I thought it was just Me

As part of my 2017 great filing project I was going through some 1973-74 Topps' Hockey cards from my childhood earlier today when I noticed something.

At first I thought it was just me-but I knew I wasn't into several bottles of Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale yet-so I pulled up the Trading Card Database website and proceeded to go through all of the images of the 1973-74 Topps' Hockey cards-and alas it wasn't just me. I was on to something.

What was I on to you may ask? Flipping through the Topps' cards I noticed many of the photos featured members of the Blue note in their home whites in the background. I pulled up the images and counted how many of the 198 Topps' cards were posed shots, action shots with Blue Notes in the background, action shots with non Blue Notes or no one in the background, and special cards.

If you take away the actual Blues, league leaders, checklists, and team cards you end up with 157 player cards. Of these 157 player cards, 111 are posed studio shots-or locker room-either way this leaves us with 46 game action shots. Are you still following me?

OK good, of the 46 action shots 23 have Blue Notes in their home whites in the shot-either the player is identifiable or not.  Now we are getting there-so, of the 23 remaining action shot cards-2 feature Rangers, 1 Saber and 1 Black Hawk, as well as 1 I can't tell except it isn't a Blue.  We are down to 18 cards. We can eliminate all the player cards from teams except the Atlanta Flames, Boston Bruins, Golden State Seals, Chicago Black Hawks, NY Islanders, Fliers, Rangers, and Penguins. These teams are teams for which there are action shots with Blue Notes and ones that only show the player. I think we can assume that the photos with no other players were taken the same time as the ones with Blues. This leaves us with 10 cards that either show another team in the background OR there is no action shots with any Blues in the background, so I assume these may not have been shot in the STL.  End the end I can, I think, make an educated guess that 78% of all photos in the 1973-74 Topps' set were shot in the STL.

Now I didn't check OPC but since the photos are the same then we can assume that this is true. I did count up the posed shots in the OPC issue and there are 66 more (177) than the Topps' issue. This happens to be the difference in the # of cards in each set- 198 for Topps and 264 in OPC, which is shocking actually.

Card Images #1-7 left to right then repeat for next line

1. Unknown-Could be Wayne Stephenson, Jacques Caron, or Peter McDuffe
2. Unknown
3. #17 RW Phil Roberto
4. Unknown
5. #15 LW Jake Egers
6. Could be #12 Terry Crisp or #22 Danny O'Shea both centers or LW #22 Bill Sutherland
7. Unknown

Card Images # 8-11

8. #7 C (A) Gary Unger
9.  Unknown
10. #8 (C) D Barclay Pager
11. #30 G Jacques Caron or G #30 Peter McDuffe

Card Images #12-23

12. Unknown
13. Gary Unger
14. Gary Unger and #17 RW Phil Roberto
15. Unknown
16. Unknown
17. Gary Unger
18. #5 RW Bob Plager and crew
19. Bob Plager and one of the Goalies
20. Unknown
21. Gary Unger
22. #11 RW Gary Sabourin
23. Unknown