Jeff Morris was editing a Canadian hobby magazine when he was granted an interview with Patrick Roy at the old Buffalo Auditorium on January 31, 1992, after a Montreal Canadiens game-day skate. The subject was hockey cards, and Roy had plenty to say about them.
Somewhere in the conversation, Morris mentioned his grandfather. The old man was a former journalist and author who had served as a communications specialist in the Second World War, he loved sports, and he was seriously ill and living in a nursing home. Morris had grown up going through card collections with him on Saturday nights.
It was the sort of thing an interviewer says in passing and doesn’t expect anybody to act on.
Morris happened to have a Hallmark get well card with him. Roy took it, wrote a personal note inside, and handed it back to give to a man he had never met.
“He glowed with excitement and then showed every person he knew in the town of Prescott, Ontario how Patrick Roy sent him a get well card,” Morris wrote.
Patrick Roy, by the numbers:
| Category | Total |
|---|---|
| Cards in his collection in 1992 | about 150,000 |
| Stanley Cups | 4 |
| Conn Smythe Trophies | 3 |
How did Patrick Roy get into collecting hockey cards?
Growing up near Quebec City, he sorted his cards by team, spread the sides out across his bed and played games with them, using a marble for a puck. Most Canadian kids of his generation did some version of that. He simply never stopped.
“I learned about hockey from hockey cards. I read all of the bios and memorized the stats,” Roy said. “I didn’t collect goalies in particular because I tried to collect the whole set every year, but the goalie cards were my favorite. My favorite goalie was Dan Bouchard.”
Which is why one particular moment registered with him the way it did. Roy told Morris that one of the thrills of his career was pulling his own O-Pee-Chee card out of a pack for the first time. It felt like proof he had made it.
He would go on to become one of the most serious collectors in the sport, chasing master sets of everything and competing with other wealthy buyers for one-of-ones. His collection ran to roughly 150,000 cards even in 1992.
There was one more thing that told Morris who he was dealing with. Before the interview had properly started, Roy asked a question of his own, wanting to know what a fair price would be for a C56 set from 1910 that somebody had offered him.
The best goaltender in the world was asking a small-town hobby journalist for buying advice, and listening to the answer.
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