Gretzky’s memorable stick to be auctioned
Young phenom scored his 1,000th goal at 13 years of age
THE CANADIAN PRESS When Wayne Gretzky was 13 years old, coach Ron St. Amand already had an idea to help his star player’s hockey career.
“I remember him saying to Wayne, ‘ We’ve got to beef you up to get bigger to go on and play this as a career,’” recalls Rick St. Amand, Ron’s son. “Wayne actually came and worked at our printing company, sweeping floors and emptying garbage pails and doing that kind of stuff.”
Even then Gretzky was no ordinary 13-year-old and his hockey career was already the subject of media attention. That will happen when a kid scores 378 goals in a season.
Walter Gretzky started keeping track of his son’s stats, so by the spring of 1974 Brantford, was abuzz about the prodigy’s 1,000th lifetime goal. When he scored it in a late-season exhibition game, Gretzky signed his stick and gave it to Ron St. Amand and it remained in the coach’s house until last year when he died at age 73.
Rather than decide which one of her children should inherit the historic stick, St. Amand’s widow decided to put it up for auction with bidding through Heritage Auctions set to close Aug. 1. The value of the stick isn’t clear because Gretzky memorabilia generally doesn’t go back that far, but the U.S.-based auction house expects it to fetch $20,000 or more. The highest bid online as of Friday morning was $8,000.
“The uniqueness of this stick is the fact that it’s probably one of the more important pieces of Wayne’s early history,” Rick St. Amand said. “Pretty remarkable that even at 13 he was taking almost an adult position of signing the stick and giving it to someone he cares for.”
Shawn Chaulk of Fort McMurray, Alta., who owns one of the largest collections of Gretzky memorabilia, is interested in purchasing the stick, which he says collectors will be very “opinionated on.”
“A lot of the collectors who collect his career stuff have no interest in that kind of thing because it’s not part of the pro career or when the person turned the corner and became pro, things like that,” Chaulk said. “It’ll appeal to some people just because it’s unique. It appealed to me more because it’s unique and because I’m a greedy collector who likes to have everything.
“But I’ve had a lot of people tell me straight up they have no interest in it because it’s not a milestone NHL stick or where he set a record in the WHA or something like that. It’s a childhood stick”
Chaulk said it’s hard to prove the authenticity of items from an athlete’s younger days, but he has “no doubt” that Gretzky signed the stick after comparing the signature to others he had from his childhood.
Chaulk knows all about Gretzky’s handwriting from letters to another coach he owned and sold, one that even had a mention of Ron St. Amand.