Normie Himes - Ice King!

For whatever reason, I tend to subscribe to the 'save the best for last' philosophy.  I guess I like anticipation and build-up.  With respect to this blog though, that attitude sometimes results in me withholding an absolute favorite card for months and months, in some cases longer.  I stay caught up with trade posts and smaller items as they come in, and before I know it some of the highlights of my collection are cleared off my card desk and put in storage (or on display) without ever seeing the blog.

I'm trying to break that habit a bit this year, and in the spirit of doing so here's a fairly recent addition to my vintage hockey collection:

What a card!  I still smile every time I look at this one.  As the PSA slab indicates, Normie Himes here is from the 1933-34 World Wide Gum Ice Kings set.  World Wide Gum was a Canadian company that had some sort of affiliation with or association to Goudey, which was operating out of the US.  They reproduced the 1933 Goudey baseball set for Canada, but also printed a few hockey sets of their very own that same decade.

Do I care that this card was graded a 2?  Not at all, in fact it's the only reason a guy like me could afford pretty much any card from this set.  These 80+ year old beauties are not very easy to come by in any condition on my budget.  Here's a better look at the front:

I love the stars and stripes New York Americans sweater, lack of equipment, and newsboy cap.  Apparently that hat was a trademark for Normie, who was a very under-rated player in his day by all accounts.  There's not a ton of info online about him, but he was the Americans' leading scorer for quite a few seasons and participated in the very first NHL All-Star game.  The most thorough write-up I could find on his career was this one.

Here's a look at the back, which will look familiar to any of you baseball collectors who have pre-war Goudey cards, except that it was printed in Montreal.

I never thought I'd have one of these original World Wide Gum cards, and I'm excited to welcome Normie Himes to my collection.  This is one I'll likely always hang onto, even if I stop collecting someday.