Seventy-Nine Blue Line Autograph Project: February 2016

February 21, 2016

PHIL RUSSELL

1979-80 O-Pee-Chee
IP 2/21/16 at Stadium Series VIP Pre-Game Party

JAMAL MAYERS

2008-09 O-Pee-Chee Retro
IP 2/21/16 at Stadium Series VIP Pre-Game Party

PETER MARSH

1979-80 Topps
IP 2/21/16 at Stadium Series VIP Pre-Game Party

CLIFF KOROLL

1979-80 O-Pee-Chee
IP 2/21/16 at Stadium Series VIP Pre-Game Party

JERRY KORAB

1979-80 Topps
IP 2/21/16 at Stadium Series VIP Pre-Game Party

REG KERR

1979-80 Topps
IP 2/21/16 at Stadium Series VIP Pre-Game Party

ADRIAN AUCOIN

2008-09 O-Pee-Chee Retro
IP 2/21/16 at Stadium Series VIP Pre-Game Party

February 20, 2016

ADAM BURT

Custom Card
TTM 2/20/16 (37 days)

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.