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.
