I’d like to begin this soon-to-be weekly jaunt into the wide world of bizarre hockey cards by presenting the absolute pinnacle of putrid, one of the most famous hockey card abortions of all-time: the supremely awful 1971-72 Rogie Vachon O-Pee-Chee.  Seriously, I typed “Rogie Vachon card” into Google, and this card was the first one to pop up.  According to Hockeydb.com, Vachon has 98 other cards out there, yet this is the one that shows up first.  This is one of the first old-time hockey cards I ever bought, back at the Brookdale Mall in Cornwall, Ontario back in the early 90s.  I must have been about 10 or 11 when I bought it for about five bucks.  I knew Rogie was a great goalie and I thought it would be a neat card to add to my growing collection.  I also must have been pretty dumb to not actually notice anything wrong with the card when I bought it.  When I got home, I seriously believed I had been gyped and that this card was a counterfeit.  That is how bad this thing is!

Wow!  That is one HELL of a primitive PhotoShop job right there.  It’s like the guy making the card was in a rush to beat the five o’clock traffic, but absolutely insisted on getting this assignment done on this, his very last day at the office.  How could anyone think this thing looked even reasonably acceptable, even by O-Pee-Chee’s classic bottom-of-the-barrel standards?  Rogie’s skin colour does not even come close to matching that of his neck – actually, Ross Lonsberry’s neck.  The great thing about this card is Rogie’s smile, like he believes everything is going just honky dory, when in reality he has no idea his head has been severed and attached to some other dude’s body.  Luckily for Rogie, he was not the first, nor would he be the last (even that season!) to get the old cut-and-paste treatment, as you will all see in the coming weeks.