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2017-18 Upper Deck O-Pee-Chee hockey is a unique set in a world full of clones

By Derek Helling

A Wayne Gretzky 100-Year Anniversary Patches card from the newly-released 2017-18 Upper Deck hockey set. Photo courtesy of Upper Deck.
A Wayne Gretzky 100-Year Anniversary Patches card from the newly-released 2017-18 Upper Deck hockey set. Photo courtesy of Upper Deck. /
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One of the oldest and most comprehensive sports card sets still in production thanks to Upper Deck delivers a break from the norm in modern collecting.

Sports card collecting in the modern era (1980s on) has become all about the chase. From short-printed parallels of hot rookie cards to ripping packs likely full of relatively worthless base cards to finding elusive autograph or memorabilia inserts, consumers who approach buying product with a return on investment motivation are more like gamblers than collectors. 2017-18 Upper Deck O-Pee-Chee offers consumers a diversion from the frustration of unrealized pack ripping dreams.

O-Pee-Chee hockey has been in production since the 1930s, and Upper Deck has been producing it since the 2006-07 NHL season. In the set, Upper Deck has done a great job of maintaining the feel of the days when sticks of bubble gum that somehow tasted more like cardboard than the cards themselves.

Along with a 500-card regular base set, O-Pee-Chee offers four short-printed high number base subsets (League Leaders, Marquee Rookies, Season Highlights and Team Checklists) which each have 25 cards in them according to the checklist.

O-Pee-Chee also delivers three base set parallels, in black rainbow foil, rainbow foil and a collector favorite, retro. As far as inserts go, that’s where O-Pee-Chee starts to deliver the goods that collectors who have an investment interest in the hobby are concerned.

Playing Cards are back for the new season after making their debut in 2016-17 O-Pee-Chee, with a foil parallel included. Minis come at collectors as well, bringing their parallel versions black and black foil with them. Patches should be the biggest chase of them all, however.

These memorabilia cards come in seven varieties this season. 100-Year Anniversary Legends, 100-Year Anniversary Logos, Base, Base Rookies/Legends, Logo Patch Update, Mascots and Mascots Rare. In another twist for collectors, the bottoms of blaster and hobby boxes are cards themselves. The blaster box bottom set has six cards in it, while the hobby box bottom set includes 16.

There are no autograph cards in the product, but that doesn’t mean that the set is without chase-worthy features. Black Rainbow foil base parallels are numbered to 100, and foil parallels of the Aces in the Playing Cards set come one in every 1,568 packs. Black parallels of the Mini cards are numbered to 27. For the patches, they range in frequency from one in 190 packs to one in 25,000 packs.

Upper Deck impressed collectors in the first product release of the new hockey card season, 2017-18 Upper Deck MVP, with an unannounced insert. It shouldn’t surprise anyone to find the same in O-Pee-Chee when it releases on Wednesday, Sept. 6.

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Collectors who are buying boxes in pursuit of the Mascots Rare patches may be missing the point of O-Pee-Chee, however. The set is a throwback to days when a pack of hockey cards complete with the horrible gum would set a child back a quarter. It’s about finding as many of the players on a fan’s favorite team as possible. That massive base set makes O-Pee-Chee unique, and that alone makes it worth collecting.