Topps put the stars on the round numbers. Gretzky was card 18.

How the set was numbered

Card companies of that era had a habit, never written down as a rule but plain in almost every checklist: the biggest names went on the round numbers. Card 100, card 200, and the tens and fives in between.

The 1979-80 hockey set follows it closely. Read down the checklist and the All-Stars fall on #20, #40, #50, #70, #100, #130, #140, #150, #160, #200 and #230: Glenn Resch, Borje Salming, Larry Robinson, Denis Potvin, Bryan Trottier, Clark Gillies, Bill Barber, Ken Dryden, Marcel Dionne, Guy Lafleur and Mike Bossy.

The great veterans in their final seasons land on the fives. Bobby Clarke at #125, Stan Mikita at #155, Gordie Howe at #175 and Bobby Hull at #185.

The first eight cards are the league leaders from the season before. Number 83 recaps the Stanley Cup final.

And then there is number 18

Gretzky is card 18. Card 17 is Willie Huber, a Detroit rookie. Card 19 is Ron Sedlbauer of the Vancouver Canucks.

That is the ordinary part of the checklist, where the working players go. Nothing about the position marks him out.

What the companies knew in 1979

Put yourself where the checklist was drawn up.

The WHA had just folded, and four of its teams, the Oilers among them, were joining the NHL for 1979-80. The card companies had a set to fill with players from four new clubs, most of whom had never appeared on an NHL card, and a star system that rewarded proven NHL performance.

Gretzky had none. He was eighteen, he had never played an NHL game, and nobody yet knew how he would fare against NHL defences. On the evidence available in the summer of 1979, putting him among the working players was not an insult. It was the cautious call.

It was also completely wrong, and within a season everybody knew it.

One year later

In his first NHL season Gretzky tied for the league scoring lead and won the Hart Trophy as most valuable player.

The 1980-81 Topps set then gave him card 250. Not a ten. A two hundred and fifty. He also appears on an All-Star card and on two league-leader cards, and his record for becoming the youngest player to score fifty goals gets a card of its own at number three.

From an ordinary number between two journeymen to one of the set's anchor slots, in twelve months. The checklist records the change of mind more clearly than anything else from the period.

What the number did afterwards

Being card 18 meant nothing at the time. It has come to mean a great deal since.

The number is how the card is searched for, catalogued, and argued about. It is on both printings, Topps and O-Pee-Chee, which share the first 264 cards of the checklist, and we have written about how differently the two printings behave. It is also the name of this site.

There is a coincidence here that should be noted and not overworked: Gretzky was eighteen when the card was made, and it is card 18. Nothing suggests anyone intended it.

The same mistake, in a different sport

Card companies have guessed wrong about rookies in both directions. Ten years later a teenage employee at Upper Deck did the reverse, and put an unproven minor leaguer on card number one because he believed in him. That player was Ken Griffey Jr, and we have written about how that choice was made on our sister site.

In 1979 nobody took that kind of chance on Gretzky. They put him where they put everybody they were not sure about.