1988-89 O-Pee-Chee Stickers Box Break

Hello all.  Today I bring you a box off 1988-89 O-Pee-Chee Yearbook Stickers.  The story goes, I originally thought I had purchased a box of 88-89 O-Pee-Chee cards with a chance of pulling Hull and Shanahan rookies at a very cheap price tag (too good to be true) but after some research I realized that I had actually bought these Panini-like stickers.  The original auction picture only showed the inside of the box with the wax packs which I was unfamiliar with.  Oh well.  You live, you learn.

Although it wasn't what I had hoped for, the stickers are a nice addition to my collection.  And I scored a bunch of various Gretzky, Lemieux and Hull stickers.

This set consisted of 270 stickers (no foils) and an album was available at the time to place them in.  The backs of the stickers were three types: trivia questions and answers (42 different red Level I and blue Level II), various souvenir offers for mini-sticks, pucks, duffle bags etc. and Future Stars.

On the inside back cover of the sticker album the company offered (via direct mail-order) up to 20 different stickers of your choice for ten cents each; according to Beckett this is one reason why the values of the most popular players in these sets are somewhat depressed compared to traditional card set prices.

The box contained 48 packs and each pack contained 5 stickers along with a stick of bubble gum.  As one would expect, the gum fell apart into pieces at the slightest touch like something dipped in liquid nitrogen.

Here is a run down of some of my favorite stickers that I pulled from the box.

224 - Wayne Gretzky.

232 - Mario Lemieux.

45 - Patrick Roy.

253 - Steve Yzerman.  All these guys are so young looking!

111 - Pierre Turgeon.

157 - Luc Robitaille.  Love the old Kings uniforms.

103 - Ron Hextall.

51 - Chris Chelios.

23 - Ray Bourque.

A few 80s Oilers stickers.

1 - Wayne Gretzky.  Gretzky amassed a total of 145pts in the 1987-88 season.

227 - Jari Kurri.

223 - Grant Fuhr.  Really like the look of this card.

230 - Mark Messier.

The 'Future Star' stickers are a set in their own.

Hull, Leetch, Healy with the Kings, Burke, Kirk McLean and Turgeon are a few that I received.  The Hall and Leetch stickers were released before their actual rookie cards but aren't recognized in that sort of way.

Most of the stickers came as a two-in-one deal.  Here are examples of Burke and a Mario Lemieux Art Ross sticker; And another of one of my all-time favorite goalies Billy Smith and John Vanbiesbrouck sharing a card together.

I pulled a few of these "4-Star" stickers, these were two of my personal favorites; Roy and Lemieux.

An example of what happens when you wrap a stick of bubble gum up on paper for 23 years.  Luckily they were easy to remove and didn't do damage to the stickers.

I was a little too late in ordering that Maple Leafs bag.