My New Oldest Goalie Card!

In my recent five-card eBay Parkhurst pick-up, I grabbed a card that instantly became the oldest goalie card in my entire collection.  Check it out!

This beauty, featuring Bruins goaltender Jim Henry, hails from the 1952-53 Parkhurst release.  I'm absolutely in love with this card, the prominence of the brown leather goalie gear and wooden stick is just perfect.  Not to mention the lack of a helmet or face mask!

For those who are not hockey card collectors and may not know, these early Parkhurst releases are a smaller sized card.  Think early '50s Bowman baseball.  Their inaugural set was the 1951-52 release, so this card is actually from the second major Parkhurst set ever released.  It's actually my third card from this set overall, all Bruins.

As for the subject, Henry was a goalie at the NHL level for many years throughout the 1940s and 1950s, playing for a few different franchises (and there weren't that many back then!).  He's probably most well known for an infamous photograph where he's shown (with a black eye) shaking hands with (a bloodied) Maurice Richard after a game 7 during the 1952 Stanley Cup Playoffs:

What a great shot!  If that doesn't give you a sense of the personal sacrifice some of these athletes made in terms of battering their bodies for the sake of the sport, I don't know what will.  Fantastic.

Here's a look at the back of the card.  Not in quite the same shape as the front, with a couple of surface creases and some staining along the bottom, but it's clearly legible which is all I really care about.  If you ask me this card is an absolute beauty, especially coming up on 70 years old now.

The crazy thing about this card is that it set me back just $10 with free shipping.  When I think of all the dumb things I've dropped $10 on in this hobby over the last dozen years or more I can't believe it took me so long to cross this one off the list.

So, while not the overall oldest card in my hockey collection, this is absolutely now my oldest goalie card.  How about you?  What are some of the oldest cards in your personal collection?  Have you had them a long time, or are they more recent pickups?  I'd love to hear about it in the comments below, and thanks as always for stopping by!