NHLPA makes questionable call on rookie cards

According to multiple sources (link), the NHLPA has decided that the 2012-13 hockey cards will only contain rookies that made their debut during the second half of the 2011-12 season.

In case you don't know why that is significant, here's some background:

One of the biggest draws in trading cards are rookies.  Everyone wants to own the first card produced for every great player.  Take a look at the base rookie card for Sid, from 2005-06 Upper Deck:
Sidney Crosby 2005-06 Young Guns Example 1
Sidney Crosby 2005-06 Young Guns Example 2

In other words, if you want a Sidney Crosby rookie (and the Young Guns cards are generally considered to be the base rookie worth getting), you're going to pay about $250.  If you want one that has been professionally graded and has a decent grade, be prepared to pay much more than that.

This came from a pack of cards that cost about $3.00.

Obviously we're looking at the most desirable rookie card since Mario Lemieux (or maybe Patrick Roy), but the point is that rookies drive the sales on most products.

So when the NHLPA says it will prevent the normal rookies (ie, last year's draft picks like Neil Yakupov) from appearing in 2012-13 hockey cards, they are seriously harming hockey card sales for this season.

Upper Deck, one of the two licencees that can produce hockey cards, is primarily doing hockey cards these days - it is their only remaining major sports license.  I can't imagine this going to help them.

It also means that if you buy hockey cards, you can expect to pay more in 2013-14.  Why?  Because it will be a year with a double rookie class.  That same thing happened after the last lockout, and the 2005-06 card sets are loaded.  I don't think 2013-14 will contain both a Crosby and an Ovechkin (plus a TON of other really good players), but it will drive demand and ratchet up the box prices on the secondary market.

I can't see how this is a good move for the card companies (Upper Deck and Panini).  If I were them, I'd rather have been able to have a strong second half of 2012-13 and then had a normal 2013-14.  They aren't likely to charge a higher base price for their product, and they certainly aren't going to make up the lost sales on what is essentially filler for the rest of this season.

Very curious.

I think there's a support group for something like this...

I had to zip through Target today and made the mistake of glancing over at the cards.

This is what I saw staring up at me:


Come on - could you resist that? It says EXTREME VALUE!! It has to be true - and it was only $10! I have to see if there is a CA (Collectors Anonymous) meeting near here...

As long as I bought the box, I may as well show you what was on the inside.

The packs were as follows:
2008-09 Upper Deck Series 1
2006-07 Upper Deck Series 2
2006-07 Fleer Hot Prospects
2006-07 Parkhurst (x2)
2005-06 Upper Deck Victory (x2)
2005-06 Parkhurst
1998-99 Pacific Omega (x4)
1991-92 Pro Set Platinum (x2)
1990-91 Bowman (badly warped)

So was it really an EXTREME VALUE?

Err... not so much. But it *did* have some neat cards.

Let's forget about anything since the end of the lockout - those are all Upper Deck cards and they're pretty boring, I think. Note - Upper Deck also published Fleer and Parkhurst and hold the only license to make hockey cards.

The neat cards are the other three sets - Omega (which I had never seen previously), Pro Set and Bowman.

Okay - the Bowman are crappy too, but I did get one cool card:

Check out the fedora! Did you know he had three hat tricks that year?

Pro Set Platinum has great photography. There is a full bleed (no borders) picture on the front and a different full color picture on the back. You sacrifice any kind of statistics, but still, nice pictures. See the LaFontaine example below.

No chance for the Cobra Kai Dojo!

Pacific Omega was completely new to me, and I really liked the layout. All of the cards appear to be laid out horizontally and have a nice design. There were a few nice rookies in those four packs.

I wouldn't have guessed that 98-99 was Giguere's rookie year.

More Hockey Cards

So earlier this year, I may have gone a wee bit overboard and bought too many hockey cards. I was thinking I wanted to get a Crosby rookie, but just buying the stupid card would not be NEARLY as much fun as wasting hundreds of dollars in an effort to find one in a pack.

I also thought it would be fun to get hockey stickers and do one of those albums I have such fond memories of from when I was a kid.

So...


You're looking at:

• 2 boxes of Panini 08-09 stickers
• 4 boxes of 2005-06 Parkhurst Hobby (for an attempt at the Crosby rookie)
• 2 boxes of 2006-07 O-Pee-Chee (because they were cheap)
• 3 boxes of 2007-08 Mini-Jerseys (because they were cheap too, and I use them on the blog... COUGH... rationalization... COUGH...)
• 1 box of 2007-08 Fleer Ultra Retail (it was free because I bought so much)

The posts over the next few days will be all about these boxes and what was in them.

Before you ask, it was a tremendous waste of money and I enjoyed every minute of opening the cards. Hey - it could be worse - I could be smoking or playing the lottery! At least with the cards, I'll be able to burn them to keep warm once civilization goes under (that and The Wife can scale a tree like no one you've ever seen - fire from the cards and the high-hanging fruit - we'll be all set!)

Want a Sidney Crosby rookie card?

How about 45 of them?

Here's the auction on ebay.

Not only does this show how insane the card collecting business is these days, it also shows that for the right cards, there can be real money involved.

With 5 days left, this auction is at $6100. That's over $100 per card. It's likely to go much higher before it ends.

Weren't thing much simpler when you had one rookie card to collect, like when Lemieux was a rookie? Okay - I'll grant you that he had two (OPC and Topps), but OPC was sold in Canada. When I was a kid, you bought packs of Topps hockey until you got the Lemieux rookie (or the Roy rookie the next year). How many "rookie" cards can there be for one guy?

