Being Canadian, I have been collecting vintage hockey for many years now and there aren't that many of them out there. For example, if I do an eBay search for a 1958 Topps Bobby Hull Rookie, I will see that there are currently
25 of them up for sale. There are
15 1960 Topps Stan Mikita rookies and only
5 1961 Parkhurst Dave Keon rookies.
Now I was searching for some vintage football last night, and I just couldn't believe how many of them are out there. I see at least
120 John Unitas rookies and
90 Jim Brown rookies - that's quite a lot!
In Canada, companies didn't start mass-producing hockey cards until the late 1970s. In USA, it looks like companies were doing this as early as the 1950s. With baseball it's even worse. There are a trillion Roberto Clemente rookies and Hank Aaron rookies out there.
Anyways, I do want to go after the key football rookies, but it just sucks that there are so many of them.