Hockey's Highest Valued Hockey Card?

Honus Wagner's famous 1909 baseball card gets worldwide attention for its selling value that is in the millions. What is the top valued hockey card?

Baseball has Honus Wagner. The 1909 Honus Wagner baseball card produced by the Piedmont Cigarette Company is the most valuable in existence. There are believed to be only sixty of these cards in the world and they have sold for millions.

What is the most valuable hockey card in existence? Where the Wagner card gets international attention each time it’s sold, very few know what hockey card sells for the most. It doesn’t quite fetch the millions that the Honus Wagner card does, but valued at $20,000, it’s not too shabby for a thin piece of old cardboard.

Since the early 1990’s, a great amount of attention has been paid to O-Pee-Chee’s #18 in their 1979-80 set. Of course, this card is the Wayne Gretzky rookie card. The card is valued at $800.00 today but has risen well over $1,000 in the past. High quality reprints that have found their way onto the market have tainted the value of the original card.

Only about thirteen years before, a set was produced by Topps that contained the rookie card of the great Bobby Orr of the Boston Bruins. This card, with the front face looking like an old style television screen, was the 1966-67 Topps #35. The Bobby Orr rookie card is valued at $3,000 in mint condition.

The RCs of two other legends are also valued at $3,000. Chicago Blackhawks historical icon Bobby Hull had his first hockey card show up as the 1958-59 Topps #66. Seven years earlier, the 1951-52 Parkhurst #66 featured the rookie card of Detroit Red Wings legend Gordie Howe. This was the first year that hockey cards were produced on a regular yearly basis and was eleven years after the closest previous set, the 1940-41 O-Pee-Chee V301 collection.

In fact, the first known hockey cards were produced in 1910-11 by Imperial Tobacco and were considerably smaller than the standard card size that we see today. The following year, the Imperial Tobacco set featured the great Georges Vezina in his rookie season. George, of course, is the goaltender that the NHL’s Vezina Trophy is named after. Vezina’s rookie card is valued at a cool $6,000.

From Vezina’s card, we take a huge jump to the next highest valued card. Harry Oliver played 16 seasons in the NHL from 1926-27 to 1936-37 with the Boston Bruins and the New York Americans. Oliver was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1967. His first card was produced in 1933-34 as part of the V129 set. Since this had been the first year in nine for hockey cards, Harry’s, like almost every other player’s, was a rookie card. Oliver’s was short printed. Because of this, the card is very rare today and is valued at $15,000.

Bert “Pig Iron” Corbeau is not a well-known name. Yet, Corbeau’s 1923-24 V145-1 #25 is the hockey card with the world’s highest book value. Corbeau had a ten year National Hockey League career with the Montreal Canadiens, Hamilton Tigers and Toronto St. Pats (predecessor to the Maple Leafs) from 1917-18 to 1926-27. He was part of the Montreal’s first Stanley Cup championship team, the first player to play for both Montreal and Toronto during his career and the first player to record 100 penalty minutes in one season. Corbeau’s rookie card from 1923-24 is valued at $20,000 but expect to pay much more if one can be found for sale.