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An Interview with a Hockey Card Collector
by Patrick Hoffman on 12/11/09 at 10:34 AM ET
Comments (3)
This past week, I conducted an e-mail interview with a big-time hockey card collector, Sal Barry. Barry is the owner of hockey card site PuckJunk.com and can sometimes be heard on XM NHL Home Ice discussing all things hockey cards.
Sal was kind enough to take time out of his schedule and discuss how he got into the game and how he got into hockey card collecting.
PH: How did you first get into hockey?
SB: It was January of 1989, and I was 13 years old. We just got cable television, and I was flipping back and forth between a movie about Martin Luther King Jr. and SCTV reruns. I entered the wrong channel number on the remote, and caught the end of a hockey game between the Chicago Blackhawks and the Buffalo Sabres. I tuned a few days later to watch another Blackhawks game, and became more interested. At the end of the month, my Aunt Gayle took me to a ‘Hawks game for my 14th birthday, and I was hooked.
PH: Growing up, who was your favorite team and player? Why?
SB: Being a life-long Chicago resident, my favorite team was (and still is) the Blackhawks. When you are a kid, you tend to follow the team in your home town because they are in your home town. Plus, they were contenders during the late 1980s/early 1990s. They had some exciting players like Denis Savard, Jeremy Roenick, Chris Chelios and Ed Belfour. As it turned out, both my Mom and my Aunt were hockey fans in the 1970s – my Mom even gave me her old hockey scrapbooks, and a Guy Lafleur autograph she got from early in his career.
Dirk Graham – the team captain for the Blackhawks – was my favorite player for a while. He was a hard worker, the typical “whole is worth more than the sum of its parts” type of player. Average skater, average shooter, but worked his ass off and was always reliable. Later, my favorite player was – and still is – Chris Chelios. Like Graham, Chelios embodied the hard-work ethic that is appreciated in Chicago sports.
PH: At what point in your life did you start collecting hockey cards/memorabilia?
SB: I started collecting hockey cards soon after going to my first game. But hockey cards were hard to find in Chicago in the late 1980s – you could only get those at an actual trading card store – so I first collected Panini Hockey stickers, which you could easily find at grocery and drug stores. Whenever I did make it to a card shop, I’d spend what money I had on hockey cards. In June of 1989, I finished 8th grade and spent all of my graduation money on several complete sets from the 1970s and 1980s. At that time, I had only been a fan for six months, and yet I was already a hardcore collector.
PH: Tell us about your experience in collecting hockey cards/memorabilia. What are some of your best hockey card sets? What are some of your best hockey memorabilia items?
SB: Well, I’ve been collecting for 20 years and have amassed quite a few cards. I have about 200 complete sets from 1968 to present, plus another 50 or so team-issued sets, about 3,000 autographed cards, and a few other odds and ends.
Among my favorites is the 1971-72 Topps set, which was the first vintage set I attempted to put together. I started building the set when I was 15, and finally finished it when I was 25 or 26. Another of my holy grails is the 1983 Canada World Junior Team Set – it has cards of Mario Lemieux and Steve Yzerman from the World Junior Championships, a year or two before they made their NHL debuts. And I’m quite proud of my autographed card collection – I got tons of ‘graphs from many of the players I grew up watching.
I’m not much of a hockey memorabilia collector – I tend to focus more on cards. But I really like hockey toys – I have most of the Starting Lineup hockey figures from the 1990s, and many McFarlane SportsPicks figures from the 2000s. I think what trumps all of that, though, is the Wayne Gretzky Doll, made by Mattel in 1983. More or less, it is a Ken doll with a Gretzky head and an Oilers jersey. It is pretty lame-looking, but that’s what makes it so awesome.
PH: How did you come up with PuckJunk.com?
SB: Since I’m a professional web designer, it was only natural for me to want to create a website about my favorite hobby. There’s not a whole lot about hockey cards on the internet – it’s always about baseball cards. So I wanted to rectify that, and give puck heads a site where they could find enjoyable and informative articles about hockey cards.
PH: What are you looking to bring visitors who come to your site?
SB: I like to inform my visitors and make them laugh. The articles on Puck Junk should teach collectors something new, but in a humorous way. Collecting is a fun thing to do, and I try to reflect that on my site.
Price guides will tell you what a card or set of cards might sell for, but they don’t mention why a set of cards is worth owning. That’s the niche I’m trying to fill.
I don’t really care about the so-called value of cards. I just want to tell people if a set of cards (or other hockey-related item) is worth spending their money on, or making room in their collection for.
About a year ago, I wrote an article about the 1990-91 Pro Set Hockey set, which is pretty worthless set, according to most price guides. After reading my article, a guy emailed me to say that he dug out his old Pro Set cards, and is now going to try to finish the set with his 6-year old son. That is an awesome story. Collecting is a leisure activity – I want to remind people of that.
I also like to spotlight some of the hidden gems of collecting, such as the awesomely bad airbrushed cards of the 1970s and 1980s. Back in the day, when a player was traded over the summer, Topps would airbrush the player’s uniform to look like he was on his new team, but the cards almost always look horrible. So bad, they are awesome. Cards like that and other off-the-beaten path type of hockey cards that no one really thinks of or knows about.
The bottom line is, I write articles that I would enjoy reading. The reader should learn something they didn’t know, and get a few chuckles in the process.
PH: How do you see PuckJunk.com evolving in the future?
SB: I’d like to get a few other people to write for Puck Junk. Eventually, I’d like to have a review up of every major set that has been released. That’s a pretty lofty goal, but I’m in no rush. But getting a few other people to help out and write would be great. Maybe one day, Puck Junk will be the be-all, end-all resource when it comes to hockey cards. Perhaps when I finish graduate school, I’ll have more time to make that goal a reality.
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Tags: PuckJunk, Sal+Barry,
Comments
good interview, Sal’s a good guy who’s filling the niche for those hockey card collectors.
Posted by Aron from Mt Vernon on 12/11/09 at 01:24 PM ET
I love the 90-91 Pro Set NHL set. The set is huge, 705 cards.The quality is lacking and it was severely over-produced, but it’s a great set to start with if you’re new to the hobby. There are big team rosters, about 15-20 players per team and tons of RC’s. Plus, there are a few subsets like Team Logos, Award Winners, League Leaders, Career Leaders, HOFer’s & All-Stars (pictured in their All-Star uniforms, which is very cool). There are even subsets of the Coaches and the Officials, which is basically unheard of today. This set has two series and is very cheap. I recommend building it.
Great Interveiw and post.
Posted by Lindas1st from New England on 12/11/09 at 05:31 PM ET
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Patrick has a tremendous passion for hockey. Besides covering the Rangers and the NHL for Kukla’s Korner, you can also find Patrick’s work over at RLD Hockey, Rangers Tribune, and TheGoodPoint.com.
Prior to writing for the above mentioned outlets, you could find Patrick’s musings at hockey web sites/outlets such as TheHockeyNews.com, The Fourth Period, Spector’s Hockey, Hokeja Vestnesis, Blueshirt Bulletin, SNYRangersBlog.com and many more.
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Nice interview, Patrick.
These are the collectors who keep the fun alive. The others who try and turn ludicrous profits on selling autographs and sports trading cards as “financial investments” deserve to get punched repeatedly in the face for being bottom-feeding scumbags.
Posted by VooX from Behind the Bar in the Hasek Club Car on 12/11/09 at 11:11 AM ET