This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 12/12/2020
The 1911-12 Imperial Tobacco hockey set is just the second set to immortalize the sport on cardboard. Taking up where their baseball contemporaries, such as the T-206 set, left off, the C55’s continued the evolution of sports cards by giving each card an individual number so they could be easily collected and switching from having a purely advertising back to introducing brief biographical facts about the player depicted on the front. Each of the 45 cards in the set feature a colored lithographic portrait framed on each side with a pair of hockey sticks and a gold banner at the bottom with the player’s name. A true complete set is 46 cards due to the two variations of card 27, Walter Smaill, which is found with either his right hand holding his stick, or as the less common hand on hip version. Both are represented in this lot. The C55 set is noted for its Georges Vezina rookie card – essentially the Honus Wagner of the hockey card world. A rookie when this set was issued in 1911, Vezina was the Montreal Canadiens goaltender. He would quickly establish himself as one of the game’s earliest and brightest stars, allowing the fewest goals in the league seven times in his career and becoming the first NHL goaltender to record a shutout. He was one of the original nine inductees to the Hockey Hall of Fame and the NHL’s annual award for best goaltender, the Vezina Trophy, is named is in his honor. This key card is in choice condition and has been graded a PSA 6. Other notables in the set are early stars Art Ross (PSA 6.5), Newsy LaLonde (PSA 5) and Fred "Cyclone" Taylor (PSA 6). The entire set has been graded by PSA with all cards ranging from a single PSA 3 (Walter Smaill hand on hip) and lone PSA 4 (Paddy Moran, card number 1) to (25) PSA 5, (4) PSA 5.5, (13) PSA 6 and (1) PSA 6.5. The set rating is a 5.444 and it is currently ranked as #7 on the PSA registry. An absolutely phenomenal master set of one of the earliest and certainly the most attractive hockey sets produced.