Then and now
Luke has an on again off again relationship with his hockey
card collection, but he certainly looks after it. Each one is carefully encased in a nine pocket plastic sleeve and kept in a
binder. It's not like in my day when they were attached to your
bicycle with a clothes peg in order to make a motorcycle sound in the spokes of
the rear wheel. Or they were flipped at
a wall. I remember the game as
“closeys”. The winner was closest to the
wall and the reward was that you got to pick up all the other gamers cards to add to
your collection.
If I only knew
Not a lot of perfect condition cards survived that need to
play various games with them. But you only
paid about five cents for a pack of 5 or 6 cards and some really awful bubble
gum back then, and that’s about all they were worth. The collector hobby and ebay changed everything
and today some of those way-back cards, in perfect condition, are so rare they fetch hundreds, even thousands of dollars.
I never got wealthy with my collection and it isn’t likely that Luke will
either. For most of us, the collector
hobby is more than cash value. It's about the memories.
Got him, got him, need him, need him
 |
| Luke with his Mom's Lukowich card |
Luke likes to trade doubles with his friends and he saves his allowance to buy more packs.
Recently, a family friend gave him some new Winnipeg Jets cards and he
was thrilled. Out came the binder to be
reorganized. Each one of the Jets was carefully put
away to admire again and again. His Mom
Laura helped him. She’s a big Jets
fan.
While they figured out which card would
go where, Mom happened to mention that she had a card of one of the original
NHL Jets, a card from the 80’s and that he was named after that player. Luke was intrigued. Laura quickly dug it out of her box of
memories and gave it to him. Luke could
hardly believe that his Mom was cool enough to have such a great old card, and
it came in a hard plastic protective sleeve.
No way was this one going into the binder. It had to have a special place in his room.
Luke’s namesake Luke
 |
| Morris "Luke" Lukowich |
I met Laura when she was 16 and in grade 11. She was our son Jonathan’s first real
girlfriend. She told me how Morris “Luke” Lukowich was her favourite Winnipeg Jet.
She even had her own Lukowich #12 Jets jersey and still does. It was me who gave her the cool card in the
hard plastic protective sleeve all those years ago.
The first time she dated her now husband
Mark, they talked about Luke #12 and he was impressed with her prized
card. Naming a son Luke always seemed
like a fun idea to them and when they actually had a boy, they went with it. Laura knew that one day she would give that
Lukowich card to her son. She was glad
she waited until now at a time in his young life when he was blown away. Little Luke loves the Luke card and his Mom.
The collector gene
My father saved all of his hockey cards from the 1930’s and would
show them to me when I was a kid. They were Beehive and Quaker Oats. Included were players from teams that no longer exist like the New York Americans and the Montreal Maroons.
After our son Jonathan began collecting, my
Dad gave me his collection, with one major condition. I was not allowed to sell those cards from
the 30’s but had to promise to put them with the cards I had saved from the 50's and one day
pass them along to my son. Just like
Laura and Luke, Jonathan and I worked on his collection together. He too was about 7 when he got his first pack. One thing led to another, and it grew far beyond cards into
autographed photos, pucks, sticks, balls and jerseys. More than 200 cards also got signed over the
years.
Full circle
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| The Wendel jersey I want |
When he died in 2008, Jonathan and I were working on a
couple of specific memorabilia projects. He idolized
former Toronto Maple Leafs captain Wendel Clark. That’s why he wore #17 in both hockey and
lacrosse.
Our mission was to recreate
a specific Wendel jersey, just like the one you see in the photo - Wendel’s autograph on the
numbers. Clark signed three dark blue
Leafs #7’s for me several years ago, but that’s as far as it got. The problem was the same then as it is today. That particular Leafs jersey is impossible to
find. One day though, the project will
be completed.
After he passed away, Jonathan’s wife Anna made sure that
his collection of cards, photos, jerseys and balls came to me. My full circle will now be the day I give my collection to our grandson Jonathan, named after his Uncle.
He'll have
hockey cards and memories from his Great Grandfather, his Grandfather and his
Uncle Jon. He’ll need more than a binder
with plastic sleeves to hold everything, he’ll need a small museum. But, just like Laura and Luke, I’ll be there to help our grandson organize his
favourites.
