1973-74 O-Pee-Chee Hockey Forum

I noticed a few months back that most of the images from the 1973-74 OPC hockey set showed up in my profile as 'Card in my collection without an image.'  Didn't think much of it at the time, since I was crazy busy at work and just assumed the images were being replaced with better scans or cards in better condition.  Had a chance to look this week at the set again and noticed a change to how the set is being shown altogether.

From the release notes on the set: "Two different paper stocks were used during printing which resulted in cards with light (tan) and dark (grey) backs. The "dark" backs are more common for series 1 cards (1-132) and are listed here as the base. The "light" backs are more common for series 2 cards (133-264) and listed as a parallel set."

Personally, I would not have considered the cards with different card stocks as separate sets (nor did I since I have them intermixed in my PC).  With the change to the website, all of my cards, collection and for trade, are all listed as the parallel (light) backs.

My post here is for three reasons:

1. For those that collect vintage hockey, to be aware of the change to the website.  I was not aware of the change and had not seen any posts identifying the change.
2. To understand the rationale behind the change.  Not sure if the change was driven by the Admin or from the community at large?
3. To understand how to register my cards for this set on the site.  I will go through my cards are record them correctly based on the card stock, but I am struggling to figure out how I complete the set.  To me, the release notes imply that the main set should be Series 1 (dark) + Series 2 (light) while the insert set should be Series 1 (light) and Series 2 (dark)?

Thanks for the input in advance  I'm sure I am overthinking this one too.

There are multiple cases of this.  1987 Topps Stickers, soft vs hard back, depending on if they were printed by Topps or Panini.  1990 & 1991 Topps Traded, light vs dark stock depending on if they came from packs or the boxed set.  1991 Topps with all the ink variations...yeesh.

For what it's worth, I did have a chance to go through my cards from last night.  I completely cleared this set from my collection and started over.  My collection mostly followed the set description with the overwhelming majority of cards in series 1 have dark backs and series 2 having light backs.

Where I could, I replaced light backs in series 1 cards with dark backs.  Where I had only a light back for series 1, I kept the card listed in my collection (light backs) and added the same card to my want list for the dark backs (opposite applies for series 2).  In the end, I added about six cards to my want list for each series.  nothing major, but cataloging the cards is now accurate.

Not sure how I am going to show the set as complete on this site (unless I collect the sets with dark/light backs in their entirety?) or be happy that I both sets will show 50% complete.

I'm quite glad that this change was made. I just got my first card from this set in trade and I would never have known there was another version without it. (I got a card on the Topps-style dark cardstock, and thought it was Topps at first until I noticed it was bilingual!)

In a similar situation, the 1977-78 Topps NBA set is available on brown back and white back stocks. Before they were broken out here I just had a listing of if I had the number or not. As it turned out, I had a bunch of them in my duplicate stash that were in fact NOT duplicates...now I'm one card away from having both versions complete, I think. I may have that one as well but just won't know until I have everything scanned and sorted, and that's several years away.