Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Early O-Pee-Chee Cards

When you think of O-Pee-Chee, many think of Canadian-issed cards that were essentially bilingual versions of Topps cards beginning in 1965 and continuing afterwards. In fact, There is a blog called Oh My O-Pee-Chee that goes over the sometimes subtle differences among many of the cards.

However, O-Pee-Chee was making cards long before Topps was. Going through some of my old image files on my computer, I found this card:


This card is from 1937, and represented the first baseball set OPC issued. It has the more "proper" spelling of DiMaggio's position than we Americans use, which gives it away as a Canadian issue. Joe D. appears to be playing inside a field, with players silhouetted in place as if a game were going on. There were 40 cards in all, and they weren't simply a variation of an American set.

However, the card is also die-cut, much in the same manner as the Batter Up set issued between 1934-36:





Personally, I like the design of the OPC cards better than the natural backgrounds used in the American set.
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2 comments:

  1. AnonymousNovember 9, 2011 at 2:28 PM

    OPC used the same basic design for their 1936-37 hockey release. I wrote about it here: http://1967ers.wordpress.com/2011/08/24/simply-awesome-ii-charlie-conacher-1936-37-opc-v304d/

    I've never seen the baseball release in person. They seem much harder to find than the hockey and the prices follow accordingly.

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  2. AnonymousNovember 11, 2011 at 10:08 PM

    After saying I'd never seen one of those, I went to the Toronto Fall Expo today and there was an absolutely perfect Joe. Can't even begin to imagine what they wanted for it, but I'd never seen anything like it. It was as though it just came out of a time capsule.

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