Seventy-Nine Blue Line Autograph Project: September 2011

September 22, 2011

KYLE BRODZIAK

2008-09 O-Pee-Chee Retro
TTM 9/22/11 (234 days)

BRAD STAUBITZ

2008-09 O-Pee-Chee Update Retro
TTM 9/22/11 (269 days)

September 19, 2011

MIKE MODANO

2008-09 O-Pee-Chee Retro
TTM 9/19/11 (21 days)

September 17, 2011

PAVOL DEMITRA

2008-09 O-Pee-Chee Update Retro
Purchased 9/17/11

PAVOL DEMITRA

2008-09 O-Pee-Chee Retro
Purchased 9/17/11

JAROME IGINLA

2008-09 O-Pee-Chee Update Retro
Purchased 9/17/11

About This Blog

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.