Belated Thanks to 1967ers!

As 2012 nears its end and I look back over this past year, I've come to the realization that I owe a couple of thank you posts.  Today I'm going to square up with 1967ers, who exchanged bubble mailers with me all the way back at the end of last winter (wow, has it really been that long!).  I started posting about some of the trade contents relatively quickly, covering the 1971 O-Pee-Chee, 1972 O-Pee-Chee and 1978 O-Pee-Chee Red Sox cards that were included in my package.

I was saving the best contents for last, but as sometimes happens here at Shoebox Legends headquarters time got away from me.  Here we are in November and my favorite cards from 1967ers still haven't seen the light of day.  Time to rectify that!  Here's the rest of the cards that came my way many months ago now:












That would be half a dozen 1980 O-Pee-Chee Red Sox cards.  Nearly halfway to a team set right there, and not just the scrubs either!  Yaz is easily my favorite.  Chris also sent the '78 O-Pee-Chee Yaz, and two of the '71 OPC League Leader cards he sent featured Yastrzemski as well, so I went from having no O-Pee-Chee Yaz cards to having four just from this one great trade.

Also inside the bubble mailer were two Red Sox from the 1973 O-Pee-Chee set.  A great, late-career card of Hall-of-Fame shortstop Luis Aparicio.

1973 features one of the best card back designs ever, so I was happy to see that O-Pee-Chee didn't really change the design significantly from the Topps release.

The other '73 O-Pee-Chee included was this fantastic card of Luis Tiant.  I just love this photo.  Probably my favorite baseball card in the entire trade package.

Perhaps the best thing about these two cards is that I don't own the Topps version of either, so this was my first time seeing them in hand.

Finally, there were two much appreciated hockey cards as well, both from 1970-71 O-Pee-Chee.  The first was Johnny Bucyk, card #2 in the set.

The last card is the one that was the impetus behind this trade, and is one I've wanted to add to my hockey collection for a long time:

Yes, thanks to 1967ers I finally have my very own copy of the Terry Sawchuk "In Memory Of..." card.  A very significant, if not somewhat out of the ordinary, card that I think is a must have for any good vintage hockey collection.  More importantly, it's just another example of the awesomeness that is the card-blogging community.  I lamented in a post here that I didn't own a copy of the Sawchuk card.  Without me asking, or begging, or really doing anything other than casually mentioning that I didn't have it, Chris went out of his way to send me a copy.

Thanks for a fantastic trade Chris, and sorry it took me so long to give you a proper thank you post!  Let's try to do it again in 2013.

Now, in closing, only one question remains.  I selected the above Stanley Cup card to occupy slot #231 in my Ultimate Hockey Card franken-set, but at the time I didn't own the Sawchuk tribute card.  Now that I've got both in hand, I'm wondering if I made the right choice.  If you've got an opinion I'd love to hear any thoughts in the comments.  Should I stick with my original selection, or should the Sawchuk tribute be the first to supplant another card in my franken-set?