Thom's place
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
185.31155
Summary
Tom Racine is an avid hockey fan and puck collector. He has over 3,000 pieces of hockey memorabilia in his collection and keeps them all on display in his basement in order to display them in a special place in his home.
Transcript
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Okay, so here's Tom Racine. We're going into his special hockey room here. And look at this.
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It's a hidden door to hide his treasures. Okay, so we'll go on. He's turning the lights on.
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And look at this. I want Dad to see this. Check this out, Dad. Look at the puck collection.
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Look at the pucks. Un-freaking-believable. Look at this.
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3,334. Now, Tom, I want to ask you this. Is there one in particular that you... I mean, there's so many here. Is there one that kind of stands out?
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Yeah, there's a couple. This one over here. This is...
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From the Guelph Biltmore Mad Hatters. It's one of the first crested pucks from the late 50s, early 60s.
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It's kind of neat. It's old. It's as old. Old is older than I am, I think.
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And then there's a couple NHL ones that I have. But there's several. I mean, that tower in the center, there isn't a biscuit in there that's worth less than $50, roughly.
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Wow. On average. So, like, there's a... That's kind of like my sacred tower.
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And I know people... People know that you collect them and you've had people actually send you pucks and kind of get them in the mail.
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Yeah. I... I've had many... Many guys just drop off bags. They've been either in the garage or in the basement.
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You know, and there's always a gem or two in the bags.
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I'm just wondering. I'm just looking at the way that they're mounted up here. Is this your own idea or did you get this somewhere else?
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No. It's a puck collecting buddy of mine in Albany, New York.
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Made these for his basement, but he upgraded to oak cabinetry.
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And he told me, what am I getting on? He asked me, what am I going to do with these things?
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And I said, well, I'd take them, but I have no way to get them here.
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And about a week or two after that, wouldn't you know it, someone from here was going down there with a truck.
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Didn't really have any room for 8x4 sheets of plywood, so I cut them.
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And so it made four great display boards on either side.
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Beautiful. Beautiful. Look at the pucks up here.
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The best part about puck collecting is the fact that every logo on a puck describes a team.
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And if you look at the edge of the puck, you can date that puck.
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And then all you've got to do now with the internet, you just go and punch in that team,
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and you can literally find players who play for the team.
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Well, it's interesting because I look up here, and you've got all the teams that no longer exist.
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You have the Hartford Whalers, the Colorado Rockies.
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That probably, who was the goalie who played for Cherry?
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He said, Hardy Astrum's standing in the middle of the road one day,
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and a truck came down and went right through his legs.
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Karen wanted you to know that the number of pucks are on the other side of this board.
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Okay, now I want to ask you a little bit about these masks.
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My brother played pro for 15, 16 years, and that one there is from Finland.
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This is the one he wore when he played for the Maple Leafs in St. John's, the farm club.
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There's the entrance to the Harvard St. John's.
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and because he traveled and only lived out of suitcases and apartments,
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you know, just leave it there, and one day he'll come and take it all back.
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I see here, you know, you've got these black and white photos.
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Henderson's probably the nicest of the three game winners that he got
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in 72 was in game seven, and then, of course, game eight.
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Three game winners in that series, and eight games.
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Well, I mean, the top rail and the kick boards on the bottom
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actually come from the arena in town, the complex, when they changed.
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They were throwing all the stuff out, so I just happened to be driving by one day,
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and so I piled up by the garbage can, so I took as much as I could.
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And I had an idea that one day I would do this, and so I stored it,
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And I see a name down here, and this is rather timely because it wasn't very long.
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He was just like a little kid when he was here.
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He found out I wanted him to sign something, and I wrote a story about it.
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I've had a lot of comments on the day he was here,
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and it was kind of a sad thing that happened to him.
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I mean, it was only within the last couple of years he dropped by.
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Yeah, I don't know if you're CFL fans in Sarnia, but I'm sure you are.
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There he is right there with the Ottawa Rough Riders.
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17 years, and so this is all stuff I collected as a kid for the most part.
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And I mean, this is my dad's game-worn 1960 Grey Cup sweater.
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And the one from 68, my sister has, and the one from 66 I have, and they lost to Saskatchewan in that one.
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Yeah, well, you can see, back in those days, you can see they didn't change them.
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I remember this poster over here, the Hockey Canada.
