July 13--16 Birthdays

Again, with 16 available players to have today as their birthday, I have nothing to show. However, I will dig in my archives to see what goodness I can find.

WOW

7-11 Slurpee NHL Action Stickers advertising piece.  This was for a set of discs (2" in diameter) sold at 7-11 stores in Canada during the 1984/85 season. This set was  difficult to put together since the discs were sold one at a time with large slurpees and the disc was hidden under a panel on the bottom of the cup. So, you couldn't see which one you were buying. You would need to buy 60 slurpees with no doubles for a complete set. I see a lot of tooth decay here. There was also a 6" Gretzky for some unknown reason. I never did complete this set. As it happens, don't remember much on this item but got to know the cashiers there and got stuff in later years. Will post these at a later date.

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I read with interest the product information for 2011 Parkhurst Champions Hockey. In case you haven't heard or forgotten, they are including the introduction of Wire Photos which brings some of hockey's most iconic pictures to cardboard within the context of which they actually appeared.

Insertion Rate

Wire Photos (1:4) capture some of hockey's greatest moments. The 30-card set includes both single- and multi-player cards.

Wire Photo Autograph parallels (Single-signed: 1:400, multi-signed: 1:2,600) include such signers as Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux, Steve Yzerman and Jean Beliveau. Multi-signature combinations include Gordie Howe ad Ted Lindsay, and Johnny Bucyk, Phil Esposito ad Bobby Orr.

 I guess they're reproducing these in card size. A wire photo is a photographic image that was transmitted from an agency to a subscriber via telegraph or telephone wires, and later, via satellite. Different agencies trademarked different terms, including Wirephoto, Telephoto, Laserphoto, Laserphoto II and others, that corresponded to their wire photos. The process was similar to sending and receiving a fax, where the photo was scanned in at one location, transmitted over "the wire", and printed at another location. Wire photos were printed on special, thin paper, rather than developed in a traditional darkroom. The resulting print has a tendency to fade and turn brown much quicker than gelatin-silver prints. With the advent of digital photography, the wire photo is truly an artifact of a bygone era.
Now my interest was piqued as I have probably 10,000 of these, mostly hockey and baseball. I only have them covering the years 1988-1991. I figure there may been 10 pictures a day over that time frame. Now I have some autographed ones also. This is one I have on memreg.com



April 23, 1989 CP laser wire photo autographed in black sharpie by Eddie Mio . I have some signed by Guy Lafleur, Gary Leeman, Vincent Damphousse and lots of unsigned photos of Gretzky, Lemieux, Yzerman--teams like the Winnipeg Jets, Quebec Nordiques and Hartford Whalers.  Guess I should have patented my idea. If anybody needs any player, team or from a game you attended, they are available. Shoot me a line and we'll come up with something. Thanks for reading.