Joy of a Completed Set – 1963-64 Parkhurst Part 3

These are the last 35 cards of the set, plus one dupe I’m hanging onto because it’s interesting.  The cards comprise the standup/full-body poses of Montreal and Toronto, less the first four Leafs who were in the last post.  The Leafs would go on to win the 1964 Cup (famous for Bobby Baun scoring an OT winner on a broken leg), while the Habs would win four of the next five (with the Leafs getting the other).  As a result, there are a LOT of Hall of Famers in this set.

Page 9 – cards 65-72

Pictured here are Johnny Bower, Eddie Litzenberger, Kent Douglas, Carl Brewer, Eddie Shack, Bob Nevin, Billy Harris (the elder) and Bob Pulford.  Kent Douglas was the 1962-63 Calder winner – the first defenseman to be so honoured.  Billy Harris is “the elder” because of the other Billy Harris (not related) who played primarily for the Islanders, but also for the Leafs in the early 80s.  Billy the Elder was the better Leaf.  Of this group, only Bower, Douglas, Shack and Pulford would be around for the ’67 Cup win, and Douglas wasn’t playing.  He and Shack would be lost in the expansion draft.

Click here for an image of the back of the cards.

Page 10- cards 73-80

Players depicted are captain George Armstrong, Ron Stewart, Dave Keon, Tim Horton, Frank Mahovlich, Bob Baun, coach/GM Punch Imlach, Gilles Tremblay.  This is a really strong grouping – five Hall of Famers and the three players who aren’t (Stewart, Baun, Tremblay) all had excellent careers.  This is also the page where the pattern is broken from the first part of the set.  Normally, all of the full-body cards appear in the same order as in the first half of the set.  Here, though, Keon replaces MacMillan and King Clancy is simply missing (making for a 99-card set instead of 100).  No idea why this would be the case.  I like Punch’s jacket.

As an aside, I got an old copy of Lanny McDonald’s biography and in the opening pages, he says that one of his great regrets is not punching Imlach in the chops when he had the chance.  It’s kind of odd-sounding coming from Lanny, but that was the Imlach impact.

Click here for an image of the back of the cards.

Page 11 – cards 81-88

Players depicted are Jean-Guy Talbot, Henri Richard, Ralph Backstrom, Bill Hicke, Red Berenson (RC), Jacques Laperriere (RC), Jean Gauthier (RC), Bernie Geoffrion.  Laperriere would become the second defenseman to win the Calder, going back-to-back with Kent Douglas.  Talbot was the only blueliner from the great 1950s squad to also play on the Cup winners of the 1960s.  Other than the 1963-64 York Peanut Butter set, these two Parkhurst cards are the only ones you ever see of Jean Gauthier.

Click here to see an image of the backs of the cards.

Page 12 – cards 89-96

Players depicted are captain Jean Beliveau, J.C Tremblay, Terry Harper (RC), John Ferguson (RC), coach Toe Blake, Bobby Rousseau, Claude Provost, Marc Reaume.  No shortage of Hall-of-Famers here, too.  Of the ones that didn’t make it, all had significant NHL careers save for Reaume, and he was still a 17-year pro.  Tremblay is somewhat of a forgotten superstar.  He gave the last seven years of his career to the WHA.  It’s hard to fathom a 1970s Habs blueline with Tremblay in addition to Robinson, Savard and Lapointe.  That team might never have lost.

Click here for an image of the backs of the cards.

Page 13 – cards 97-99 (plus one)

Players depicted are Dave Balon, Gump Worsley, Cesare Maniago (RC), plus a second Vic Stasiuk.  This is kind of a neat page because it has the two goaltenders, and the Maniago card is interesting in and of itself.  It’s the only card that is landscape-oriented, the only one to show anything other than the player (the net), and because he has no stats, it’s one of the few with any sort of write-up on the back.  It’s also the last card of the set, making it irritatingly condition-sensitive.  This was one of the ones where I found a PSA 6.5 running under book value and cracked it.  Maniago had a bit of a knack for giving up milestone goals.  As a Leaf in 1961, he gave up the record-tying 50th goal to Geoffrion, as a Ranger in 1966 he gave up Bobby Hull’s record-breaking 51st and as a 1971 North Star he was victimized for Beliveau’s 500th.  I see one report that he gave up Mikita’s 500th as well.  That one is news to me, but I wouldn’t bet against it.

The Stasiuk is one of two I had that had autographs on them.  A Geoffrion is one that I’ve concluded was signed by someone’s mom, but this Stasiuk seems legit.  The signature is a dead match for the one on his 1962-63 Parkhurst card.  It was clearly stuck in an album, but came out pretty gracefully with no paper loss.

Note that Dave Balon appears to have a weird edge.  It’s scanner glare.

Thus ends the set.  It’s a little bit of a misstatement to say it took me 25 years to complete – partly because it’s really 29 and partly because I took over 10 years off in the middle.  It also wasn’t my only focus.  I would pick up any old card I could, so really, I was working on all sets simultaneously.  Still, it’s nice to see it complete and it gives me three different Parkhurst sets.

I have no idea when I’ll finish a fourth.