Signature Sundays - Gump!

It's All-Star Weekend for the NHL, and we're back to hockey for our Signature Sundays autograph post this week.  A great one too in my opinion, goaltender Lorne "Gump" Worsley!

What a great looking hockey card, huh?  I'm not entirely certain, but I believe these 2001-02 Parkhurst autographs from In the Game were among the earliest pack-pulled on-card certified autographs available for many of the HOFers in the 59-card set.  I love the simplistic design, and the fantastic photograph of Gump.  I'm a sucker for just about any goalie card with a photograph from the era of brown pads and wooden sticks.

Worsley was one of the better netminders of his day, winning the Calder Memorial Trophy for Rookie of the Year, four Stanley Cups, and a couple of Vezinas too!  He was enshrined in the Hockey HOF in 1980.

Here's the back.  Not a whole lot to it, but it does clearly authenticate the autograph on the front.  I guess that's about all you can ask for.  While these are not serial-numbered, the print runs of these cards are generally known and acknowledged, and range from just 20 copies on the rarer side, up to 90 copies.  Worsley is one of the most common ones, with 90 copies in circulation, however that's still a somewhat rare autograph.  I don't stumble upon these all that often myself, so I was pleased to snatch this one up when I did back in 2014.

There are some really big-name players in this set, and I love that all the cards are hard-signed.  I actually picked up a couple of other autos from this same set from the seller, but I've decided I'm going to package those up and send them off to a hobby friend that I am long overdue in sending something significant to.  I'm hanging onto Gump here for my own collection though, as it's my first and only autograph of his.  There aren't a whole ton of them available out there either, as he passed away in 2007 from a heart attack.

So there you have it, one of my older and certainly most prized certified hockey autographs.  For those of you that collect hockey, have you ever come across any of these Parkhurst autos?  Do you have any in your own collection?  Would love to hear about it if so...