Pro Set Hockey: The Strange Errors and Variations That Made 1990-91 Legendary

There are bad sports card sets, there are quirky sports card sets, and then there is 1990-91 Pro Set Hockey.

Released during the height of the junk-wax era, Pro Set’s inaugural hockey issue was supposed to be a major arrival. It had a huge 705-card checklist, a colorful modern design, photographs of the NHL’s biggest stars, rookies of future Hall of Famers, and the official NHL license. Instead, it became famous for something nobody at Pro Set intended to collect: mistakes.

More than three decades later, 1990-91 Pro Set Hockey set has developed a reputation as one of the most error-ridden major sports card sets ever produced. That reputation is not based on one or two amusing printing mistakes. The set contains an extraordinary assortment of misspelled names, incorrect statistics, wrong photographs, incorrect jersey numbers, missing text, incorrect biographical information, design variations and corrected versions.

The Trading Card Database currently documents 103 error and variation records for the 1991-91 Pro Set Hockey set. Beckett’s description of the issue is similarly blunt, noting that the inaugural Pro Set hockey release was punctuated by numerous grammatical, statistical and factual errors.

That is what makes 1990-91 Pro Set so fascinating. The mistakes aren’t merely cosmetic. Some cards contain information that is simply wrong. Others have the wrong player on the back. Still others exist in multiple versions because Pro Set corrected mistakes during subsequent print runs.

For collectors, opening a pack can feel less like completing a checklist and more like conducting a forensic investigation.

A Giant Set Produced at Breakneck Speed

To understand why the 1990-91 Pro Set Hockey set became such a mess, it helps to understand the environment in which it was produced.

The late 1980s and early 1990s were the boom years of sports-card collecting. Companies were rushing to capitalize on enormous demand. New manufacturers entered the market, production numbers exploded, and collectors were buying cards by the box and case.

1990-91 Pro Set Hockey was one of the most ambitious newcomers.

The 1990-91 Pro Set hockey set consisted of 705 cards, with a 405-card first series followed by a 300-card second series. At the time, it was an enormous hockey release. Beckett notes that it was the largest hockey set of its kind until the much later 2008-09 O-Pee-Chee release reached 800 cards.

The checklist itself was impressive. It included stars, veterans, team cards and rookies of players who would become some of the defining names of the 1990s and 2000s.

Among the notable rookie cards are Sergei Fedorov, Jaromir Jagr, Mike Modano, Rob Blake, Ed Belfour, Mike Richter, Curtis Joseph, Peter Bondra and Alexander Mogilny.

In other words, this was not an obscure regional issue with a few dozen cards. Pro Set was attempting to create a comprehensive, nationally distributed flagship hockey product.

And the larger the checklist became, the more opportunities there were for something to go wrong.

The Pro Set Hockey Errors Begin with Card No. 1

Perhaps the perfect symbol of the entire set is its very first card.

Card No. 1 features Boston Bruins superstar Ray Bourque. Unfortunately, his name was printed as “Borque.”

It is difficult to imagine a more conspicuous mistake.

The first card of the company’s first major hockey set misspelled the name of one of the greatest defensemen in NHL history. The error was eventually corrected, creating both an uncorrected and corrected version.

And Bourque was hardly alone.

Garry Galley‘s card originally identified him as “Gary” on the back. Al MacInnis was identified as “Allan” in one piece of card text. Marc Fortier‘s name appeared as “Mark.” Phil Bourque‘s surname was also misspelled as “Borque.”

These weren’t mysterious statistical discrepancies buried in tiny type. Some were errors in the names of the players themselves.

For collectors, that created an entirely new challenge: completing the set could mean deciding whether “complete” meant owning one copy of every card number or owning every documented error and corrected variation.

Wrong Player, Wrong Picture

The problems went considerably deeper than spelling.

One of the most entertaining examples involves cards 17 and 18, featuring Dave Andreychuk and Scott Arniel.

The back of Andreychuk’s card originally displayed a photograph of Arniel. Meanwhile, Arniel’s card had Andreychuk’s photograph.

In other words, the two players effectively traded photographs.

Both versions were eventually corrected.

This is the kind of mistake that gives the set its legendary status. A typographical error can happen anywhere. But placing one NHL player’s photograph on another player’s card suggests that multiple pieces of production information were being assembled and checked under considerable pressure.

And there were other examples of questionable information.

Some cards contained incorrect statistical data. Others had missing information. Dave Christian‘s statistics, for example, were incorrectly divided between Washington and Boston. Goaltenders Rejean Lemelin and Andy Moog had statistics mixed up between their respective cards, while other cards contained missing or incorrect team information.

These errors matter because statistics are one of the fundamental purposes of a sports card. A card is supposed to preserve a player’s historical record.

Pro Set sometimes managed to rewrite that history.

The Famous Paul Gillis“ Bloody Nose” Card

Then there is the card that may be the most famous Pro Set error of them all.

Paul Gillis, card No. 246.

The card exists in versions featuring a visible bloody nose and versions without it. The same card also contained a jersey-number error: the incorrect version showed Gillis wearing number 37 on the front, while the corrected version showed number 23.

The bloody-nose variation has become one of the signature curiosities of 1990-91 Pro Set.

