2019-20 O-Pee-Chee: 18-Pack Break

I had a second chance of diving into some of Upper Deck's 2019-20 O-Pee-Chee cards via a silent auction benefiting youth hockey, so I took another stab at adding another 144 cards to my collection, in addition to the 10 packs from last month.

My initial reaction was that these were nice cards to get signed, but this time around I realized the collation out of the 600-plus-card set is terrible: I already have four sets of triples - Neal Pionk, Deryk Engelland, Seth Jones and Andy Greene - and a bunch of doubles.

At least the inserts were all new, starting with the Blue Border Parallels of Gabriel Landeskog, Nikolaj Ehlers, and Joe Thornton:

As always, I could do without Season Highlights cards, even these of Carey Price and John Tavares:

The five "regular-issue" Marquee Rookies (Blake Lizotte, Taro Hirose, Kevin Stenlund, Victor Olofsson and Ryan Poehling) were nice pulls:

The five Caramel Minis, however, had the most and best name recognition, with Jonathan Toews, Leon Draisaitl, Blake Wheeler, Claude Giroux and Evgeni Malkin:

I also landed eight "regular" Retro cards, of Andreas Athanasiou, Alex Goligoski, Brayden Coburn, Drake Batherson, Cal Clutterbuck, Jonathan Drouin, Matt Niskanen and John Carlson:

As you can see, the background colours don't really follow any pattern: players from the same team can have different ones, and the same can be said for the positions they play.

There were two more Retro cards, however, from other sub-sets, namely Marquee Rookies (Nathan Bastian) and Season Highlights (Jesperi Kotkaniemi):

When I was a kid, the inserts really took away from the main sets, but for OPC, they dive into it so deeply all-in that it becomes the highlight of the set; their 1950s, 1960s and 1970s-inspired designs also have their charm.

The collation tempts me into lowering my initial grade for the set, but I won't go that far as of yet, and the inserts give me so many more autograph options that I'm willing to forget about it. I'm happy with this purchase.

10-Pack Break: 2019-20 O-Pee-Chee

I wasn't really in the mood to buy another small box of cards but still wanted to test Upper Deck's 2019-20 O-Pee-Chee product early enough in the season that I could use them for some mailings, and I was not disappointed.

As usual, these are made from regular cardboard stock that will not require much erasing for the player's autograph to stick; furthermore, this year's design is clean and light, which will make signatures pop off of them, as can beattested from the base cards (virtually no money was spent on the backside):

Of course, this is an OPC product, so there are a fair bit of the single-colour background "Retro" cards, but even their design stays relatively simple with just a pair of flashy colours for the background and lettering; I landed four of them:

There are also the "Blue Border Parallels", and I'm hoping to get both of these signed this year:

Of course, a 600-card set will usually have a very good player selection, and this one is no exception; it also has a fair share of rookies, since I landed four:

And this time around, the French translation for Marquee Rookies is good.

I also got a "Caramel Mini" variant of one of the most polarizing players in the league:

And, as usual and as was the case with the other best "bang-for-your-buck" set of my return to card collecting (Panini's Score sets), I had to receive a Season Highlights card of a San Jose Sharks player:

All told, this is one that aims to please low-income collectors, kids and people who like getting their cards signed, and the French translations have improved 300% from previous years' sets. I also do not regret buying these packs individually instead of in a box, which means they're not too overpriced, even if these aren't the 30-cent packs from my youth.

This rates a solid 8/10 for me.