The first pack of card I ever opened was from this set. I was seven years old at the time and already liked Hockey. I had seen my first professional hockey game (New Haven Nighthawks AHL) about a year earlier. I was given the pack by a neighbor on Halloween night 1975. They would give out packs of Hockey cards every Halloween till around 1980. Nice people...

This is a rather average set from Topps with
the team name across the top in bold letters.
Big name rookies are limited and include Gillies,
Tremblay, and Mcnab.

Although I have no recollection of buying or opening them, this is the first pack of cards I ever opened, at age 7.

[The first set of cards I ever loved was 1976 Topps baseball; I memorized the look of the players, positions, teams, even trivia from the card backs. The summer of 1976 is when I first began to fall in love with sports.]

Yet the 1975-76 Topps Hockey had a prominent place in my collection. I don't know why I would have bought hockey cards, and even at that age if I had a choice I would have purchased basketball cards to collect that winter (1975-76 Topps Basketball is my all-time favorite design, to be sure). But Hockey it was.

Although I don't consider it a great all-around design, 1975-76 Topps Hockey remains a sentimental favorite. I didn't devour the cards as I did 1976 Baseball, but still I studied these cards closely (a hockey player named Carol? or Guy? California Golden Seals?).

One anecdote about 1975-76 Topps Hockey: I was in 1st grade at the time, and we were allowed to bring items from home for free time. Some of us brought our cards. I found myself playing some sort of speed trading game with a couple of other kids; we'd both lay down a card from our stack and the more wizened kid trading with me would quickly tell his friend "take it" or "no." Well, I could tell pretty quickly I was sort of getting ripped off here, but I was just a kid and intimidated by the whole process. The trading game ended when this dastardly pair made off with my 1975-76 Stan Mikita (growing up watching the Blackhawks even at that age I knew Mikita was a special card).

Later, I somehow went back to that kid's cards and stole back my Mikita and hit it in my shoe, yes, under my foot in my shoe, the rest of the day. Don't think it ended up NM.

Maybe one day I'll tell you the story of my mom chasing down some neighborhood kids who stole my 1977 Reggie Jackson!