It's been a while

Yes, it's been a while since I've posted (8 days), but that's not the reason for the title.  I was in Target last week picking up some stuff for the house and I decided to make what I thought would be a futile attempt at hitting the card aisle.

Shockingly, there were a few fat packs of 2020-21 O-Pee-Chee hockey hanging there.  The first time since before March that I'd seen anything on my local big box store card shelves.

There were 5 packs there, but for some reason I only bought 4.  All I really was happy about was getting started on the set build for the latest OPC release.  

I'm very happy with how the set looks...

I decided to scan a couple of Sabres as they were part of one of the 2 big off season free agent signings, as the Sabres nabbed Taylor Hall to a contract, even if only for 1 year.  Hall and Eichel on the PP together should be fun to watch.  

I like the design of the set, it's simple and clean, and there's something a little new this year!

The backs are a nice bright white this year, not the normal card stock based back which had been a staple for the past decade and a half.  For this guy whos sight wasn't what it once was, being able to see the card #'s nice and easy was a very good thing.

The SPs are the same, rookies, team checklists, season highlights, marquee legends and league leaders.  The Jagr card threw me off for a bit, thinking I may have pulled a gold parallel, but there are no gold parallels, just the borders of the Legends cards all feature the gold. 

Similar looking in size and shape to the previous year's caramel inserts, this year I pulled one of what OPC is calling the "Premier Tall Boys" insert.  Not sure why UD felt they had to get their Premier name on their base OPC set, but that's not my call.

Each year OPC features their "retro" parallel, one per pack, or two per fat pack.  I can honestly say that there has been no middle ground with these each year for me.  I either love them, or I can't wait to get them out of my hands.

This year, it's the latter.  The only redeeming quality is the players name is in a stripe that features a team color.  To me, there was no imagination used this year in the design.  Even the color on the back, a purplish pink, isn't very inspiring.  

I managed to pull one of the red bordered parallels, nicely done featuring a team who's predominant color is red.  These are seeded 1:18 packs (not sure what the fat pack ratio is), and there's a blue parallel that's 1:3, but I didn't snag one of those.

I really do want to rip a box or two of this set, as I haven't ripped much in the last few years except a handful of fat packs from the big box store in order to get sets started.  

It has been a while...

Enjoy the hobby!

Robert