Happy Canada Day to my fellow Canadian card collectors! I hope everyone is enjoying their holiday with family and friends. As for me, well, I wanted to write-up a little something for a recent pickup for the goalie collection.
Upper Deck’s 2024-25 Parkhurst Champions included a clever homage to the iconic 1953-54 set…& more gum references! This also means more fun retro cards to write about!
After UD started leaning back into the old school Parkies brand these past few years, there has been a few notable nods to the past as well. In this year’s iteration of the product included a bunch NHL Alumni, as well as a funky new retro wrapper back parallel card which I will touch on today.
Writing about the yearly Retro parallels is something I’ve done for the past few years now, as it scratches that nice itch of new school meeting old school. Once this product dropped, I decided to snag a Curtis Joseph card from this set for my collection. As a Leafs fan who lives near Toronto, my blood runs blue. As for CuJo, he was the man back when I was a kid. You couldn’t help but love the guy and the way he played between the pipes. So this card does hold a lot of nostalgia for me as well.
This year’s card time capsules focus on 1953-54, and the classic design they used back then for the 1952-54 sets. They tweaked the design to include a crispier photo of the player to make it pop off the cloudy and artistic background, while still keeping the facsimile autograph like the originals.
What makes this card different from the main 53-54 Retro set is that this Joseph card is the Jumbo Gum Backparallel. The back has a simple but bold colour scheme that is noticeable right away. To some, this Parkies image on the back of a card might seem totally random, but it is another perfect tribute to this hobby’s history that runs deeper than most realize.
The packs that these retro cards were packed out in were particularly unique as well. Within each hobby box, the retro cards were packed out in their own single 1953-54 Retro Bonus pack. This was due to the slightly larger sizing of the retro cards that made it impossible to fit into a standard size pack with the rest of the cards in the box. To some it might seem strange to include them in their own pack, but them being slightly taller cards are historically accurate – and that’s pretty cool!
These packs were slightly larger than the other packs in the product to fit the taller retro cards.
The retro 53-54 parallels were inspired by the original Parkhurst set from that time period. I’ve included some key examples below:
When looking at the backs of these parallels, the Jumbo Gum Back parallel design was based on the original card wrapper that these vintage cards were originally packed out in, which (of course) also contained gum! This was a common occurrence with many card sets back then.
The Parkies New Giant Hockey Gum cards from the 1953-54 series were a pretty BIG deal at the time, as the card size had physically grown from the previous year’s 1952-53 card size of 1 15/16″ x 2 15/16″ (1.9375″ x 2.9375″) in 1952-53to 2 1/2″ x 3 5/8″ (2.5 inches by 3.625 inches)size in 1953-54, which is a tad bigger than what we see today when looking at your modern base card which measures in at 2.5 inches by 3.5 inches.
This original set of cards in 1953 was released by the Parkhurst Products Limited company, which was located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
I’ve included a few examples of the original wrappers these cards would have come in back in the day. These wrappers would also include a stick of bubble gum inside for the collector to enjoy.
And there you have it! I hoped this article helped you learn a little bit more about this awesome hobby. While some cards can be flashy, others can include a small history lesson, too.
Happy Collecting,
Aaron
CREASECOLLECTOR 
Leave a comment below!