When I was younger, I had a baseball card collection. My best friend did too, and branched out into football. Just about everyone I knew had a baseball card collection, but there was one kid in my neighborhood who went against the grain and focused his attention on hockey trading cards. Silly, right? Well, maybe he wasn’t so crazy after all, because he could very well have a very valuable card in his collection.
That would be a 1979 Wayne Gretzky rookie card, printed by O-Pee-Chee. On Thursday night in Atlantic City, New Jersey, the card — in mint condition of course — fetched a whopping $465,000 at an auction at the National Sports Collectors Convention. That’s like a dollar for every point credited to Grtezky during his Hall of Fame career, give or take a few.
This Wayne Gretzky rookie card just sold for $465,000, a record for any hockey card ever sold pic.twitter.com/voRY7HGUYm
— Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) August 5, 2016
As noted by Darren Rovell of ESPN.com, the winning bid set a new record high for a single hockey card, as if The Great One has any more room for another record in his Wikipedia bio. Now if you will excuse me, I have an old card collection to dig out and dust off. My hockey-loving friend always gave away a pack of hockey cards at his birthday parties, so I need to do some searching for a diamond in the rough.
