Hockey fans who have been patiently waiting for the flagship Upper Deck product to be released for 2021-22 will have to wait just a little bit longer by the looks of things. Upper Deck Series 1, which is normally released in November ahead of most of the major national card shows, was originally pushed back to December following supply chain issues caused by the pandemic.
This fall, Upper Deck released the following statement regarding many of its popular hockey brands:
While many held out hope that they’d be able to get their hands on a few boxes of UDS1 before the holidays, keen eyed hobbyists noticed that many sites had begun listing January 19th 2022 as a new ship date for pre-sales. While Upper Deck has yet to provide a definitive timeline for it’s release, hopes of seeing the latest crop of young guns before the 25th of December seem highly unlikely at this point.
There’s some additional intrigue surrounding the 2021-22 set given the fact that collectors have yet to see a confirmed checklist for series 1. Cole Caufield has been confirmed as one of the big names that will be available in the initial hobby box release, but outside of that it’s anyone’s guess.
In years past UD has done a fairly good job of splitting the “big name” rookies evenly amongst series 1 & 2. If that pattern holds, you can likely count on seeing 1 or more of Zegras, Raymond, Seider, and Byfield being moved over to Series 2. Pre-sales of Cole Caufield’s YG card have settled in the $230-250 range on Ebay in recent weeks.
As far as investments go, there’s none safer than collecting young guns cards, as they’ve become THE rookie cards to own over the years. For those who don’t want to shell out thousands of dollars chasing rookie/patch/autos in some of the higher end sets, UD Series 1 & 2 provide tremendous bang for your buck and generally see their values rise year over year.
For now however, it seems as though hockey fans will have to wait just a little bit longer to get their hands on the latest crop of cards.
-Kyle Skinner
Twitter: @JKyleSkinner