Seventy-Nine Blue Line Autograph Project: August 2011

1979-80 Topps
TTM 8/22/11 (24 days)

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My all-time favorite sports card set is the 1979-80 O-Pee-Chee/Topps hockey set. It is most famous for featuring Wayne Gretzky's rookie card. For me, it's just as big for including Bobby Smith's rookie. But beyond that, I always loved the design, with the deep and oh-so-'70s light blue border.

Upper Deck resurrected the design for the "Retro" parallel inserts in its 2008-09 O-Pee-Chee set. When I fell back into the autograph collecting hobby a couple of years after that, I made a point to try collecting as many autographed cards as I could from both the original 1979-80 set and the 2008-09 retro set.

A few years after that, after learning some basic Photoshop skills, I began making custom cards with this design for players who didn't have a card in either of the other sets.

August 22, 2011

WAYNE MERRICK

August 19, 2011

STEVE SHUTT