Vaughan entrepreneur creates snapshot hockey book

YorkRegion.com
June 19, 2014
By Michael Hayakawa

A picture can be worth a thousand words.

In the case of having more than one picture, Paul Marin felt it was worth publishing a book.

Especially after he was privy to viewing an assortment of never-before-seen black and white and colour negatives depicting former National Hockey League players and teams.

With the photographs conjuring up some fond personal memories and feeling they would be appreciated by any avid hockey fanatic, the 54-year-old owner of Concord’s Fantactics Sports and Entertainment Marketing Inc., is finalizing some of those pieces of nostalgia by assembling a book titled Glory and Triumph.

The 176-page publication is to be comprised of 100 photographs of former NHL moments, players and teams, some of which include now defunct franchises including the Oakland Seals and Colorado Rockies, along with editorial content assembled by Marin’s son, Christian.

The negatives Marin saw came after making contact with Andrew McCall through the social internet.

A memorabilia collector, McCall purchased the rights for the negatives from various photographers.

Initially meeting with McCall approximately 18 months ago, Marin recalled he was hoping to procure some autographs of players from the negatives.

After showing Marin some of his possessions, an initial 30-minute meeting evolved into one that went on for almost 10 hours.

Through subsequent meetings in which McCall continued to bring in additional unseen negatives, about 10,000, Marin became further intrigued.

“I said to Andrew, ‘Wow, these are photographs that people should see’,” Marin said. “These are classic pictures, from players, coaches, fans, classic moments.”

As a means of unveiling the photographs, Marin and McCall immediately thought of putting out a special collector card set.

While McCall had turned down a lucrative offer from a high profile trading card company for the negatives, Marin thought he could offer assistance, having worked with the Canadian Football League’s Player Association to publish a special limited 100-year Grey Cup anniversary set.

Through sales of such a set, Marin and McCall wanted to channel the funds to assist former NHL players who might be experiencing some financial difficulties.

“We want to give back to the NHL alumni guys. All of these guys paved the road to today’s players, many of whom are spoiled,” Marin said.

In order to do this, Marin held meetings with the NHL Alumni Association.

While the association was in favour of the cards, a snag came up when they requested the involvement of the NHL Players Association.

With the subject of royalties arising, Marin and McCall turned down that idea and elected to go the route of publishing a book.

After discussing it with lawyers, they were suggested it would be safe as long as no players in the book would be defamed.

And, they did not require permission from the NHLPA.

Production began in December and Marin said they hope to have an initial run of 4,000 have ready by early next month.

Assembling the book, Marin acknowledged it has been a challenge.

The biggest hurdle was creating a theme and deciding what negatives to develop since McCall’s collection is large.

“It was harder than we thought it was, nothing is ever easy,” he said.

To assist in their efforts to convey what McCall possessed along with plans to publish a book, Marin sought the assistance of two tech savvy individuals in Huseyin Bilen and Parminder Sarna.

With the book being a first-time venture, Bilen and Sarna felt one way to increase its awareness and to sell copies without the use of a distributor was through the social media.

Electing to utilize the crowd-funding site, kickstarter.com, Bilen and Sarna will have McCall on the video where he will talk about his background story and passion in collecting negatives and photographs.

Through his speech, he will ask for support in terms of pledges.

“Andy is a passionate collector of negatives and he wants to share this with passionate followers. He is already on Twitter and he has close to 900 followers now,” Parna said. “We will target his followers and others who collect cards. We have a big community already.”

The book will be available for sale on kickstarter.com

For those who make donations, there are various degrees of incentives ranging from having their name put in the book or receiving a complete set of four-by-six photographs or even having a VIP Night with former NHL players and receiving a copy of the book and every photograph that is in it in an eight-by-10 format and autographed.

In anticipation of their book, Marin remained optimistic there is a demand for it.

By raising its awareness on a social media network such as Kickstarter, he feels it will also generate the funds they want to assist the NHL Alumni.

“Through Kickstarter, it will give us a gauge of consumer response. I think the interest is there.

“We’re offering a piece of NHL history,” Marin said of their upcoming book.

While excited about the prospects in publishing their first book, Marin said they have another edition in the works.

One that will revolve around goalkeepers from the 1950s to the present time.

“We think in time, every player that’s alive would want to be in the book.”