1972-73 O-Pee-Chee Wayne Hillman #255 High Series Philadelphia Flyers

Description

1972-73 O-Pee-Chee Wayne Hillman #255 High Series Philadelphia Flyers There is a certain honesty to a 1972-73 O-Pee-Chee card of a hard nosed defenceman in his thirteenth professional season, and this Wayne Hillman #255 delivers it in full. The 1972-73 O-Pee-Chee Wayne Hillman #255 High Series Philadelphia Flyers card belongs to the tougher back half of a 341 card Canadian issue, the notorious high number run that dealers and set builders still chase decades later because far fewer of those wax packs survived the winter of 1972 and 1973 intact. The season itself is one of the most storied in hockey history. The Summit Series had just electrified the country, the World Hockey Association had launched and raided NHL rosters, and the league had expanded again with the New York Islanders and the Atlanta Flames. Against that backdrop, O-Pee-Chee produced a set that captured the sport in transition, and Hillman was exactly the kind of steadying veteran the Flyers needed as the Broad Street Bullies era began to take shape around him. Born in Kirkland Lake, Ontario in 1938, Hillman was one of three hockey playing brothers, broke in with the Chicago Black Hawks during their early sixties peak and was part of the 1961 Stanley Cup championship organization, then moved through New York and Minnesota before landing in Philadelphia, where his experience anchored a very young blue line. The reverse of this card is a genuine Canadian O-Pee-Chee bilingual back, printed in the familiar cream and burnt orange palette with English and French biography text, a cartoon panel, and a full NHL career record grid showing more than six hundred games played. It is a bilingual statistical back, not a puzzle back, and it carries the Printed In Canada notation collectors look for when separating O-Pee-Chee from its American Topps counterpart. the photos show a bright, well registered front with strong blue background saturation and no creases or wrinkles under angled light, four corners that are present and reasonably square with light fraying at the upper left and lower right tips, minor edge chipping along the tan right border and a few specks of white showing at the top edge, centering that runs slightly heavy to the left with the bottom border tighter than the top, and a clean back with light handling toning but no writing, stains, or paper loss. The conservative estimate reflects the corner softness and the off centre cut rather than any structural damage, and a submitted copy could certainly surprise upward, but pricing raw at the cautious end protects the buyer and keeps the transaction honest. Grade Estimate: EX 5