Try a Pack #16: 2018-19 O-Pee-Chee

I mentioned on Saturday's post that I got my first look at 18-19 OPC in the lot of cards that Doug had sent me.  Well, I was impressed enough that I had to make a run to Target on Saturday and bought myself a jumbo pack (32 cards) and a blaster (11 X 8 cards). 

I really like what I've seen so far.  I'd only opened the jumbo pack as of writing this post, so I haven't hit all that there is to offer in the set, but I did get a good start on hitting cards to show off.

It is the standard 600 card set, base cards #'d 1-500, cards 501-550 are rookies which are short printed, 551-560 are SP season highlight cards, 561-591 are team checklists, which are numbered in order by division standings.  For example, the first 8 cards are the Atlantic Division, with the order being Tampa Bay, Boston, Toronto, Detroit, Montreal, Ottawa and Buffalo. 

Finally, cards 592-600 are league leader cards, also short printed.

Here's a few for your viewing pleasure.

As I also mentioned on Saturday, I like that they added the All Star bar on the left hand side of the card.  I now have 4 of these, including the Auston Matthews card from the other day.

The base cards are really nice, I like the silver border and the design.  With 500 cards in the set, there's no shortage of cards for team collectors no matter what team you cheer for.

The only detriment for me is that the minis are back.   There's nothing wrong with the card per se, it's just that I don't care for the smaller cards and will probably move them on to someone who will enjoy them more.  As you can see with the Alex DeBrincat cards here, the mini uses the same picture as the base card.

I will always love the team checklist/logo cards.  This goes back to my childhood and the team logo cards that were found in sets back in the 70's.  As you can also see, the cards are printed in both English and French text.  Would be interesting down here in S. Florida if OPC created a Spanish parallel....

Finally, my parallel weakness is exploited with these two retro cards...

Now, these might look plain to the average collector, but I love the magenta background.  Did a little digging and there are other cards that have different color backgrounds (McDavid is dark blue, Kuznetsov is a light blue), but they also all seem to be horizontally oriented.  I believe that I'll be chasing this parallel over time.   I really like the design, and a good chase is always fun. 

There's other cards that are in the packs but not shown here.   Playing cards are back, 52 in total (of course).  Parallels of the minis and retro cards (including a no-name scratch off parallel) and several other inserts which should be interesting pulls/photos.

I'll keep you apprised of my progress on these set builds.

Thanks for reading, Robert