Historical Hockey and Sports Memorabilia Auction February 2024
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 2/20/2024
Unable to claim Lord Stanley’s hardware despite two attempts throughout their tenure, the Minnesota North Stars spent a quarter century in the NHL before relocating to Dallas and advanced to the Stanley Cup finals in both 1981 and 1991. The Stars can include a number of notable alumni within their organization, including Neal Broten, Brian Bellows and Bobby Smith. Offered here, we have this exceptionally rare and desirable inaugural-season Minnesota North Stars jersey from the expansion season of 1967-68 that has been attributed to defenceman, Pete Goegan. Only seeing action during the preseason (between Sept. 16th 1967 and Oct. 5th 1967), a Gerry Cosby label with “44” sizing is affixed to the collar though through laundering the jersey appears much smaller. With no other tagging present, the front of the heavy double knit garment is styled with the classic green-over-gold pointed-N tackle twill team crest while Goegan's number “5” is sewn to the sleeves and verso in matching style material. Additionally, there is no nameplate present over the upper reverse but evidence of a formerly affixed example is present and accounted for. Exhibiting game-use through a few stick marks over the body and both sleeves, a very faint red board paint transfer spot is seen in the right elbow as well. Also sporting a bit of staining over the front and both sleeves, both inside and out, as well as an additional board paint smear to the right of the reverse number "5", a small unrepaired hole is found at the bottom of the number that is worth mentioning for accuracy. Serving as one of the original Minnesota North Stars jerseys, this scarce example is deserving of considerable hobby veneration.
As mentioned, these Wilson double-knit jerseys with Gerry Cosby tagging were worn for just the inaugural preseason games before that Stars switched to General Athletic durene jerseys for the first regular season game vs St. Louis. There are a number of differences between these first sweaters worn during the preseason and the examples that saw use throughout the regular season, with our preseason specimen sporting a tie-neck front with solid gold collar, with the upper left portion of the “N” team crest slanting downward as opposed to extending horizontally as seen on the regular-season jerseys, with a slightly rounded numeral font and thinner colour bands over the waist also specific to just the preseason jerseys. Though these jerseys were long thought lost for good, they were likely recycled as per the nameplate removal on the back and the circular patch removed from the front, and it’s believed that this set of 1967 expansion jerseys were used by North Stars owner Walter Bush's Midwest Jr. Stars in the mid-1970s.
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