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Well, 72 fuels a lot of the passion I have for the game.
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I absolutely think that, you know, you can argue what 72 was, but I think it defines us as a nation when hockey is concerned.
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And whether you like the way we won or not, the unity of the whole thing that brought this country together back then,
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and to have lived it as a 12-year-old kid, and then understand it as you get older.
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I mean, heck, we had our road hockey games for the next three or four years, and we sang both the Russian and Canadian.
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That's how I know the Soviet Union's national anthem from the 72 Summit Series, and I agree with you 100%.
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Well, my dad asked me what I wanted for my birthday, and I told him the year that the Forum closes, I'd love a seat.
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And it was 96, I think it was 96, and so I'd love to get a seat, and he said, okay, and I gave him the information on how to get the seat.
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In June of 1996, I think it was, this big box arrived, a Purolator UPS, and there was a card in it.
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There's a lot of autographs on the wall, and you said people signed us.
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There's a lot of hockey players that have come around, eh?
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Yeah, Dark Carpenter, Ryan Vandenbush, Dale Howardchuk was here, Probert, Crowder.
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Bobby Hall was supposed to come, and he got busy signing autographs at another function
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that stayed an hour or two longer than he was supposed to, and the next thing you know, I got chopped.
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But that would have been kind of neat to have him here.
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I know a couple of years ago, Hockey Night in Canada, didn't they do something about people who have collections?
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You got featured on there a little bit, didn't you?
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They came for three hours, for a minute, and I think it was 40 seconds of video.
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It was on Hockey Day in Canada, they featured it.
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Every February, they have Hockey Day, and they did a little segment right from here.
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I'm wondering, is there a record for the most pucks?
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I know a couple of fellas in Toronto that have close to 8,000 to 10,000.
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I mean, I can get a little bit crazy, but these guys are...
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They're the gurus, and one of them's written a book.
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You've got a lot of these collections, I notice, when you go around...
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I'm going to ask you about this, because I used to have...
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I used to have a little carousel for the poker chips.
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I don't have the carousel, but the carousel basically was a poker chip carousel that was
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Because the shields were what you put these in.
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Now, these are from 61, and this is a really neat piece, because it's a piece of Canadiana,
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Yes, the original six, and it's some great players, Howe and Hull and Bellevue, they're
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That was my favorite player when I was younger.
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The things I like to do is, like, I got this picture.
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And, I mean, it's just a moment frozen in time from any hockey game, but on the back
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of it, there was a date, and I ended up researching it and found out that you can't really see it
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on it, but this is a game from 1964, and I found the summary in Montreal 1-2-1, and the
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interesting thing about it is that McCourt wearing number four, it wasn't too long after
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that that another guy came along and wore number four.
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That's my brother's when he played in Pittsburgh.
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They won their first Stanley Cup in 1990, and Bruce was a member of that team, and that's
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the Prince of Wales trophy for winning the conference, and then every player gets...
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Yeah, I expect him to come and take those one day, but...
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I'm going to turn the camera off just so I can poke around, but just remarkable.
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You know, somewhere in my dad's house, I got a hockey puck for you.
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What is it, what is it, get off the track, here it comes, clear the track, I got a Toronto
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Maple Leaf hockey puck from 1974, he was at a Dairy Queen, and he signed it, and I'm sure
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There's another one, too, for Shaq that he did, was it Donut, it wasn't the Tim Hortons
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ones, but he was involved with the Donut Company, and they had pucks on it with Eddie
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Shaq's signature, and I think I have one of those around here.
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Now, the pucks, so this is basically what they're worth, I mean, a puck's worth a couple
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Well, yeah, it's like I was saying, like in here, John, there isn't anything in here
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There's about 300 pucks in the complete WHA collection, which I don't have, but, you
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know, the Nordiques puck and the Sharks puck are both in the area of $75 to $100.
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Probably the most expensive puck in here that I have is this one, and it comes to the
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Quebec League's Plattsburgh Pioneers, who played 11 games back in the early 90s.
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The team closed up operations, and they've been wiped from the record books of the Quebec
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And so any memorabilia you get from the Plattsburgh Pioneers is huge, and that puck's worth about
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So that's probably one of the most expensive ones I have.
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The original Spalding pucks from the 30s, they're $300, $400 pucks.
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They have the baseball on them, the Spalding baseball, but it's the hockey puck.