1972 O-Pee-Chee CFL Emery Hicks #12 Late-Season Trade Hamilton Tiger-Cats

Description

1972 O-Pee-Chee CFL Emery Hicks #12 Late-Season Trade Hamilton Tiger-Cats Some cards are quietly better stories than the stars of their set, and the 1972 O-Pee-Chee CFL Emery Hicks #12 is exactly that kind of find. O-Pee-Chee built its 132-card CFL set team by team, giving the Hamilton Tiger-Cats the entire opening block from 1 through 15, selling each ten-cent wax pack with eight cards and a stick of bubble gum. It is the last O-Pee-Chee CFL issue of its era, famous today for carrying Joe Theismann's first card at number 27, yet mid-season acquisitions like Hicks produce the most interesting individual cards in the whole set because they capture a roster snapshot that no other release ever repeats. The back bio tells the story in two lines. A graduate of Kansas University, Hicks began his professional career with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers and joined the Tiger-Cats in September of 1971, listed on the back as a 6-foot, 220-pound import linebacker, and O-Pee-Chee's cartoon panel labels him a vicious tackler, with the French caption calling him un plaqueur redoutable. The timing of that trade made him part of the Hamilton defense that beat the Saskatchewan Roughriders 13-10 in the 1972 Grey Cup on November 26, 1972, which adds a delightful wrinkle for this buyer, because the sheet this card was stored on is populated almost entirely by those same Roughriders. the front shows a fine vertical line running top to bottom through the right third of the photo that reads like a light crease, though scanner or sleeve marks can mimic that exactly, so the grade has been set conservatively to account for either possibility. The photo is printed a touch left of center, leaving a wider yellow border at right, the top corners look crisp while the lower right corner is a shade softer, and a short line of edge rub runs along the bottom edge. The yellow TIGER CATS banner stays bold with only minor chipping, and the reverse shows light tan freckling in the left green stats panel. This is a genuine Canadian O-Pee-Chee bilingual back with parallel English and French print, not a puzzle back. We estimate VG-EX 3.5 because the crease question, the corner softening, and the mild centering shift keep this out of Excellent, while the vivid color, intact banner, and lack of stains or dings keep it comfortably above Good. The 1972 O-Pee-Chee CFL Emery Hicks #12 raw is a smart, budget-friendly add for Hamilton, Winnipeg, and CFL-history collectors, and it ships in a penny sleeve, soft card sleeve, and rigid team mailer. Grade Estimate: VG-EX 3.5