1972-73 O-Pee-Chee Garry Unger #120 Bilingual Back St. Louis Blues

Description

1972-73 O-Pee-Chee Garry Unger #120 Bilingual Back St. Louis Blues Look at the hair, the grin and the absolutely untroubled posture, and you are looking at one of the toughest men in hockey history before anybody knew it. Garry Unger was in the middle of a career that would eventually include 914 consecutive NHL games, a streak that stood as the league record until Doug Jarvis finally passed it in 1986, and this 1972-73 O-Pee-Chee portrait catches him at 24, a young center with the Blues who had just finished an 81 point season's worth of promise. He arrived in St. Louis in a 1970-71 blockbuster with Detroit, and the back of this card notes the club record he tied in 1971 with three goals and four assists for seven points in a single game, a line that still reads like a typo. Unger went on to score 30 or more goals in eight straight seasons, finished with 413 NHL goals and 809 points over 1,105 games, and around all of that he played drums in a band, which is the most 1970s sentence in hockey. The card itself is a second series entry in the 340 card 1972-73 O-Pee-Chee set, printed in Canada with the tan border, vertical team name and yellow name band that collectors recognize instantly, and it sits in strong supply because Unger was a popular player on a perennial playoff club. The back is a full bilingual English and French biography with a career record running through 1971-72, and it is a standard O-Pee-Chee bilingual back, not a puzzle back. Whether you are completing a St. Louis team set, hunting ironman trivia cards or assembling the 1972-73 O-Pee-Chee Garry Unger #120 for a graded registry, this is a clean, honestly described raw example. this is the cleanest card in the group, with a bright green background, a crisp portrait, four firm corners and only the faintest printer's speck visible in the upper left field, while centering measures close to 52/48 left to right with even top and bottom margins. The bilingual reverse is bright, unmarked and square, with no writing, no tape and no toning beyond the natural stock color, and it is not a puzzle back. A conservative grade of EX-MT 6 is justified by sharp corners, untouched gloss and clean borders, held just below NM by the minor centering drift and a single light edge tick at the bottom center. Grade Estimate: EX-MT 6