The start of something new: My Vintage Goalie Collection

1953-54 Parkhurst #46 Terry Sawchuk

Today I'm talking about about vintage hockey cards. Not just any vintage cards, but vintage goalie cards. Yes, goalie cards make these much sweeter pickups for me, personally. 

I'm not sure if it's been the pandemic or not, but for the past little while I've been really getting into vintage cards. From the sheer number of how many years this card has been in circulation on this earth, to the stories of the particular player depicted on the card, the old hockey equipment (which I still don't know how any player survived playing the sport for a living back then), even how these cards were manufactered compared to today's modern cards.

Everything about vintage cards seems even cooler the more I look into them.

​ I knew that if I ever started a vintage collection, the goalies would have to be number 1 on my list of priorities when looking into acquiring any new pieces for my new collection. I already had a 1963-64 Parkhurst Johnny Bower in my collection, but that was given to me a long time ago, so it wasn't added "on purpose" for my collection. Still, that Bower card is pretty sweet and it's right at home in my overall PC. 

After deciding on a few cards, I decided to pickup a 1953-54 Parkhurst card of Terry Sawchuk for the first addition in my new collection. Since Sawchuk is arguably one of the best goaltenders to ever play the game, this made it a very easy card to settle on without going over my budget. 

To think that I have a piece of hockey history that was in circulation while Terry was tending the pipes for the Wings is pretty amazing. Back when this card was released in 1953, Terry's career had been picking up some serious steam after making his NHL debut in 1949-50. At that time, who would have thought he'd end up with the record-setting career he did? Especially with the kind of numbers he put up wearing the Detroit Red Wings uniform in that era. 

As for the card itself, it's a thing of beauty. I mean, don't get me wrong, It's not perfect by any means and would grade terribly by anyone's standards of what a card "should" look like, but that's the way I prefer it for this vintage goalie card project. The overall eye appeal is what I'm really going for, plus I never really liked graded cards to begin with. There are plenty of these raw cards available which made it very easy to snag without breaking the bank. 

You'll also notice that this card doesn't have a photograph of Terry Sawchuk, but rather an artists depiction of him. This was done on purpose, as the technology wasn't around back then for Parkhurst to print photographs on cards on such a massive scale like we see today, and was fairly costly, which is why they opted for artistic depictions instead. Pretty cool stuff, right? A year later, I believe, in 1955, is when we see the first photography of players used on cards for mass-produced NHL card set, which helped pave the way for cards we're used to seeing today. So, in a way, cards from this 1953-54 Parkhurst set was the 'passing of the torch' when looking at the history of hockey cards. 

 I'm not sure how long this project will go or what cards will enter this collection from here on out, however, I'm really looking forward to reliving some goaltending history through these old pieces of cardboard! Even typing that out felt really cool. 

You can browse my small but mighty vintage goalie card collection on my new Vintage card page. Feel free to contact me if you have any vintage goalie cards availible. Maybe we can work out a deal! 

Happy Collecting,

​- Aaron