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Today’s prize: 2012-13 O-Pee-Chee Hockey hobby box

ENTER NOW!

Join Beckett Hockey‘s Dave Sliepka, Dan Hitt and Chris Olds as they rip into a box of 2012-13 O-Pee-Chee cards from Upper Deck in this latest edition of Box Busters.

What will they find inside? Watch and find out …

By Susan Lulgjuraj | Beckett Hockey Editor

Upper Deck included a surprise insert in 2012-13 O-Pee-Chee NHL that wasn’t on the checklist.

The insert set is called O-Pee-Chee Black & White. As the name suggests all the picture are black and white, in addition to a deckled edge with a facsimile autograph on the front of the card. There are no real autographs version of these cards, according to Upper Deck.

The cards are tough to grab, and prices on eBay are certainly indicating the scarcity.

In hobby packs, the black and white cards fall at a rate of 1 in 960 packs. On the retail side, they fall at a rate of 1 in 1,920 packs.

The checklist includes 36 popular players (see the below), including Alexander Ovechkin, Bobby Orr, Jordan Eberle and Jonathan Toews.

Just how well are these cards doing right now?

A black and white Ryan Nugent-Hopkins sold for $249.93, Roberto Luongo went for $99.99 and an Ovechkin sold for $91.

However, these cards are only gaining in popularity right now. Two current auctions of Wayne Gretzky on eBay (one has a day left, the other four days) are both more than $150.

1 Alexander Ovechkin
2 Alexandre Burrows
3 Antti Niemi
4 Bobby Orr
5 Brett Hull
6 Carey Price
7 Claude Giroux
8 Curtis Joseph
9 Daniel Alfredsson
10 Drew Doughty
11 Eric Lindros
12 Erik Karlsson
13 Henrik Lundqvist
14 Ilya Kovalchuk
15 Jaromir Jagr
16 Jason Spezza
17 Joe Sakic
18 John Tavares
19 Jonathan Toews
20 Jordan Eberle
21 Mario Lemieux
22 Martin Brodeur
23 MilanLucic
24 Nicklas Lidstrom
25 Ondrej Pavelec
26 P.K. Subban
27 Patrick Roy
28 Patrick Sharp
29 Pavel Datsyuk
30 Pelle Lindbergh
31 Roberto Luongo
32 Ryan Nugent-Hopkins
33 Sidney Crosby
34 Teemu Selanne
35 Wayne Gretzky
36 Wendel Clark

Susan Lulgjuraj is the editor of Beckett Hockey magazine. You can email Susan here with ideas, comments and questions. Follow her on Twitter here.

By Susan Lulgjuraj | Beckett Hockey Editor

Hockey card season is here, and Upper Deck’s first product is 2012-13 O-Pee-Chee, which comes out in just a week.

Canadian collectors get a special surprise for grabbing the newest product, which happens to have a 600-card base set. Upper Deck is having a wrapper redemption program for OPC.

For every 50 wrappers collected and shared with an Upper Deck Certified Diamond Dealer (in Canada only), collectors will get one redemption pack of five red-bordered parallels and one All-Star insert. There are 50 subjects on the insert’s checklist.

“O-Pee-Chee is a brand with strong Canadian heritage that many Canadians think of as “their” set.” said Upper Deck’s Chris Carlin, Sports Marketing and Social Media Manager. “To play up that heritage and encourage our Canadian audience to get behind this program, we felt having it exclusive to Canada would be the right way to start it out.”

Once you collect the wrappers and give them to a CDD, the dealer will ship the wrappers for their customers to Upper Deck’s fulfillment center. Collectors will then pick up the wrapper redemption packs at the dealer’s store when they come in.

Upper Deck says the wrapper redemption packs are completed and will be sent out as soon as wrappers come in.

American collectors who would like to get the cards have a couple of options: picking up at card shows, trading with Canadian collectors or buying them on the secondary market. Carlin said customers could also get in touch with Canadian dealers to have their wrappers shipped up north.

Since this is the first giveaway for OPC, Upper Deck wanted to keep it a little smaller for now.

“Since it is a new program, we want it to be successful so it can potentially grow in the future,” Carlin said. “The best way to have a successful hockey program is to run it through Canada where the collector base is so passionate. We believe it will be successful and as the product and program generate more buzz, potentially we can look to bring it to the US in the future.”

Susan Lulgjuraj is the editor of Beckett Hockey magazine. You can email Susan here with ideas, comments and questions. Follow her on Twitter here.

By Andrew Tolentino | Hockey Editor

Lots of things are heating  up this time of year. The Stanley Cup Playoffs are steaming right along in the semifinals. People are firing up their grills for late-spring burger flipping. And the oppressive summer heat is already starting to spike temperatures in Texas.

But in the spirit of keeping cool, Upper Deck hit the hobby with details about its upcoming summer releases, 2011-12 Ultimate Collection and 2012-13 O-Pee-Chee. Put on those Ray Bans, hockey collectors. It’s bright out there.

2011-12 Ultimate Collection

SCHEDULED RELEASE: Late June

BOX PROMISES

• Four cards per pack/box
• One autograph card
• One Rookie Card
• One memorabilia card

CASE STUDY

• Four or more Patch cards
• One-two 1997 Legends Autographs
• One Ultimate Auto Rookie SP (numbered to 99)
• One autographed Memorabilia card

THE RUNDOWN
Designed for the high-end, high-reward ripper, Ultimate Collection offers a number of desirable legends, veterans and rarer rookie hits. Shorter print runs and quality materials are key components in the otherwise meh-morabilia game. It’s not quite The Cup, but it’s a brand that’s bound to produce some highly sought-after singles when it hits hobby shelves. — AT

OTHER FINDS

• Ultimate Signatures
• New 1997 Legends Signatures
• Ultimate Autographed dual jerseys
• Ultimate Autographed Patches and Duals
• Jumbo Premium Swatches and Patches
• Ultimate Duos, Trios, Rookies, Rookie Duos and Rookie Trios Jerseys
• Jumbo Autographed Ultimate Debuts Threads Jerseys
• Ultimate Debuts Threads Patches

2012-13 O-Pee-Chee

SCHEDULED RELEASE: Mid August

BOX PROMISES

• Eight cards per pack (32 packs per box)
• 32 1950s-era Retro parallels
• Eight Marquee Rookies
• Eight Marquee Legends
• Eight Rainbow Foil parallels
• 10 OPC Stickers (New)
• Two OPC Pop-Ups (New)

CASE STUDY

• Four Team Logo Patches (New)
• Two OPC Signatures
• One Team Canada Signatures card

THE RUNDOWN
How could anyone fault a product like this? Reasonably priced O-Pee-Chee always affords any hockey fan of any age the opportunity to rip with a sense of humor and fondness for the hobby’s gimmicky past. But for cynics who might view kitschy stickers, pop-up cards and the overall retro vibe as unnecessary schtick, the brand does boast a few case-level selling points. On top of team logo patches and other signatures, OPC buyback autographs are bound to win over the most critical of collecting critics.    — AT

OTHER FINDS

• Rare OPC Buyback autographs (new)
• Black Border Rainbow parallels (numbered to 100)