1979-80 O-Pee-Chee Guy Lafleur #200

the card

notes

Card 200 is Guy Lafleur at the exact top of his career, in the same set that carries Wayne Gretzky's first NHL card at number 18. Nobody buying a pack in 1979 would have guessed which of the two mattered more.

The back tells you why. The 1978-79 line reads 80 games, 52 goals, 77 assists, 129 points - he led the Canadiens in all three - and the lifetime totals sit at 603 games, 355 goals, 816 points. The front carries a 1st Team All-Star banner, his fifth of six consecutive selections. He had won the Art Ross three years running, the Hart in 1976-77 and 1977-78, the Conn Smythe in 1977, and the Lou Marsh as Canada's athlete of the year. In the spring before this card was printed he had won his fifth Stanley Cup, and Montreal's fourth in a row.

He was also the first player in NHL history to score 50 goals and 100 points in six consecutive seasons, a run that started in 1974-75 and ended in 1979-80 - the season this card was issued for. He scored 50 and 125 that year. He never reached either mark again.

The dynasty ended at the same moment. Ken Dryden retired, Jacques Lemaire retired, Yvan Cournoyer retired, and Scotty Bowman left. Dryden's last card is number 150 in this same set. The Canadiens went out in the quarter-finals to Minnesota, and the team that had won four straight was finished.

So the set documents a handover twice over. Gretzky arrives at 18. Howe at 175 and Hull at 185 are playing their final seasons. And Lafleur at 200 is the reigning best player in the game, one year from the end of his prime.

The design is the standard one for the set: photo inside a blue border, name and team above, team logo lower right, bilingual back with 1978-79 and career statistics, a short biography and a cartoon. Lafleur's cartoon says he lists tennis among his hobbies. That same year he released a disco album of himself reciting hockey instructions.

population

PSA

graded elsewhere

recorded 29 aug 2026. figures are a snapshot on that date, not a live count.

recorded sales

dated past results, not an estimate of what a copy is worth today. figures published by an auction house normally include the buyer's premium, so they are more than the seller received.

where to buy one

Common, cheap and easy to find, which is the opposite of the Gretzky in the same set. Lafleur has six cards from his prime and this is not the scarce one.

That makes grade the whole question. In low grades this is a few dollars, so there is no reason to buy a beaten copy. PSA 7 and 8 are readily available and are where the value sits for a collector who wants it to look like the card they remember. PSA 9 is a different market, because the set's blue borders chip and the print quality out of London was inconsistent - the same problem that makes every card in this set hard in high grade.

If you are building the set, the 395-card run without the Gretzky costs a fraction of the complete one, and this card comes with it.

what to check before you buy

Check the back for the copyright line. This card says 1979 O-Pee-Chee, Printed in Canada, and the text runs in English and French. The 1979-80 Topps #200 is also Lafleur, printed in the United States and English only. They look alike from the front and sellers confuse them constantly.

Read the blue borders on all four edges. Chipping shows as white flecks and is the single most common reason this set grades lower than it looks.

Check centering on the back as well as the front. The back is often worse, and it counts.

Slightly rough or furred edges are original to O-Pee-Chee's cutting and are not damage. Cards with them grade as high as PSA 9.

Counterfeiting concentrates on the Gretzky at card 18, and no reprints of this card are documented. That lowers the risk here, it does not remove it - buy from someone who takes returns, and look at photographs of both sides before you commit.

sources