Pushed Out

Often when I post a blurry scan or two of something here, I get an e-mail sending along better quality pictures.  A fairly recent post showing an uncut 1968-69 O-Pee-Chee Hockey Push Outs partial sheet garnered the attention of longtime Friend o'the Archive Bobby Burrell (who is pretty much the top authority on hockey cards and collectibles-check out his Vintage Hockey Collector guide!).  Bobby has provided a much better shot of this 55 card partial sheet, one that's actually complete!

Bobby had this to say about the sheet:

"The 1968 push out inserts were the very first insert for OPC in their stand along name being OPC away from Topps.

They were inserted into the second of this two series issue.

The insert sheets are always found cut in half, it would appear that the Push Out were more manageable cutting down due

to a large sheet handling would make some of them pop. Almost all have a pin mark, to hold the die cut in the process of

being done, almost every card has this small nick or pin hole, which doesn’t go through."

I think Topps and O-Pee-Chee had issues generally with die cut sets as you see a lot of partials like this from the era.  Those pinholes are also endemic on their earlier paper wrappers-the Topps Gum penny tabs that formed the first products of the company from 1938 had them as well.

The wax wrapper is pretty nice:

Puck or harmonica? You decide!

The box is pretty slammin' as well:

Thanks to 48 double prints, the 2nd series of OPC Hockey for 1968-69 indeed had 84 subjects, a very scarce number not divisible by the usual 11.