Pack Rip - 1978-79 Topps Hockey

I've opened two packs of this stuff before, once here and once at A Pack to Be Named Later. I finally negotiated a price and purchased the remaining 17 packs from the box at the local hobby shop yesterday. I'm as confident as you can be that they're authentic and not re-wrapped, and considering I paid less than $4 a pack it was a risk I was happy to take. I doubt I will pull anything as cool as this Jim Bedard card though.

If nothing else they should make for some good material here on the blog. It's not every day that you get to open wax from the 70's, and the packs I've busted before seemed to get a pretty good reaction. Here's a full shot of the unfolded wax wrapper:

The advertisements on the wrappers vary, with this one being for Bazooka's Smooooth N' Juicy gum:

Each pack contains 12 cards and 1 team sticker. Here's the very first pack:

#5 - Garry Unger Highlight

The first five cards in the set are these Highlight cards spotlighting achievements from the previous season.

#229 - Mike Murphy

Mike is currently serving as the NHL's vice president of hockey operations.

#236 - Don Marcotte

Don was a career long Bruin and a member of both 1970's Stanley Cup teams. With any luck we'll see the Cup return to Boston in a few weeks here.

#259 - Checklist

#252 - Ron Zanussi

#189 - J. Bob Kelly

Apparently J. Bob's nickname was "Battleship".

Rangers Team Sticker

Not sure if the number sticker is a 6 or a 9. #9 is retired by the team (Andy Bathgate).

#227 - Rejean Houle

Apparently Houle is one of the least popular GM's in Canadiens history. Patrick Roy, Mike Keane, Mark Recchi, Vincent Damphousse and Pierre Turgeon were all traded away during his reign for little return.

#130 - Gilbert Perreault

Card of the pack by a long shot. Not only is it one of only two Hall-of-Famers in the pack, but the card is absolutely mint with 4 sharp corners and perfect centering. There are a lot of centering issues with this set, and my experience has been that only three cards per pack or so actually have good centering. It's nice that the best card in the pack is one of those in this case.

#14 - Gene Carr

Carr didn't suit up for a single NHL game in 1978-79. Those skates couldn't have helped his cause much.

#233 - Greg Malone

Malone served as head scout for the 1991 and 1992 Stanley Cup Champion Pittsburgh Penguins teams.

#62 - Billy Smith

Smith was the Islanders netminder during their four straight Stanley Cup seasons from 1980 through 1983. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1993.

#242 - Ric Seiling

The last card in each pack has wax stains on the back, so Ric here will not be going into my set. He'll either be sent off in a random trade package or tossed out.

A decent start. No matter what these packs will net me 204 cards (192 minus the wax stained cards) towards a set that's only 264 total cards. I'm not sure I'll post all of these, but I'll definitely post at least a couple more.