THE HOBBY EP2: 1979 Wayne Gretzky Rookie - O-PEE-CHEE vs. TOPPS?

To many, the 1979 Wayne Gretzky rookie card is THE most iconic hockey card - and also one of the true grails for any collection. But what's the difference between the O-Pee-Chee version and the Topps?
On this week's episode of The Hobby, Adam Gray is joined by hockey expert Jeremy Lee to discuss the two cards, their differences and things to consider when pursuing your own Gretzky rookie.
Follow Jeremy Lee: / sportscardslive
Follow Adam Gray: / thereal27guy
New episodes of The Hobby drop every Wednesday night at 8PM EST. Subscribe to the channel to be notified!

[@leehaskins307]

i own 3 gretzky rookie cards… yay… and i own 2 lemuix rookie cards..yay….and I own 1 orr rookie card yay… i love them all…. i was planning to go to the national in AC this year but work got in the way and wont make it.. was hoping to meet you Jermey… maybe another time as u r the type of collector as me.. tho I dont sell and I know u do...

[@leehaskins307]

@@anonanon7235 Agree !!! I do have a brett hull rookie… but yeah should prolly get a patrick roy rookie to.. will look into that. thanx..

[@cardboardcheddah3715]

I’ve recently picked up my 4th Gretzky rookie in mid grade. One of my favorites. I believe the term the grading companies use is called “Hand-Cut” I’ve heard many collectors say they trust the lines to know it’s not a reprint and that’s why they endear to those copies more,imo.

[@hbo7390]

The new reality is there are more O Pee Chee Gretzky Cards on PSA pop reports now at 8200 total vs 8000 Topps so everyone had it wrong with the O Pee Chee scarcity argument, O Pee Chee surpassed this year. In the past 5 yrs only 2 Topps PSA 9 have been discovered vs 36 PSA 9 O Pee Chee, so the argument that it's harder to get high grade O Pee Chee than Topps was also wrong. Strike two. The other reason why i think Topps will flip in valuation vs O Pee Chee is that Topps and O Pee Chee were not printed at the same time. Topps was first to market by almost 6 months, it's older so it would actually be his true true rookie. The majority of people that buy either card don't realize that important fact. This is documented by the fact player trades that happened during the production year were only able to get updated on O Pee Chee because the Topps cards were already printed and out there. Strike 3. Lastly, Topps did the design of the card, afterwards O Pee Chee did it's own reprint with French wording months later, so that would clearly make the O Pee Chee a secondary card. Strike 4. These are facts that people had wrong or didn't realize. So better to actually know what you are talking about then continuing another decade of misinformation.

[@jimmy_iKoN]

I think they’re both his true rookie cards and to have either one is awesome. Good points on the topps though. I have noticed that PSA gives a lot of o pee chee cards higher grades than what I believe the cards should get. I’ve seen a lot of 8s that look like they should be a 6-7. Not all 8s are the same and that is especially true with the o pee chee cards. The really nice 8s are hard to find on o pee chee. To find one that is a nice cut with solid printing and well centered isn’t easy. You can find really nice topps that are 8s a lot easier than nice 8s of o pee chee. When I went to the national I went to every table and looked for a really nice PSA 8 o pee chee and there were only 5-6 of them there at the whole show. There were a ton of the topps in really nice solid 8 condition at the show. The majority of the PSA 8 o pee chee Gretzky cards were blurry or really rough cut or off centered and did not look like true 8s to me. It seems that PSA looks past a lot of the flaws with the o pee chee and often gives them higher grades than what they deserve in my opinion. Finding a really nice 8 o pee chee that is not blurry and nice centering and a clean cut isn’t easy and If you do find one it will cost you 3x the price of the topps card. In the end if you have either card in nice condition that is awesome. I consider them both to be his rookie card and wouldn’t put one above the other. The only real difference is that it is a lot harder to find a true PSA 8 of the o pee chee than the topps because I believe a lot of the o pee chee cards are over graded. That’s just what I’ve noticed.

[@montrealsports29]

As long as the cards are from the same season, it doesn't matter which one was printed first. Topps always released their hockey cards before OPC did. It's a non-issue. And OPC always used the Topps design (except for 1992-93) because that's what they were licensed to do, so it's also a non-issue. It doesn't make it a secondary card. Topps was for the US market and OPC was for the Canadian market. That's the only difference.

