Released at the end of the season, the 2024-25 Parkhurst Champions set gives retro flair to modern players. The cards are designed to look like they could be from the 1950s, with cut-out players superimposed over a bright, solid-colored background.
A box of 2024-25 Parkhurst Champions is currently selling for around $130 for a 20-pack box, plus one bonus “Retro” pack.
Each of the 20 packs have eight cards. Packs have six base cards plus two other cards which are either a short print, a parallel, or an insert. A box contains one autograph, memorabilia, or lenticular (“magic motion”) card.
The “Bonus Pack” has five “1953-54 Retro Cards,” which use the 1953-54 Parkhurst design. It is possible to get an autograph or parallel “Retro” card in this pack.
I recently opened a box of 2024-25 Parkhurst Champions Hockey. Let’s take a closer look at what you get in a typical box.
119 Base Cards
Just as we have come to expect, the design of this year’s Parkhurst Champions set looks very retro, evoking designs of 1950s and 1960s sets like Topps and Parkhurst, as well as some of the O-Pee-Chee Retro sets from the 2010s. A player is cut out and placed against a solid-colored background.
Sometimes, this works well, but sometimes, the player blends in too much with the background.
Card backs have vitals such as height and weight, one year of stats, career totals, and a short biographical blurb – a.k.a., the “BS Blurb,” as it really doesn’t say anything particularly interesting. The card backs reprise the same photo as the front, but with the background in black and white instead of being removed completely.
The 2024-25 Parkhurst Champions set has 200 base cards. My box had 119 cards – or about an average of six per pack. Base cards have no gloss on them and have a very nice matte feel to them. I bet these cards would look great autographed.
6 Short Prints
Short-printed cards are numbered 201-300 and feature Stars (201-240), Rookies (241-280), and Greats (281-300). My box had six short prints – and I have issues with this.
First, getting one short print every four packs is rough. It will take a lot of money and effort to complete this set.
Second, taking the top 40 NHL players and making them short-printed “Star” cards is cruel. I understand that short printing rookie cards has been the standard for a long time. But what fun is a set if Connor McDavid, Alex Ovechkin, Sidney Crosby, Leon Draisaitl, and David Pastrnak are all tough to get?
Finally, while I enjoy getting cards of all-time greats like Wayne Gretzky and Gordie Howe, these seem more like filler to get the short-printed portion of the set up to an even 100 cards.
If Upper Deck is serious about collectors trying to finish this set, don’t make it such an uphill battle. Give us one short-printed card in every two packs and make the best players part of the base set. If a set is too hard to complete, most won’t even try.
Parallels
Deck gonna deck, so of course there are more parallels than colors of marshmallows in Lucky Charms cereal.
20 Silver Parallels
You get one Silver Parallel per pack.
You may notice that the word “Silver” appears next to the card number on the back. In fact, all the beige-bordered base and short-printed cards have the word “Beige” next to the card number. I think this was a fantastic design choice by Upper Deck! Putting the parallel name next to the card number makes it easier when sorting these cards, as many times the card backs of standard cards and parallels look nearly identical. It’s a small detail, but one that I hope will be appreciated by collectors – and continued by Upper Deck.
6 Rainbow Foilboard Parallels
Shiny cards! I got six of ’em. Of course, they scan all goofy, but you get the idea. These are more or less the same as past “Rainbow Foilboard” parallels found in countless other sets over the past 20-ish years.
2 Shell Pink Parallels
Shell Pink Parallels are serial-numbered out of 99.
Inserts
My box had six insert cards.
2 Crease Lightning
“Crease Lightning” is a goalie-themed insert set.
1 Shake, Rattle and Roll
I am not sure what is the purpose of these “Shake, Rattle, and Roll” inserts. The design is based on old Parkhurst hockey card wrappers and looks cool.
1 Atom Squad
“Atom Squad” – because these players are THE BOMB!
1 Saturday Night Standouts
I love the look of these “Saturday Night Standouts” cards. These have a late 1980s/early 1990s look to them.
1 You Wouldn’t Believe
“You Wouldn’t Believe” cards focus on an interesting fact about a player or a game – sort of like those old “Ripley’s Believe It Or Not!” comics from yesteryear.
The Hit
The “Hit” in a box is either an autographed card, a memorabilia card, or a lenticular (“magic motion”) card.
1 Blue Auto
I got an autographed card of Ryan Strome. It is signed on-card in blue Sharpie marker and is serial-numbered 29/49.
Bonus Pack
I saved the most-interesting pack for last. These cards use the same design as the 1953-54 Parkhurst Hockey set. These “Retro” cards even are a bit taller than standard cards, again like the ’53-54 Parkies cards. That’s probably why these were put in a separate pack.
4 1953-54 Retros
As someone who is currently building the 1953-54 Parkhurst set, I absolutely love these Retro cards. They have that sort of painterly or lithographic look to them and even have a facsimile autograph at the bottom.
Even the card backs of these “Retros” look like the 1953-54 Parkhurst cards, but without French text (hence the empty space on the lower half of the card). Of course, I hope to collect the entire 90-card Retro set. I’ll buy these like crazy once the set hits ePack and the inserts find their way to CoMC.
1 1953-54 Retros Jumbo Gum Back
The “Jumbo Gum Back” parallels have an ad – or is it a wrapper design? – on the card back instead of player stats.
While I like this design, I’m not necessarily enamored with it. I’d rather have another card towards building the “Retro” set instead of a parallel.
The 2024-25 Parkhurst Champions Hockey card set does a lot right, such as the design of the cards, the Retro set, and some of the inserts. But what keeps it from a higher score is that it will be difficult to truly complete the set with all of the short prints. If the “Star” players were part of the base set itself, and short-printed cards were found one in every two packs instead of one in about every four, my score for this set would be higher. However, once this set hits ePack (and then subsequently CoMC), getting the 100 short prints won’t be too hard.
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