VANCOUVER -- Police in West Vancouver are looking to return a collection of hockey cards they suspect have significant monetary and sentimental value to their rightful owner.

The cards were seized as the result of an incident that happened on Feb. 8, said Const. Kevin Goodmurphy, spokesperson for the West Vancouver Police Department.

In that incident, two men and a woman were arrested for alleged break-ins at homes and vehicles in West Vancouver and elsewhere.

Police were called for reports of a possible break-in at a home in the 2700 block of Highview Place, off of Chippendale Road, around 8:30 a.m. that day.

When officers arrived, they found that the suspect vehicle - a white pickup truck that had been stolen in Surrey the day before - had already fled the scene. Police eventually located the vehicle and the suspects with the help of North Vancouver RCMP.

The woman was later released without charges because of insufficient evidence, but the two men - who police identified in a release as Adam Zinck and Alexander Eaton - were charged.

Zinck was charged with one count of breaking and entering with intent to commit an offence, while Eaton was charged with one count of dangerous operation of a vehicle and one count of flight from police.

"Investigators ended up executing a search warrant on the vehicle they were in, and they located these cards as part of the items that were recovered from the vehicle," said Goodmurphy on Thursday.

Goodmurphy said police do not believe the cards belong to the suspects who were in the truck, and they're looking for the rightful owner of the collection.

"A lot of the items that were discovered in the vehicle and subsequently seized belong to people from different parts of the province," Goodmurphy said. "These cards really could be from anywhere, likely in the province of B.C."

The cards themselves - more than 70 of them - have clearly been well-cared-for, he said. Many of them are in mint condition, packaged in hard plastic cases to preserve their value. Some are signed.

"Some of the cards appear they may be in the range of a few hundred dollars apiece, right now, online," Goodmurphy said.

He noted that some of the cards in the collection date back to the 1970s, suggesting someone has either had them for a long time or had to work hard to acquire them.

"Someone who has a collection this large has probably put a lot of time and effort into them, so there's probably a lot of sentimental value," he said. "In my mind, that would be the happy ending, obviously, to this, right? Getting these back to the rightful owner. I'm sure they're missing them dearly."