[@hbo7390]

Your comment "Topps always released their hockey cards before OPC did. It's a non-issue." I don't think 98% of the collectors actually know that is the chronology of events. Even though it was technically the same season OPC was made at the latter end of the season when material events had already happened and were reflected in differences in the cards. I would technically call the Topps the "A" card of the season and OPC the "B" card of 1979. Comment on the scarcity argument for OPC that has now been proven to be not true. With the case of the 1979 Gretzky, the factual data shows Topps is more scarce in this case. The gap has widen even more from when I posted one year ago. One year ago (2023) the PSA Population report was 8200 OPC vs 8000 Topps. Now (2024) there are 11,725 OPC vs 10,065 Topps. You can't ignore that anymore, OPC is not as scarce as it was believed. That was what the whole premium for OPC Gretzky was support on. @@montrealsports29

[@montrealsports29]

@@hbo7390 OPC was usually released in January. What do you consider OPC to be when it had the only rookie card of certain players, like Lafleur in 71-72 and Messier in 80-81?

[@theloudcollector]

Long time collector always waiting in the shadows to snag a Topps GOAT ... this video is greatly appreciated!!!! Few steps closer to pulling the trigger, lets go Expo 2022!!

[@len6482]

Learned a lot. love to see a professionals take on the Mario Lemieux rookie

[@alans5799]

should also check out the story from Steve Babineau who took the photos for topps of both the gretzky rc and last howe card the same game.

[@thomasvarady1210]

Can you send me the link to that story? Thank you!

[@ijksmom99]

I recently acquired a 1980 Wayne Gretzky OPC 2nd year - PSA 9 - but the back says printed by Topps. This is the first I ever seen like this. What are your thoughts on this?

[@NicoSportscards]

For football I’d put the 1981 Topps Montana, the 1976 Topps Walter Payton, or the 1986 Topps Jerry Rice

[@ugghhhyoutubeisawful646]

1 year later and that is still a great segment. only beef i have is that "do people view it as a great set?" and "the answer is no." is probably not as simple as whether it has rookies or not. the 1979-80 set is iconic and i suspect 20 years or so later it will be one of thee sets to have from the era. maybe because of the gretzky card but i suspect also because it looks the shizzle.

[@gametimegallery7661]

The Gretzky rookie is easily among the top most recognizable cards across the hobby. We tend to think the OPC is scarcer than the Topps version, however, the pop reports say otherwise.

[@jimmy_iKoN]

I don’t even trust the pop report really. O pee chee Gretzky cards are over graded. If you look at the PSA 10s they don’t even look close to being worthy of a 10 grade.

[@cardboardcheddah3715]

I don’t think of the OPC as scarcer but more condition sensitive. The tools they used to cut the full sheets would make a serial killer cringe. 🤪

[@lawrencelerat2847]

The Topps rookie has more vibrant color and I think its a much nicer card than the OPG card. I pulled pone back in 2002 and it was well centered and it has some surface stuff that wasn't visible to the naked eye. A PSA 8 that looks like a 10. Looking for another one...................:)

[@cameronsquires8112]

On the surface O-Pee-Chee might be more valuable due to the limited number printed but that doesn’t equate to quality. Recently bought a PSA 8 topps Mike Bossy rookie and when I compared it to O-Pee-Chee PSA 9’s, most were noticeably OC

[@samdodero6451]

I picked up a OPC PSA 7 and a Topps 7.5 over 20 years ago and the OPC looks better then some 8’s I have seen

[@jimmy_iKoN]

If you own a nice topps or o pee chee you are lucky. They’re both great cards. I’d rather have the o pee chee in good condition personally. The o pee chee has more condition issues because of the way they were cut with wires. Finding a nice o pee chee that isn’t blurry and with a clean cut is tough. I notice on a lot of the ones listed on eBay the eyes on Gretzky can be blurry. Even if you look at the example they show @5:34 in the video you can see the blurry eyes and mouth. I personally don’t care for the rough edges on the o pee chee so finding one that is a good cut can be hard. If you are able to buy a nice Gretzky rookie now is the time. The o pee chee is usually 3x the price of the topps. You can probably get a nice psa 8 topps for 5k but if you can afford it I would get an o pee chee. It’s just hard to find ones that are clean cut and not blurry with good centering. I also personally would not buy one that is graded by KSA. Nothing against KSA but I wouldn’t want to gamble on crossing over a KSA to PSA or SGC and it coming back trimmed. The KSA ones are a lot cheaper but I wouldn’t risk it personally. I also wouldn’t buy a BVG graded Gretzky either. If you are looking for a clean cut o pee chee I would only get one graded by PSA or SGC. When I was at the national they only had about 5-6 REALLY nice PSA 8s o pee chee cards. Most of the 8s were really rough cut or blurry or really off centered. I brought 15k cash to buy the right one and the dealers that had the really nice 8s I liked wouldn’t budge on price sadly. Lowest one guy would go was 18k and most of the guys wanted 20k firm.

