His collection is the great one.

And now the Fort McMurray man who boasted one of the world’s best and highly-sought after collections of Wayne Gretzky memorabilia has netted more than $450,000 at an auction — and he said he only sold roughly 20% of his massive collection.

Shawn Chaulk, a 46-year old who owns a local construction company, contributed about 25 pieces of Gretzky memorabilia to an auction spring event at Montreal-based Classic Auctions.

Chaulk estimates the items are also roughly 20% of the value of his collection, which includes about 100 jerseys and 90 sticks.

“It’s amazing. Auctions are a funny creature,” Chaulk said.

“When you put your stuff in there’s always a risk, and quite often the things you think you’re going to do really well only do average and sometimes the things you think will do average really do well.

“There’s no real explaining, with auctions.”

The haul includes several pieces from the Great One’s pivotal 1986-87 season with the Edmonton Oilers.

That includes gloves (two pairs, sold for $13,155 each), skates sold for $19,489, the puck with which he scored his 500th goal sold for $22,413, and the jersey he wore both when he broke the 500-goal mark and when he lifted the Stanley Cup, which went for a cool $297,995 before auction fees.

Bidders are anonymous, so Chaulk largely doesn’t know who will walk away with the historic equipment.

However, he did say that the 500-goal puck and the first NHL puck used by the Edmonton Oilers in 1979 will be staying in Fort McMurray, after the two sets of buyers dropped him a line to let him know they’re in town.

“I thought it was really cool that a couple of local people stepped up to have a piece of it,” Chaulk said.

Some items outperformed expectations, like a Gretzky practice jersey that he predicted would go for between $5,000 and $10,000 (26 bids later, he landed $14,150) and an equipment bag used by the Great One.

“I offered it to a guy a few weeks before the auction for $2,000, he hemmed and hawed and I finally just sent it to the auction with the rest and it sold for almost $10,000,” he said.

“Those are some good little, more than double what I expected in some cases. Significantly more.”

Chaulk says it was never his intention to get out of what he referred to as “the hobby”, but downsizing his collection was a decision he made for a number of reasons.

For one, the dream home he was building for his family would have a smaller hockey room to display his treasure horde.

He also admits the collection, some of which is uninsurable, was getting too valuable.

“You go to bed at night...and think, oh my God, if we have a catastrophe, that’s all gone and unrecoverable,” he said.

“That started to play on my mind a little bit.

“We had two basement floods in the spring of this year. Luckily nothing got damaged, but it could have. We started to realize that it’s so easy to lose it all.”

However, he won’t stop collecting.

“You never turn down a good deal,” said Chaulk.

“Even though I’ve collected all my life ... when something comes by that’s the right deal, you’re still going to take it, and I still will.”

andrew.bates@sunmedia.ca