It is a perfect junk-wax-era collectible because it is simultaneously bizarre, accidental and visually obvious. A collector doesn’t need a statistical reference guide to understand that something unusual is happening. Put the two cards side by side and the difference is immediately apparent.

The Gillis card also illustrates an important distinction in the Pro Set story.

Not every unusual card is necessarily an “error” in the strictest sense. Some are variations resulting from different stages of production. Collectors and databases have therefore documented the set using separate categories for errors, corrected errors and variations.

That distinction becomes increasingly important as the checklist grows.

It Wasn’t Just Errors, It Was Corrections

One reason 1990-91 Pro Set became such a complicated collecting project is that Pro Set actually corrected many of its mistakes.

That sounds like good news.

For collectors, it was anything but simple.

When a company catches a mistake before production, the solution is easy: fix the artwork and print the cards.

But when cards are already being manufactured and distributed, corrections can create multiple versions of the same card. The result is a collecting landscape in which the original erroneous card, the corrected card and sometimes additional production variations can all exist.

The Trading Card Database’s records demonstrate the scope of the problem. Its catalog includes errors involving names, photographs, statistics, jersey numbers, missing text and design elements, along with corrected versions and other variations.

For example, Brad McCrimmon‘s card originally carried the number 39 on the front rather than his correct number 4. Both erroneous and corrected versions are documented.

Shawn Burr‘s card had missing write-up text on the back in one version.

Troy Murray‘s card exists with different treatments of the position and sweater-number printing.

Duane Sutter‘s card can be found with and without a retired-player stripe.

These aren’t all the same type of mistake. Some are straightforward errors; others are printing or design variations. But together they contribute to the set’s extraordinary reputation.

Why So Many Mistakes?

There probably wasn’t a single catastrophic reason.

The more likely explanation is a combination of factors common to the sports-card boom: an enormous checklist, rapidly changing information, multiple pieces of artwork and statistical data, tight production schedules, and a company trying to establish itself in a fiercely competitive market.

There was also a fundamental challenge in producing hockey cards during this period.

Players were being traded. Rosters changed. Statistics had to be compiled. Photographs had to be matched to players. Biographical information had to be checked. Card numbers and team affiliations had to be synchronized.

Every additional data field created another opportunity for an error.

And the 1990-91 Pro Set Hockey set had hundreds of cards.

The result was a perfect storm.

Why Collectors Still Love the 1990-91Pro Set Hockey

Ironically, the very qualities that made 1990-91 Pro Set embarrassing for its manufacturer are what make it interesting today.

The cards themselves generally aren’t considered especially valuable in the conventional sense. This was the junk-wax era, and enormous quantities were produced. Beckett’s retrospective description captures the contradiction particularly well: the set is remembered as being “filled with errors,” yet it remains fascinating to collectors because of its unusual history.

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That distinction is important.

1990-91 Pro Set hockey isn’t necessarily a great investment set. It’s a great collecting set.

There is a difference.

A collector can hunt for the Bourque “Borque” card, the corrected Bourque, the Andreychuk/Arniel photograph swap, the Gillis bloody-nose variation, statistical mistakes and dozens of smaller anomalies.

The hunt itself becomes the hobby.

And because many of these cards were printed in enormous quantities, finding an individual error card is usually not about rarity in the traditional sense. It is about identifying exactly what you have.

That’s part of the fun.

Is the Pro Set Hockey Really the Most Error-Prone Major Set Ever?

“Most error-prone ever” is ultimately a subjective claim. There is no official industry ranking of sports-card sets by error rate, and the distinction between an error, corrected error and printing variation can make comparisons difficult.

But the reputation is understandable.

The documented checklist contains more than 100 error and variation records, while contemporary and hobby references repeatedly emphasize the sheer breadth of the mistakes.

More importantly, the errors occur across virtually every category imaginable:

• Misspelled player names
• Incorrect statistics
• Wrong photographs
• Incorrect jersey numbers
• Missing biographical text
• Incorrect headings
• Wrong team information
• Design inconsistencies
• Printing variations
• Corrected versions
• Photographic oddities such as the famous Paul Gillis bloody nose

That’s an extraordinary range of production problems for a single major release.

And perhaps that is why 1990-91 Pro Set Hockey has survived as more than just another junk-wax set.

It is a historical artifact of an industry moving too quickly.

The Ultimate Junk-Wax Treasure Hunt

The irony of 1990-91 Pro Set Hockey is that its greatest flaw became its greatest attraction.

Pro Set set out to produce a massive, modern NHL card set. Instead, it accidentally produced something collectors can spend years studying.

The cards document not only the players of the era, but also the mechanics, and mistakes, of card production during the industry’s boom years.

For a conventional set collector, the Pro Set Hockey errors can be maddening.

For a variation collector, they’re irresistible.

And for anyone interested in the history of sports cards, 1990-91 Pro Set Hockey is almost a case study in what happens when ambition, deadlines and mass production collide.

The set may never be remembered as the most valuable hockey release of the junk-wax era.

It doesn’t need to be.

It has something arguably more entertaining: a mistake for almost everyone.

From “Borque” on card No. 1 to a swapped photograph, incorrect statistics, wrong jersey numbers and a hockey player with a mysteriously bloody nose, 1990-91 Pro Set Hockey remains one of the hobby’s great cautionary tales.

And if you happen to own a box of these cards?

Don’t throw them away just yet.

Start checking the backs.