Collecting Whalers - 2012-13 O-Pee-Chee Retro Ron Francis

One recent trend I've been very thankful for is the inclusion of Hartford Whalers cards in more and more modern-day sets.  There have been at least a handful of new Whalers cards each year for the past two or three years, and in my opinion the sample size has been just right.  There have been enough new cards to give me something fun to chase, but not so many that the chase becomes overwhelming.  A few weeks ago I noticed in a post on Just A Bit Offside that Ron Francis is included as a Hartford Whaler in the Marquee Legends subset in 2012-13 O-Pee-Chee hockey.  I'm still on the lookout for the card featured in that post, but I was able to snag the retro parallel of the same card, which I think looks even better than the base:

It's not an exact match, but the closest thing I could think of off-hand to compare these cards to are the All-Time Greats cards from the 1960-61 Topps hockey set.  I really like that this retro parallel is full color compared to the black and white photo used on the base version of the card.  I also like that while this is the same exact photo used on the base card, it's cropped further out on the retro parallel so that you can see just how much green the Whalers used to sport.  I would have to say that this is one of the most colorful Whalers cards that I own, period.

The back I would say is so-so.  Not the best card back I've seen, but not the worst either.  I don't plan on buying much, if any, 2012-13 O-Pee-Chee but I would like to track down Milt Schmidt and David Krejci retro parallels, as well as the Brendan Shanahan and Ron Francis Pop-Ups inserts, both of which feature the players in Whaler garb.

Have you picked up any of the new O-Pee-Chee yet?  If so, are you going for the set or just grabbing some singles like I am?