1972 O-Pee-Chee CFL Bob LaRose #110 Base Set Winnipeg Blue Bombers CFL

Description

1972 O-Pee-Chee CFL Bob LaRose #110 Base Set Winnipeg Blue Bombers CFL Vintage Canadian football cards rarely arrive with this much character, and this 1972 O-Pee-Chee CFL Bob LaRose #110 Base Set Winnipeg Blue Bombers CFL card is a bright and honest survivor from the final O-Pee-Chee CFL football issue. O-Pee-Chee of London, Ontario had been putting gum and cardboard into the hands of Canadian kids for generations, yet the 1972 release would be the company's last CFL football set, and collectors would wait until the 1981 Jogo issue for another league wide Canadian football card series. LaRose appears in the royal blue Winnipeg jersey with gold and white shoulder striping, number 71 filling the frame, while the bold black BLUE BOMBERS band sits across the top of a vivid yellow border. Flip it over and the reverse is the classic Canadian O-Pee-Chee bilingual back, printed in blue and green ink on grey cardboard stock with the biography presented in both French and English, which confirms at a glance that this is a genuine Canadian bilingual back and not a puzzle back. That back lists him at six foot three and 215 pounds, describes him as a non import out of the University of Western Ontario, and credits him as the Blue Bombers number one choice in the 1970 Canadian College Draft alongside his Toronto Telegram Athlete of the Year honour and his All Canadian selection in 1971. There is a bittersweet detail in that Telegram reference, because the Toronto Telegram had published its final edition in October 1971, so the card celebrates a newspaper that had already closed by the time this piece of Canadian history was printed and folded into a wax pack. The 1972 CFL season was one of the most colourful in league history. Winnipeg had just watched quarterback Don Jonas become the franchise's first CFL Most Outstanding Player in 1971, throwing for 4,036 yards and 27 touchdowns while adding 121 points with his toe, and the Blue Bombers were a genuine Western contender built on Canadian talent in the secondary. Across the league that autumn ended with the legendary Fog Bowl, where Hamilton edged Saskatchewan 13 to 10 in a Grey Cup played in fog so thick that television cameras could barely follow the ball. The 1972 O-Pee-Chee set captured that world in 132 cards, with 13 players from each of the nine teams, 14 Pro Action cards and a checklist at number 132, all echoing the design language of 1972 Topps NFL cards while celebrating a distinctly Canadian game. For collectors who grew up with the CFL of the seventies, a card like this is not simply cardboard, it is a ticket back to Saturday afternoons at the stadium and the sound of the Canadian game on a transistor radio. the top two corners remain sharp and the right edge is clean, while the bottom left corner tip shows light softening with a faint touch of white. The yellow border carries mild print snow along the left side, there is a tiny printer's fleck near the left shoulder, and the image sits about 55/45 left to right with the top and bottom borders close to even at 50/50. The reverse is clean, well centred and free of writing or staining, showing only the gentle cream tone in the stock that is entirely normal for 1972 O-Pee-Chee cardboard, and no creases, wrinkles or trimming are visible anywhere on either side under close inspection in the sleeve. A conservative grade assessment places this card at the EX-MT 6 level, held back from a higher tier only by the softened bottom left corner and the light printing irregularities in the border, with the strong yellow eye appeal and the clean reverse keeping it comfortably above the EX 5 range. Grade Estimate: EX-MT 6