Looking back on 1974-75 - Part 1

My first season of serious collecting and card activity was the winter of 1974-75.  With my allowance and the money my grandfather - grandparents are the best - would give me on the sly, I managed to get to nearly complete the 1974-75 OPC hockey set. One short!

Well, actually I was really good at our version of card flipping games. In Toronto back in the seventies kids played "knock down", "topsies" and "farsies". If you don't remember or know of these games they all included firing cards at the brick wall outside of our grade school. Any wall would do though.

Winners either knocked down leaning cards, landed on, or landed closer to the wall than the other kids' flicks. These games certainly rounded the corners, but I couldn't let my mother know why. She did not approve of me gambling so I let her believe I was just a shrewd trader to get the missing cards. 

One card that eluded me be it in packs, trades, or games, was the Stanley Cup special card. No schoolmate wanted to part with it at any cost. Hell, we were in Toronto and The Broad Street Bullies were the enemy. The way they manhandled some of the Leafs especially Borje Salming was an act of war. Why were they hoarding them so? 

I finally landed it a few years later but I have no recollection of when or how. It was no longer important in a kid's mind. 

In my inaugural post, here I first talked about our family routine about visiting the grandparents weekly. Well, they were quite aware that I was a collecting fiend. I mean I always had a bag or box of cards with me. The grocery store where they shopped was selling uncut sheets of the 74-75 set. They bought me a sheet, the "third series" (#265-396). Ugh. Grateful, but still ugh. 

The third series was the OPC add-ons to the Topps set. So it was the lesser names to a kid. As an adult though, I look at the rookies it was loaded with, Resch, Shutt, Gainey, and many more. Not so ugh anymore. I don't have the sheet as it didn't survive many moves through the years. 

This grocery store was part of the Loblaw chain so they had the 74-75 Action Players. I really liked these! Every Saturday grandma had several strips of "stamps" waiting for me. 

That is not my album but it certainly came apart just like that as the spine could not handle the stamps being affixed to the pages usually with this good stuff. I took my album with me everytime we visited until it was full and that did not help its condition. 

I completed that set in no time, and with bags of duplicates. So many that I told my grandma, no more please. 

That's it for Part 1. 

In Part 2 - posting date unknown, depends on what good stuff arrives here - will wrap up two more hockey sets and a "splash" of baseball.

As always, thanks for reading and keep collecting.