2023-24 Upper Deck Hockey Forum

At a major show today in the Toronto area. Needless to say since it's Canada, Series 2 and Bedard was everywhere.

Some folks there livestreaming opening cases of the stuff. As they opened, base cards went straight into the garbage, not even bothering to try and create bulk lots or anything, just straight to the garbage.

90% of the contents of a $400+ dollar box, just thrown out...

Just sad to see.

So, was already going to be difficult putting that set together as is with the changes UD made this year...and the damaged YGs to boot. So now don't even bother I guess?

Pathetic. Least one could do is give them to some young hockey fans in the area.

Once had a guy at a card show doing the same thing...he was chasing hit cards and was tossing all the other cards in an open trash can.  I politely asked him to save the cards and I in turn I would distribute them to kids that stop by my table.  He did so and we had a lot of smiles from both kids and parents who were the recipient of the cards. 

I don’t collect hockey but that’s an absolute disgrace. I would have gone and fished them out of the trash and given it to the kids or done something with them, not throw them away.

Thank you for sharing.  I hate reading stories like these.  Other will value the thrown away cards.

I’m not totally up on the “changes to UD hockey and damaged YG”?   Can you expand on that?  I saw something similar at a card shop where a guy got the new A&G hobby box and just went thru looking for the guaranteed auto patch or whateve, seemed less than enthused and jaded a couple inches of cards to toss. The owner said he’d save them “in his locker for10 years” until they turned into something. Must be nice to have $100 to drop and just rip n toss. That’s not collecting, to my mind, it’s a scratch off ticket.
 

of course if you decided to it with Topps you could have foil rainbow, royal blue, purple, yellow and then go into the purple and blue SN sparkle and so forth. I wonder how long, how much it’d cost to do even one complete sparkle parallel on the whole 350 series 1 set, nevermind the whole thing. Has anyone seen that sort of thing or even done it? 

“changes to UD hockey and damaged YG”?

There has been a consistent pattern of the Young Guns (which are the chase rookies in Upper Deck hockey) being damaged, mainly peeling at the top right of the card.

The changes cover both the reduction in the number of cards in boxes (which was reduced by 25% in 2023) and especially pricing. For context, a hobby box in Canada was in the 125 to 150 CAD range as recently as last year.

Series 1 this year went to abour 180, Series 2 boxes are currently in excess of 400 in Canada.

I read an article where Upper Deck claimed they only increased the wholesale price by 5%. I'm not sure how we can validate that, but if not true, I suspect they'd get called on it pretty quickly. The remainder of the price increases are coming from places further down the distribution channel smelling blood in the water and trying to get their share.

I was watching a card show vid, where the dealer asked a young kid (prolly 8 or 9) who he pc'd with the intent of giving him cards. The kid replied he didn't pc anything as he is in it for the $$ only. "Influencers" repeatedly say the same thing....".that its all about content", would seem ok if the content was hobby related, but its increasingly not.

I haven't been to show in years.  Looks like if I go again, I'll be hanging out by the trash cans.  Getting a free partial flagship set would make my day.  

I love hockey and hockey cards. This really makes me upset because throwing away cards that you don't like or need is dumb. Someone else could of used those cards.