[@thomasvarady1210]

This card is actually an Uncorrected Error card. The stat that reads 60 games played is incorrect. Wayne played a full 80 game schedule split between the Indianapolis Racers, (8 games), & Edmonton, (72 games).

[@beardubois3317]

I have this card Topps 1 of 10 1979 mint condition

[@jimmy_iKoN]

I personally would rather not have the blue lines on back.. it’s a print flaw..

[@jimmy_iKoN]

The Gretzky rookie is a top 10 card 100%

[@Axle3369]

If you look at the 1990-91 nhl topps vs o-pee-chee you will see a horrible topps difference on the back. OPC is a nice back and topps is brown cardboard.

[@hbo7390]

The new people that have come on to the card market don't care for hockey, they just care about only this card. The saying that O Pee Chee is more valuable because it is scare is just not true anymore, so like you are doing you're trying to pivot to another justification to keep this going. I can see why people get easily brain washed into believing something for so long that they finally think it's true. But as a major high high end collector, I want the first major rookie, not one made 6 months later that was copied off of the actual rookie. O Pee Chee is a reprint off of Topps's original creation, that's fact, the current valuation is illogical because it was driven by false BS.I don't care what company or what country made it, it just has to be the first and original. Topps did all the work, O Pee Chee was given a licence to copy their work. In art or anything the value is given to orginator not the copier. But with something like this, where two cards look almost identical, there should be no surprise that the important details would fall through the cracks with the passage of time. As a company, If O Pee Chee was such a holy company and brand, how could it be that they didn't even have a proper cutting blades or equipment to cut their cards, it might sound cute but it's another strike against a company that reprinted a bunch of cards based off of Topps intellectual property and put French on them. I don't know one major collector that speaks French or anyone that takes collectors in Canada or France seriously. On top of this, those high PSA grades of O Pee CHee are really generous. All those cute bad rough cuts are manufacturing defects nothing more they should all have qualifiers. The so called PSA 10 O Pee Chee are really 8s, the 9s are 7s. Subtract 2 from everyone of those defective cards, since they all have the rough cuts. But if everyone wants to live in a fantasy world and pretend those O Pee Chee grades are really reflective of the quality of the card or they are really scarce go ahead and pretend. PSA is clearly is massaging the O Pee Chee grading by ignoring it own rules. Just because the defective cuts are on all O Pee Chee cards doesn't make it ok to ignore the rules, yes population report will look like crap, but that's the reality they have defects and O Pee Chee didn't have the resources to throw them away and redo them so they distributed to the Canadian genius defective material and of course the Canadian collectors did what any human would do put a positive spin on it and try to make a negative a positive and manipulate. Topps 10s are really 10s, 9s are 9s just like every other card they don't need to be manipulated. The only thing O Pee Chee pushers can say and not even really is that Edmonton Oilers were a Canadian team, but even there you have a problem, this card is a NHL card, which is a US organization, the World Hockey Association had already folded and merged the 4 Canadian teams into the NHL in 1979 when Topps made the cards, these were NHL cards being US based cards not WHA or Canadian based. To that end Topps is a US based company. Everything you look at points to Topps's favor. But somehow through the last 40 years false information that could never be backup til now, cute stories, inflated grading, incomplete data information, fantasy, has manipulated the valuation towards O Pee Chee being scarce therefore more valuable. For the 90% hockey collectors that want to pretend that Topps does not exist then you doing yourself a disservice because when it comes to this card and this player if you holding a O Pee Chee Gratzky, you are in fact not hold his true true mass produced rookie card. So don't go around saying you have Gratzky's true rookie card. And if you want live in a pretend world lets also pretend the Holocaust didn't happen. There's no point to pretending and ignoring reality.

