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Do they count as minis if this was the standard size of the set? Probably not. They’re small, though.
1952-53 is one of my favourite sets. I say this about a lot of sets, but if there were only four or five I were able to have and keep, this would be one of them. They’re about half-again as big as the ’51-52 Parkhurst set and actually have stats and a bit of text on the back. For baseball people, they’re a little smaller than ’52 Bowman, but otherwise are pretty similar.
Parkhurst issued an album for 1952-53 and many of the cards you find show its effects. The album had slots in which to insert the corners of the cards, so a lot of ’52-53 Parkies show creases on two or three corners, typically on the back. They either got these going into the album or coming out.
For the amount I enjoy this set, I don’t collect it all that heavily. They tend to get pricey when graded and I’ve had other things that were priorities. When I see something going way under value, though, I grab it. That’s what happened here. These two cards bring me to 36/105.
The first card is George Gee of the Chicago Black Hawks. George had a pretty solid nine-season NHL career for Chicago and Detroit, hitting 20 goals once and 17-18 four other times. In a really defensive era, those were pretty sound totals. While the card lists his last amateur club as the Sudbury Frood Miners – which is an outstanding name even if I have no idea what it means – it really should list him as having played for the Canadian Navy, with whom he was enlisted from 1943-45. The Navy team out of Cornwall actually competed for the Allan Cup in 1943-44.
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Woody Dumart also enlisted in the Second World War. Like a lot of players, he joined during the 1941-42 season. His 1942 playoffs were spent with the RCAF (a lot of players who enlisted wound up playing hockey in some form or other – it was a morale thing).
Woody was the left-winger for the famous (and inappropriately-named, by today’s standards) “Kraut Line” along with Milt Schmidt and Bobby Bauer. This was one of the best lines in hockey from the late 1930s through most of the 1940s and led Boston to Cups in 1939 and 1941. Bauer retired early, but Schmidt and Dumart carried on into the early 1950s. Woody was elected into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1992.
I received a fantastic trade lot from Shoebox Legends. As soon as I can get a few minutes alone with the scanner, I’ll show it off….
Diamond Cuts and Wax Stains 