Three New Autographs for My '89-90 Quest

1989-90 Topps/O-Pee-Chee hockey was the first set of sports cards that I ever collected as a kid.  I've told the story here before, but in the winter of '89 my brothers and I would wait anxiously for our dad to arrive home from work.  Once or twice a week, when he came in the door he'd have a small brown bag from the sports card store near his work with packs of '89-90 Topps or O-Pee-Chee hockey for us inside.

My brothers and I each had three ring binders with some nine pocket sheets, and we'd spend hours sitting at the kitchen table opening our packs, admiring and learning about the teams and players, sorting and trading.  Some really great childhood memories that were the catalyst for a hobby I enjoy to this day!

I still have my original binder of hockey cards from that winter, and long ago added complete '89-90 Topps and O-Pee-Chee sets to my collection.  A couple of years back I decided I wanted to find a new way to enjoy that very first set all over again, and I started picking up some autographed versions of the cards.  It's not my top collecting priority or anything and I don't think I'll ever accumulate an entire autographed set or anything, but it's a lot of fun hunting down new ones from time to time.

Tonight I have the next three cards in that quest, which arrived in the mailbox just today from a very reputable eBay seller.  Let's check 'em out...

First up is defenseman David Shaw of the New York Rangers.  This card illustrates one of the issues with this particular project, and that is that the photographs tend to be somewhat dark in nature which makes the autographs hard to make out in some cases.  Other than going with a really small autograph and tucking it along the left border, or between his legs in the photograph, the options were fairly limited for David to sign this one.

Shaw had a lengthy career patrolling the blue line for a few different franchises, most notably the Quebec Nordiques, New York Rangers, and Boston Bruins.  He also won a Memorial Cup with the Kitchener Rangers in 1982 (shout-out to Douglas of Sportscards from the Dollar Store!).

Next up, Mark Osborne (incorrectly spelled Osbourne on the card front) of the Leafs.  Mark scored over 500 points in over 900 career games as a winger in the NHL.  The autograph is nice and legible here thanks to the use of a thick, black marker.

Here's the back, with Osborne's name spelled correctly.  This was actually an uncorrected error by the folks at O-Pee-Chee, so there is no version of the card with a correct spelling on the front (or an incorrect spelling on the back, for that matter).

The final subject in tonight's trio is Mario Marois of the Quebec Nordiques.  We used to snicker about him as kids just because his first and last names are so similar.  Mario had been around a while by the time this set was issued, having begun his NHL career back in 1978.  This card actually reflects his second multi-year stint with the Nordiques, a club he captained for a few years in the 1980s.

Love the autograph on this one, Marois is certainly my favorite signature of the three in tonight's post with those beautiful, loopy 'M's.

I love that all three of these guys included their uniform number in their signatures.  I'm pretty convinced they're authentic autographs given A) the credibility and track record of the eBay seller I purchased them from, B) from the limited research I was able to do they appear to be in line with other autographs from these athletes, and C) they cost me $1.99 each, so there's not much incentive for forging these guys!

I'm actually up to 20 different on-card autographs from this set now, if you count my Topps and O-Pee-Chee cards combined.  If you're interested, you can see the entire collection here; it's starting to look quite nice if I do say so myself.

Best of all, these three autographs were actually part of a lot of six that I purchased overall, so I'll have another trio posted soon in this quest.  Until then, thanks as always for stopping by!