UPPER DECK FACES PREMIER, PARKHURST CHALLENGES

What’s hot? Pick a company, not a player card. With the exception of 10 to 15 players, not much is hot in cards lately. In each sport other than hockey there’s one hot company. In baseball there’s Topps Archives, in football there’s Wildcard and in basketball there’s Upper Deck. In hockey there are three hot companies. Upper Deck is still number one but two others are gaining ground. A mainstay of Canada’s hockey card history, Parkhurst is now a card line produced by Pro Set. Although Parkhurst missed a couple of players in its Series 1 (namely Pavel Bure and Sergei Nemchinov) their UV coated cards are attractive. The secret to Parkhurst’ success is a ridiculously small print run. The company says it made 12,500 cases of English and 2,500 cases of French product. Premier…

UPPER DECK KNOWS A GOOD THING WHEN IT SEES IT

No matter what you think about the 1991-92 Upper Deck Low Number Series, you’ll have to agree it’s one Hull-uva set. There’s Brett Hull in a St. Louis Blues’ uniform, Brett Hull in a Team USA uniform, Brett Hull shaking hands with Eric Lindros, a Brett Hull portrait with the other members of the 50-goals-in-50-games club and Brett Hull on a nine-card subset chronicling his achievements from his days with Penticton of the British Columbia Junior League to his days of superstardom with the Blues. And, as if that wasn’t enough, you’ll also find the Golden Brett pictured on cards of teammates Scott Stevens, Gino Cavallini, Adam Oates and opponents Brent Sutter, Steve Thomas and Frantisek Kucera. Obviously Upper Deck knows a good thing when it sees one. That is also evident in the…

READER QUESTIONS DEALERS’ HONESTY REGARDING WAX PACKS

I recently purchased a box of 199192 Score bilingual cards from a card store in the hopes I’d be able to complete a set. 1 was extremely disappointed that I didn’t get either of the two Eric Lindros cards and that I only had six cards total in the 300-330 range-which include all the trophy winners and other good subsets. I was surprised the boxes aren’t sealed and that the transparent packaging allows for card inspection. I mentioned this to a co-worker who is a collector and he said he got three Lindros cards in his box, which he purchased at a grocery chain store. He also said the Lindros card was the first card in each package. At a card show, some dealers told me the same thing-that Lindros is…

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