1973-74 O-Pee-Chee Toronto Maple Leafs #NNO Team Logo Pushout Insert 1st Series

Description

1973-74 O-Pee-Chee Toronto Maple Leafs #NNO Team Logo Pushout Insert 1st Series In Canada the maple leaf is not merely a team mark but a national signature, and the blue leaf of the Toronto Maple Leafs is the most storied emblem in hockey, stitched onto a dozen championship sweaters and broadcast into living rooms every Saturday night on Hockey Night in Canada. This 1973-74 O-Pee-Chee Toronto Maple Leafs #NNO Team Logo Pushout Insert 1st Series decal presents the leaf in strong royal blue with the club name stacked boldly across its centre, the exact crest that Darryl Sittler, Lanny McDonald and Dave Keon wore during a season when the Leafs fought for playoff ground in one of the toughest divisions the league has ever assembled. O-Pee-Chee of London, Ontario slipped these adhesive-backed pushouts into first series wax packs of its 1973-74 issue, printing the application rules directly on the front in both official languages, 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 is the tell-tale signature of the Canadian run of this insert. Because the intended audience was children with sticky fingers and decorated bedroom walls, unused examples with the gum intact are dramatically rarer than the already modest survival rate suggests, and Toronto pieces are the most pursued of the seventeen because the Leaf brand never stopped being Canada's team. Leaf Nation stretched from coast to coast in 1973, and the blue leaf decal was the piece most often sacrificed to scrapbooks and school lockers, which explains why untouched examples command the strongest prices of the entire seventeen-card insert run today. this is the visually cleanest decal of the group, with vivid blue ink, a leaf that sits squarely centred between the two text blocks, corners that appear sharp and square at normal viewing distance, and edges free of chipping or whitening. The reverse is the plain brown adhesive-backed board carrying the die-cut leaf outline, free of stains, writing or adhesive disturbance, with only the lightest even toning, and to be explicit this is the Canadian O-Pee-Chee bilingual front instruction variant with a blank gum reverse, neither a puzzle back nor a printed bilingual back. Given the outstanding eye appeal we still grade conservatively for a five-decade-old insert, so the estimate is EX-MT 6, held back from near mint only by the faint age toning on the reverse and the always-cautious approach that raw grading demands. Grade Estimate: EX-MT 6