I know I complain about parallels sometimes…

[Cunnuc]

I know when I purchased someone's collection about a year ago it contained let's say 400 MLB, 250 NBA and 200 NFL cards along with the 1,000 NHL cards I wanted. Not knowing too much about sports other than hockey (card-wise I mean) I had to do quite a bit of research to properly identify certain cards so I could list them properly on eBay. Well I was getting increasingly frustrated with the NBA cards using several sites to try and identify the cards. Several times I got so agitated I had to stop what I was doing. I used to like busting basketball cards in my younger years but I'm pretty sure I've vowed to never buy a box of basketball cards as a result of the stupid amount of parallels and the difficulty of identifying the cards.

[Seahawks Fan]

63 parallels is nuts! But would make for a really cool rainbow pic...

Rainbows only look cool if the parallels/Colors are unique. Once you get passed one of each color...it becomes a mess imo.

[mooneyes]

I think some football products might have some crazy high amount of parallels also. I recall I guy on Facebook was going for a complete rainbow of his teams players and it covered an entire wall.
I could see some fans with OCD getting carried away with this.

[RGM81]

Rainbows only look cool if the parallels/Colors are unique. Once you get passed one of each color...it becomes a mess imo.

I agree. The first year Shea Weber was in a Habs uniform (16-17) I got almost the whole OPC Platinum rainbow complete. Never could find an Emerald Surge or the Golden Treasures 1/1, but I have the other 8 variants plus one of the printing plates. There's just enough variety there (and print run variation) that it was a fun time.

[moose7766]

yep.

leaf is bad that way. if you have that many variations of short prints, are they REALLY short prints? I usually avoid their stuff like the plague, but there are WAY too many parallels anyways. The basketball example is crazy. Remember back in the day, when the RC regular was an OPC card, and the parallel was the Topps version? LOL

Leaf has overdone parallels too. At which point do we need versions /20 /9 /5 /3 /2 /1 of the same card with only the color of the foil changing? I preferred the way ITG was doing things, with maybe a regular /40 and a gold /10.

[stoopid]

I know when I purchased someone's collection about a year ago it contained let's say 400 MLB, 250 NBA and 200 NFL cards along with the 1,000 NHL cards I wanted. Not knowing too much about sports other than hockey (card-wise I mean) I had to do quite a bit of research to properly identify certain cards so I could list them properly on eBay. Well I was getting increasingly frustrated with the NBA cards using several sites to try and identify the cards. Several times I got so agitated I had to stop what I was doing. I used to like busting basketball cards in my younger years but I'm pretty sure I've vowed to never buy a box of basketball cards as a result of the stupid amount of parallels and the difficulty of identifying the cards.

I know that I'd consider some baseball or football, but even those are overprinted and bogged down enough with parallels it's akin to a barrier to entry. As others have said, hockey is heading in this direction but much more slowly and never likely to the same degree. Until it gets there, I'm content with the current level of 'things to know;.

[discomike]

At least, UD did put more efforts in the inserts of flagship in the past couple of years. Centers of Attraction, Defense Mecanisms, Freestyle, Star zone and 200x85 are all decent designs in my opinion.

I opened quite a bit of UD1 21-22, and outside of YGs, canvas and dazzlers, most of the inserts were boring.

I know this will be probably an unpopular opinion, but that one year (15-16) that they did Full Force, I thought the inserts they did in that set were pretty cool. They had a Tim Horton's-esque feel to them. I wish they would bring that set back

[odjickfan]

I know this will be probably an unpopular opinion, but that one year (15-16) that they did Full Force, I thought the inserts they did in that set were pretty cool. They had a Tim Horton's-esque feel to them. I wish they would bring that set back

I participated in several Full Force group breaks back in the days. The Thermal Threats inserts were very strange, but most of the other stuff was nice!

[doniceage]

63 parallels is nuts! But would make for a really cool rainbow pic...

that would have to be one wide angle lens to capture that huge rainbow.

DON

[30ranfordfan]

I agree with the sentiments here. It's too much. What UD has done with the flagship set even, it's too much IMO. YGs used to have Exclusives, and High Gloss for parallels (plus the plates). Canvas has always been a weird one, and while I would consider it part of a YG "rainbow" - it's not a true parallel, as the set doesn't mirror the base set.

ePack got us two more foil variants (started out with just 1), but that's the kind of thing that ePack was meant for. Clear Cuts got added along the way too, don't recall exactly when.

Now they've added Deluxe /250, Outburst Silver, Red /25, and Gold 1/1.

Very quickly - we've gone from three versions of a card (plus plates) to 10.

I'll admit the Gold 1/1 is kind of cool - but were the other three new versions this year really needed? Was there a whole bunch of of people telling UD "You know, the four hobby versions + two ePack exclusives really isn't enough, we need more YG variants". I doubt it very much. They added more versions, because they need more "hits" to distribute across a product that they're producing WAY more of than they have in years.