Anytime anyone is willing to give me THOUSANDS of dollars for a small pile of cardboard, I have a hard time not taking it. That said, I'd buy this lot if I had the disposable income (The Wife would probably kill me).

It's almost hockey season...

... because the first hockey cards for 2009-10 have been released!

Upper Deck Victory is the first release this season (as it has been for the past few seasons). You can find the cards at most any big box store (Walmart, Target, etc) or your local grocery store. Heck, there may even still be a card shop near you that is still open (I have no idea if there's one near me - I just get sucked in when I go into the nearest Target).


The cards are pretty basic, as you can see by the scan. I liked a few things about them:

1. They are bright and colorful to catch your eye.
2. The back of the card has the pronunciation of the player's name, which is always helpful. It also has the team logo and the vitals for the players (height, weight, shoots and born).
3. The set is small - 200 cards in the "base set" (that is, any card that is not a rookie and not an insert) so it's easy to collect.
4. The photography does a nice job with facial expressions, as you can see by the unfortunate expression on Kopitar's face.

I had a few pretty big problems with these, however:

1. The biggest issue is that the player's position is NOWHERE on the base cards, front or back. If you're aiming this set as an entry level set for kids and adults, and you do manage to pick up a few casual buyers, how can you not put the player's position on the card? It's a pretty glaring oversight that would have been easy to fix.
2. The stats on the back only show the last 5 seasons. I understand sticking to a format, but if you're going to do that, at least give us something other than the big VICTORY logo on the bottom right eating up real estate.
3. If you're going to use a photo on the back, make it a different head shot than the front.
4. I know it's a basic set, but do we really need a "Victory" watermark on every base card? It looks dumb. I'd rather see the entire photo unaltered.
   

One thing I did like (mostly) was the Stars of the Game insert. These were colorful and looked nice - quite different from the plain white borders of the rest of the set. They're also fun, with a different layout and fonts to grab your attention. They might increase your vocabulary too (see "prodigious"). We need more nice inserts like this to grab your attention, instead of the sleepy "Game Breakers".

All told, they'll never be worth anything financially (except maybe the limited parallel cards, and probably not even those), but if you want a simple set to put together with your kid, or you refuse to grow up, this isn't a bad choice. I'd wait until you can get the boxes really cheap on ebay. You can pick up a box of last year's Victory edition for about $20.00, give or take a few bucks.

Box Report - 2007-08 Upper Deck Victory

I bought two boxes of UD Victory at Target. Each box had 11 packs (66 cards) and cost $9.99. See my review of the cards here.

The really interesting thing is that when combining the two boxes, there wasn't a single duplicate, except for the Draper Faceoff advertisement insert.

Here's what was in those boxes:

Box 1
-----------------
53 Base Cards (no duplicates)
6 Rookies (1:2)
3 Game Breakers (1:4) - Bergeron, St. Louis, Hemsky
2 Stars on Ice (1:4) - Jagr, Brodeur
1 Gold Base Parallel (1:36) - Kariya
1 Face Off NHL 08 Ad (?:?) - Draper
1 Jumbo card (1 per box) - Raycroft

Box 2
-----------------
54 Base Cards (2 doubles)
4 Rookies (1:2)
5 Game Breakers (1:4) - Selanne, Lundqvist, Brodeur, Fleury, Elias
2 Stars on Ice (1:2) - Havlat, Sundin
1 Face Off NHL 08 Ad (?:?) - Draper
1 Jumbo card (1 per box) - Saku Koivu

Thoughts:

• The rookies I got weren't very good. The only one I even recognized was Halak, the goalie in the Canadiens system who is now stuck behind Carey Price.
• I did get Crosby, Staal and Malkin between the two boxes. That's a score (this is a Penguins blog, in case you're not aware).
• The jumbo cards are useless if they're just blown-up versions of the smaller ones. Make them special! It didn't help that I only got Raycroft and Koivu... Maybe if it was Crosby and Malkin I'd like them more.

Hockey Cards - 2007-08 Upper Deck Victory Review

2007-08 Upper Deck Victory



200 Base Cards
45 Rookies (inserted 1:2)
50 Stars on Ice (inserted 1:4)
50 Game Breakers (inserted 1:4)

Gold Base Parallel (inserted 1:36)
Gold Rookie (inserted 1:240)
Black Base Parallel (inserted 1:720)
Black Rookie Parallel (inserted 1:2880)

Victory is the cheap, entry level line of Upper Deck hockey cards. They can be had just about anywhere, for a buck per pack. Boxes at Target with 11 packs can be had for $10.

Victory features action shots on the card front, mostly standard poses. The forwards and defense are shown mostly skating without the puck, mostly upright. The goalies are also similar, standing with their pads facing the camera. Occasionally you'll see someone with the puck or after a shot. It is a big step from last year, when they took away the background, so all you saw was the player with a bland background that had the word "Victory".

The card backs are pretty standard. I like that they show power play goals. I also like the player pronunciations. I don't like that they only show the previous 5 seasons.

Dude, where are my seasons?

The inserts are pretty sad. There's nothing really special about the cards, other than the foil lettering that says either "Game Breakers" or "Stars on Ice". I've included an example of the Game Breakers. See the black fading in from the top? That's how Bergeron felt after the hit he took the other night.


I'll leave you with the Crosby base card, both front and back. His pronunciation looks pretty funny.


Ratings (out of 5):
Fronts: 3
Backs: 3
Inserts: 2
Overall: 3