General Forum

Going thru my collection to catalogue everything to TCDB and I had a thought as I was looking at some OPC marquee rookie cards. While I get the Young Guns cards being sought after, why aren't the same rookie's cards from other sets not as desirable?

haha, well, my neighbor retired & gave me & my sister his collection,

my sister wants to collect & save everything,

& just yesterday I decided to only collect UD hockey Young Guns for my Sports Collection, 

my sister said they are popular because it is easier to get a whole set,

& the others are much harder, so you just have a bunch of singles;

& they have been popular since they started coming out.

It might have something to do with release dates of the sets, and that Upper Deck usually prints in low numbers (series 1) & high numbered cards (series 2).  O-Pee-Chee releases its set first most of the time before the hockey season starts, or very early into the new season. Under the new agreement (nhlpa) card companies can only print cards of players that have actually played at least 1 game. So OPC gets stuck with a lot of late season call ups from the previous year. With the odd exception (Johnny Hockey for example) most of their 'Marquee Rookies" play for bad teams that didn't make the playoffs, and their teams can afford to call up guys from the minors or sign US college players once their seasons are over. 

Upper Deck on the other hand actually hold a post draft skate/photo shoot each summer for the draftee's, and with their later release date some of those guys may be playing in the NHL so they can be included. They also release a second series of cards and can then print any "Young Guns" that they may have overlooked the first run, or include any sleeper rookies that no one saw coming earlier. 

There are more reasons, but this is why I believe the OPC MR cards are valued or wanted less than the UD YG's.

There's history behind it too. UD has been releasing the YG as a short-printed subset for over 20 years now. It has become a staple in the Hobby. To add onto that they tend to always provide the top-tier rookies to boot. The YG's are more short-printed than the Marquee Rookies. And finally, UD owns the OPC brand as well so they can focus and ensure that the YG are always given a apriority. I'll add this, hockey is my 3rd sport so I'm sure someone who has it as their primary/only can provide even better rationale.

For the same reason Topps flagship baseball rookies are more desirable than say Donruss (before the license change). 

It is the established benchmark brand.

Young Guns have been the iconic rookie subset of the flagship Upper Deck sets stretching back (with some gaps) to the initial 1990-91 set featuring Fedorov and Bure, so there's a nostalgia element to their appeal.  As they're short-printed in modern sets, but are still relatively affordable, if folks are going to get only one RC of a player, they usually go for the YG.

OPC, Parkhurst, and MVP are seen as lower end sets.  OPC Platinum Marquee Rookie parallels are pretty popular for people that want to get a rainbow of a particular player, while SP Authentic Future Watch Autos are probably second most popular after YG for people willing to hit a higher price level without emptying their wallets for The Cup rookie patch autos or whatever.

jimetal 7212 and BuccaneersDen mentioned that YG have the full array of rookies spread amongst Series 1, 2, and extended, while OPC ends up excluding some players because of timing of the player's first game.  In recent years, Upper Deck has done an OPC Update insert subset in flagship series 2 packs to hit Marquee Rookies for guys like Adam Fox and Jake Oettinger that weren't able to be included in OPC.