1973-74 O-Pee-Chee Chicago Blackhawks #NNO Team Logo Pushout Insert 1st Series

Description

1973-74 O-Pee-Chee Chicago Blackhawks #NNO Team Logo Pushout Insert 1st Series The profiled Indian head of the Chicago Blackhawks, framed here in a die-cut burst of orange, is among the most recognisable emblems in all of sport, and in the vintage market it is simply one of the most wanted team logos of the 1970s. This 1973-74 O-Pee-Chee Chicago Blackhawks #NNO Team Logo Pushout Insert 1st Series decal shows the head with its four feathers in red, green and yellow against the orange field, the crest that Stan Mikita, Tony Esposito and Pit Martin carried at Chicago Stadium during an era when the Hawks were perennial contenders and the organ was always playing. O-Pee-Chee inserted these adhesive-backed pushouts in first series wax packs of the 1973-74 issue, printing the application instructions in both English and French on the front, PUNCH OUT, WET BACK AND PRESS ONTO ANY SURFACE FOR TEN SECONDS and ENLEVEZ EN POUSSANT, HUMECTEZ LE DOS ET COLLEZ SUR N'IMPORTE QUELLE SURFACE EN PRESSANT PENDANT DIX SECONDS, which identifies the Canadian printing and separates it from the instruction-free American logo inserts of the previous year. Because this decal is die-cut to the shape of the logo rather than left as a plain rectangle, survivors with every point of the orange field intact are especially scarce, and this example retains the full shaped border with its feathers and points complete. Mikita was skating out his final season in 1973-74 while Esposito was still stealing games in the Chicago net, and the Stadium's legendary crowd treated every night like a festival, which is the cultural backdrop that makes any intact Blackhawks logo piece from this winter so collectible. Shaped decals like this one were the first to be pulled from packs and pressed onto binders, so shaped survivors with complete points are scarcer still. the front colour remains vivid with the head sharply printed and centred, the corners of the carrier card are square, and the shaped orange border shows the slight roughness inherent to the die-cutting process with a couple of minute nicks at the upper points but no missing pieces. The reverse is the plain gum-backed board with the shaped cut line visible, lightly toned and clean, and to be explicit this is the Canadian O-Pee-Chee bilingual instruction front with a blank adhesive back, neither a puzzle back nor a bilingual back. Weighing the inherent edge roughness of the shaped decal against the otherwise strong preservation, the conservative estimate is EX 5, an honest grade for one of the most displayable logos of the decade. Grade Estimate: EX 5