Hockey as a game was conceptualized and played as early as 1875. But, formally, the NHL and its teams were established only in 1917. Next to baseball, the game of hockey grew quickly, a fanbase was created and started relating with its players. Taking full advantage of the situation, companies like Champ’s Cigarettes started giving player cards of the leading hockey players as freebies with their products. This resulted in two things, firstly increased profits for the company because of the increase in sales, and secondly, and most importantly, the hobby of hockey card collecting was born! However, the cards printed were few in number. Hockey cards also went out of production during the First World War and hence the hockey cards produced during this period are hard to find, rare and very valuable.
Along with Champ’s cigarette company, a leading Canadian candy manufacturer, O-Pee-Chee also started promoting their products by giving away free hockey player cards with their candies. However, this production was stopped during the Second World War and it was not until the beginning of the 1950’s that production of hockey player cards came into full swing. At that point, the first real hockey card collectors began their collections. Today, hockey card collecting is now a multi million dollar industry.
Cards printed during this early period, like the Billy Coutu cards, have become holy grails for any collector’s card collection. However, today vintage cards mean and include cards printed after the 50s and include mostly the players and the game statistics sometime during the early 70s. This is because, the earlier cards are either lost or, given their rarity, are untraceable. It was during the 1970s that the leading sports card manufacturer Topps, came into the picture and started producing hockey player cards. It was only after their entry into the hockey player cards market that the industry starting booming into what is presently known as the million dollar industry. Later on, companies like Score, Proset and Upper Deck started manufacturing hockey player cards and they have become quite popular with the public.
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