Christmas Cards
Another oddball collectible that I enjoy is Christmas Card collecting. In December of every year, most sports team’s marketing departments send out their annual Christmas card on paper or by email. The Christmas card is usually sent to season ticket holders, team employees, other teams in the league and suppliers. As a collector, it is often difficult to obtain a team’s Christmas card, but if I am able to contact the team’s marketing department with a letter, phone call or e-mail, they are usually happy to send me one. Sometimes, Christmas cards appear for sale at Collectors Shows, sports card stores or on internet auction sites like ebay, but the majority of cards in my collection are from the teams themselves.
Along with team issued Christmas cards, there are a lot of artists who are interested in sports and release their own sports related greeting cards as individual prints or in boxed sets. A good example is artist Terrance Fogarty who has drawn many sports related pictures. He has greeting cards available at his studio and he was even hired by the Minnesota Wild hockey club to paint the art work for the Wild’s Christmas card fronts for the past two seasons. Michel Lapensee, a famous Montreal hockey artist drew the covers of the Montreal Canadiens Christmas cards from 1984 until 1997. Many of Lapensee’s paintings are collages of that season’s events like in 1986 and 1993 when the Habs won the Stanley Cup. One of his most beautiful collages “Forever Proud”, was on the 1995 Christmas card and commemorated the closing of the Montreal Forum. Sometimes, artists will get together and release a set of greeting cards for the Olympics or a worthy cause like the “Visions of Hockey” sets issued for Hockey Fights Cancer in 1999-00 and 2000-01.
The Christmas cards themselves are often quite interesting and can be beautiful. The card covers usually display some type of art work or graphics that represent the team or team philosophy. Inside the cards, there can be a team photo along with players’ autographs and a holiday greeting or message. One of the most unique card messages was found in the Montreal Canadiens 2000 Christmas card. The card came with a compact disc, and when inserted into the computer, members of the Canadiens would skate across the computer screen and wish you a Merry Christmas in their native languages.
Besides team issued Christmas cards, there are sports individuals like players, coaches, broadcasters and executives who issue their own personal Christmas cards. One of the nicest card runs was that of Montreal Canadiens coach Toe Blake from 1955 until 1967. Each card had a separate English and French version. The covers had cartoon drawings along with a comical message relating to the team’s past season or Stanley Cup victory. These Christmas cards are difficult to find and are valuable especially if they are autographed by deceased Hall of Famer Toe Blake himself.
As you can see, Christmas card collecting like Pocket Schedule collecting and Ticket collecting can be fun and inexpensive. You can accumulate photos and autographs of your favorite players but unlike Sports card collecting, the hobby is in the hands of the collector. The card collectors establish the prices, and routinely trade with each other to help fellow collectors in different regions of the country. I collect all Christmas cards with hockey themes but mostly concentrate on NHL team issued Christmas cards. On my site is a list of Montreal Canadiens Christmas cards. I would be happy to send you any other team list or if you have any questions regarding Christmas card collecting, please don’t hesitate to contact me.