[@jimmy_iKoN]

I agree 100% that the o pee chee cards are over graded. After personally looking for one for a long time I kept asking myself why is this even a PSA 8.. it looks like a 6 or 7 at best. To find a true PSA 8 with a good cut centered and good printing is a lot harder to find than a psa 8 topps card. The topps cards have much more consistent grades than the o pee chee cards. Those 10s of the o pee chee do not at all look like 10s. It makes me think there probably isn’t a real psa 10 o pee chee out there and if there is one they probably graded it a 9 just to protect the pop report. I do personally think they are both his rookie cards though. Sure the topps was made earlier and that is a valid argument but I would have to say they are both equal as far as his rookie card. As far as being scarce.. well I think we can both agree those o pee chee 10s don’t deserve those grades so from a grading point of view I believe it is a lot harder to find a real PSA 8+ of an o pee chee and I doubt a real 10 is even out there. You have very solid arguments and I have to 100% agree that topps was at the time the original creator of the cards but I would also have to say the o pee chee card is still just as important as the topps. It was the only way Canadian collectors at the time could even collect the set and to disregard it to be as important as the topps card is far fetched. I also disagree with the statement that there are no serious card collectors in Canada.. that is just wrong. Hockey card collecting is huge in Canada. You can’t say the o pee chee isn’t his true rookie card. It was the Canadian version of his rookie card. Well I guess you can say whatever you want really but in the end the topps and o pee chee are equally important.

[@hbo7390]

@@jimmy_iKoN We generally agree, I think the problem with these two cards is that people are chasing O Pee Chee with the wrong facts, they are blindly chasing the money because that is what everyone with the wrong facts have been doing from the start 4 decades ago. In 1979 no one had a clue what the true pops where, everyone was just guessing. I guess people assumed that Canada was far away so there will be less cards there. The biggest argument as to why pay more for the O Pee Chee cards has number 1 been 1979 O Pee Chee is scarce, hands down, whether it's Gretzky's card or in general all the 1979 O Pee Chee cards. This has been debunked 100% 4 decades later since all the facts have trickled in to the pop reports. Now it going to take time for this new reality to trickle through the hobby, and of course there will be disbelievers that will make up other justifications as to why their O Pee Chee card is more important and more valuable because they don't want the premium they paid to evaporate, the premium was because it was scarce, that is just not true anymore. Fact, Topps are more scarce whether it's the Gretzky or the 1979 Topps in general. Yes both cards are important. However, the Topps cards were printed first and the O Pee Chee came at least 6 months later with revisions. There is a clear first edition here. I was not even aware this detail before I started deep diving. They were both made the same year, but there is still a card that was on the market first, if that doesn't mean anything then there is clearly no logical to any of this. Because the hobby rewarded O Pee Chee based on assumed logic of scarcity and that they were made at the same time and now it wants to use anything illogical to keep the premium going away which makes no sense. If I'm a logical person and all the facts are in, I want his first card and most scare card between the two. It kind seems that is Topps not O Pee Chee. Bottom line Opee Chee is not Gretzky's first edition people can chase it all they want but it still not his first edition of the iconic card. Yes any O Pee Chee with rough cuts are overgraded you have to subtract 2 grades to get to were they likely are true to grade. What I meant by there are no serious collectors in Canada is that the big money collectors that are collecting big money baseball, basketball, football, and hokey are 98% in the US...they want it all not just Hockey, they are driving the market, that's why National is in the US not Canada or UK. Big money collectors want the first of everything they don't want revisions, the facts are going to take some time to sink in, but the facts are the facts and it is a clear the Topps is the first edition and less of them, that just the reality, O Pee Chee is a revised card from the Topps original....this part alone 99% of the O Pee Chee owners don't even realize because it's easy for these important little details to fall through the cracks esp when back then nobody really cared about these type of details like they do now.

[@montrealsports29]

It was 3 Canadian teams and 1 US team from the WHA that joined the NHL: Edmonton, Winnipeg, Quebec and New England, which was renamed Hartford.

[@seansmith2289]

Must be nice to be able to be pickey about which Gretzkey rookie you want.

[@max2k795]

I want too sent you one

[@fredflintstone3597]

I have a Rookie for sale if anyone is interested... it's Raw.

[@carlhammill5774]

get it graded sir

[@tonymoretti2347]

Bros butt hurt about his PSA 4