Checklists are NOT Dead!

A few weeks back, I opined that checklist cards in this day and age are pretty much useless and should be discontinued. I put a poll out on X/Twitter asking collectors if they like checklist cards.

As you can see from the poll results above, 50.7% of respondents still like checklists, while 49.3% do not like checklists.

There are two takeaways here:

1. 1. 1. This poll was a lot closer than I thought. I really believed that most people would vote against checklists still being a thing.
          
      2. Only 148 people voted. I also really believed that I would get at least 200 votes. LOL! 

Some people on X/Twitter did leave some interesting comments:

I miss the team checklist cards with the art on it like early Upper Deck. Other than those, they can be left to being inserted on a sheet of paper in boxes.

Checklists are fine – parallels of checklists should be punishable by death.

I like checklist cards like the Young Guns checklists. The O-Pee-Chee checklists are kind of lame.

Yes if they have a picture on the other side. No if it’s just a two sided-checklist.

No, but my favorite is the Phil Kessel Young Guns checklist.

I miss the old school checklist cards, that had the checkoff boxes. Both sides with checklist, not some front image and only 25-30 cards listed, but a full card of 100-some cards with the boxes next to the card number. I also miss the real team cards that have a full team photo.

Yes, with an asterisk of wanting them to be a little special and not what they’ve been the past bit (i.e. two players on a card).

As we can see, some collectors still really like checklists being a part of their sports trading card sets. They also seem to be split between liking checklists that have a photo on the front and checklists that just have the actual list of cards and nothing else.

I also posted this question to the forums on Trading Card Database and got over 20 replies, which you can read here. 

Note: This article is an updated version of an editorial that originally appeared in Volume 2 – Issue 10 of the Puck Junk Newsletter. For stories like these, plus news and updates about hockey cards and collectibles, subscribe to the newsletter here.

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Follow Sal Barry on X/Twitter @PuckJunk. ■