookie, and a classic seventies design — this is exactly the kind of affordable vintage card that makes collecting joyful. Snap it up for your Blues team set today. Grade Estimate: EX 5