Historical Hockey Memorabilia Winter 2012
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 2/22/2012
Detroit Red Wings equipment man Lefty Wilson raised mask making to new levels towards the end of the 1960s and he supplied many NHL netminders with his protective handiwork, including two of his Detroit Red Wings charges, Terry Sawchuk and Roger Crozier. Offered is an extremely early example of a Lefty Wilson mask, made in 1962 for the consignor, Tom Gillespie. The well-worn mask shows marks and battle scars but no cracking or damage and comes complete with original interior padding. Marked in faint blue ink "Jr. Wings" at the forehead across the original creamy-white paint job. Tom, a netminder in the Detroit Red Wings system is pictured on the cover of an included magazine dated later in September of 1964 while wearing this exact mask! The mask has been photo-matched to the shot and a digital pic of the match will be included. Gillespie who was with the Junior Wings at the time, also played for Eastern Michigan University (Bowling Green - 1/2 year), the Muskegon Zephyrs, and went to a San Francisco Seals camp in 1964. Tom recalls that Wilson had not made many masks when his own was produced in October of 1962, but knows that Wings-system netminders Sawhuck (wore his in practice circa 1961), Bassen and Riggin had been fitted already and remembers teammate Pat Rupp receiving his Lefty mask a month earlier in September of '62. He believes that by early in the 1962-63 season, perhaps only a half-dozen examples had been fabricated by Wilson making this one of the earliest known examples.
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