The NHL season will be in its second half when Upper Deck releases the second half of its flagship brand of hockey cards.
2018-19 Upper Deck Series 2 will feature a 200-card base set, along with 50 Young Guns rookie cards. As usual, expect those land once in every four packs. Parallels for the base set will be numbered to 100, with scarcer High Gloss parallels numbered to 10. Hobby-exclusive Clear Cut parallels will fall once in every 90 packs for the 200-card base set.
Just as in Series 1, a hobby box will contain 24 packs, with eight cards per pack. On average, collectors opening a hobby box can expect to find six Young Guns rookies, four UD Canvas cards, four O-Pee-Chee Update rookies and four UD Portraits rookies.
The O-Pee-Chee Update cards will include Retro Black Border parallels numbered to 100. Other parallels include Silver Border, Gold Border, Red Border (a hobby exclusive) and Retro.
UD Canvas will be found in various degrees of difficulty. In addition to the four base Canvas cards (on average) in a hobby box, a Canvas Young Guns card can be found in every other box. Team Canada Program of Excellence and Retired Stars can be found once in every eight boxes.
UD Portraits will be a 50-card subset and is entirely made up of rookies. There will be Gold parallels numbered to 99 and Platinum Blue numbered to 25.
Rookie Breakout inserts are hobby exclusive cards that are numbered to 100. The cards are die-cut and are printed on acetate stock. UD Fluorescence returns with a new rookie class and an updated design. These brightly colored cards also have parallels in Gold (numbered to 150), Blue (50), Green (15) and Magenta (5).
While autograph and relics are not main staples in Upper Deck Series 2, there still are some hot cards to find. Making their debut are Rookie Photoshoot Flashback Materials, a case hit that shows images from a player’s rookie season. Rookie Materials cards fall once in every 58 packs, while Rookie Material Patch parallels are numbered to 25.
The 1,000 Point Club Jersey cards are even scarcer, falling once every three cases. These cards also feature autographs numbered to 10.
2018-19 Upper Deck Series 2 is set for release on February 13.
SportsMemorabilia.com has boxes and tins of Series 2 with up to 20% off.
You can also find 2018-19 Upper Deck Series 2 hockey on eBay here.