The 1963-64 Topps set consists of 66 hockey cards featuring players from the Boston Bruins, Chicago Blackhawks, and New York Rangers. The highest value cards belonged to the Blackhawks’ Bobby Hull and Stan Mikita, along with the Rangers’ Jacques Plante. It wasn’t a great year for rookie cards with no great value RC in the set. However, there are four significant top cards that stand out above three to five times the value of a community card.
Ed Johnston – Boston Bruins
The most valuable of these four rookie cards is goalie Eddie Johnston’s number 2 card. In 1962-63, as a rookie with the Bruins, he played in 50 of the team’s 70 regular-season games with Bob Perreault as a backup. Boston finished sixth in the six-team league, eleven points behind the fifth-place New York Rangers.
Johnston went on to play in National Hockey through 1977-78 with the Bruins, Toronto Maple Leafs, St. Louis Blues, and Chicago Blackhawks. He won two Stanley Cup championships with Boston in 1969-70 and 1971-72. In the first year, Eddie played just one game, backing up Gerry Cheevers. In 1971-72 the tandem split things fairly evenly with Johnston playing seven games and Cheevers playing eight.
Ed Westfall – Boston Bruins
The number 8 card in the 1963-64 Topps set belongs to Ed Westfall. He played 63 games for the Bruins in 1961-62 but was not included in the 1962-63 set. Westfall went on to play 1,226 NHL regular season games between 1961-62 and 1978-79 with the Bruins and New York Islanders. During that time, he scored 231 goals and totaled 625 points.
Westfall also participated in an impressive 95 playoff games, adding 59 points. He played in all of Boston’s playoff games in their Stanley Cup championship runs in 1970 and 1972. Unfortunately, he missed the four-year New York Cup run, retiring the year before.
Ed Van Impe – Chicago Blackhawks
Topps took the lead with card number 30. Van Impe would play 700 regular season games in the National Hockey League, but would not play his first game until 1966-67. From 1961-62 to 1965-66, Ed played exclusively in the American Hockey League with the Buffalo Bisons.
Van Impe played in the NHL from 1966-67 to 1976-77 with the Blackhawks, Philadelphia Flyers, and Pittsburgh Penguins. He played just one year with the Hawks, moving to Philadelphia for the Flyers’ inaugural season. He remained in Philadelphia to help bring home two Stanley Cup championships in 1973-74 and 1974-75.
Gilles Villemure – New York Rangers
Also somewhat skipped by Topps on the 46th card, Villemure played just 13 games for Rangers prior to the 1970-71 season. He appeared in five games in 1963-64, four in 1967-68 and four in 1968-69.
As a member of the AHL’s Buffalo Bisons, Gilles took home MVP and Top Goaltender honors in back-to-back seasons, 1968-69 and 1969-70. He went on to share the Vezina Trophy with Ed Giacomin with the Rangers in 1970-71. Villemure retired after 1976-77, playing only for the Rangers and Blackhawks during his NHL career.