Clemente’s Corner: PWHL Cards all the Rage this Winter – and it’s About Time

It’s not often that a card set causes as much of a stir as the 2024 Professional Women’s Hockey League First Edition set, released last month by Upper Deck. Collectors were ready, eager and determined to get their hands on these cards – and the demand was evident from the moment the set dropped.

Within a week of the January 22 release, hobby boxes — originally priced between $75 to $100 — were flying off the shelves. Many big online retailers sold out, and local card shops in New York City, and elsewhere, were left scrambling to keep up with the surge in interest.

By that point, boxes were already reselling for over $200 on the secondary market. If you were around for the craziness of 2020 — when cards exploded in value due to the pandemic — it was a familiar feeling. Only this time, the excitement wasn’t for a male star like Connor Bedard. This time, it was for women’s hockey, and that’s a game changer for the sport and the hobby.

Continue reading “Clemente’s Corner: PWHL Cards all the Rage this Winter – and it’s About Time”

Topps Gives Stickers the “Fanatics” Treatment with Serial-Numbered Parallels

The 2024-25 Topps NHL Sticker Collection was released last week. Full 50-pack boxes are available on eBay and Amazon. Unlike the print-on-demand Topps Now NHL stickers, the Topps NHL Sticker Collection stickers are available in stores and are made to be put into an album. 

What is really interesting this year is that Topps is giving its NHL album sticker set the full “Fanatics” treatment by including serial-numbered parallel stickers. 

Continue reading “Topps Gives Stickers the “Fanatics” Treatment with Serial-Numbered Parallels”

Calling Out DA Card World on its Bogus Bedard Bounty

It’s easy to talk the talk but not walk the walk.

Last month, DA Card World surreptitiously posted on its blog that the $1 million dollar bounty for finding the 2023-24 Upper Deck Connor Bedard Gold Outburst 1/1 Young Guns card was “no longer an active bounty, it has expired.”

Now, I realize that DA Card World made this sneaky “announcement” on December 9 – over one month ago – and that this is old news.

However, like a lot of things that happen in December, this got lost in the shuffle, flew under the radar – whatever metaphor you want to use – because of its timing around the holidays. Heck, I didn’t even hear about this until December 20. 

I also needed some time to stew on this a bit and mull things over before I chimed in my two cents. Continue reading “Calling Out DA Card World on its Bogus Bedard Bounty”

My Collecting Resolution for 2025

Happy New Year Puck Junk readers! I hope the holidays have been great for you, that you got a cool present, and had some time to relax and watch some hockey.  

About two weeks ago, I started thinking about what my Collecting Resolution for 2025 should be while I was trying to find room to put some cards away in my “card closet.” Continue reading “My Collecting Resolution for 2025”

Puck Junk’s Top Articles of 2024

Happy New Year, Puck Junk readers! The holidays were great for me – but they also kept me away from this blog quite a bit during the month of December. Hopefully, I will have more time in 2025 to write about hockey and hockey collecting. 

Looking back at the past year, we published 40 articles on Puck Junk – in addition to releasing 34 episodes of the Puck Junk Podcast (more about that here) and sending out 52 issues of the Puck Junk Newsletter

Not surprisingly, the most popular article on this website was about Connor Bedard – specifically, his Young Guns rookie card. In fact, four of the top five articles were about card values. Here’s a look at the five most-read articles published on Puck Junk in 2024. 

Continue reading “Puck Junk’s Top Articles of 2024”

Puck Junk’s Top Podcasts of 2024

With the first Puck Junk Podcast episode for 2025 just a few days away, I thought now would be a good time to look back and see how the Podcast did in 2024. 

During the 2024 calendar year, we released 34 episodes. Topics ranged from reviews of new hockey card releases, “setrospectives” of older hockey card sets, interviews with players and insiders, and recaps of major conventions such as the National and the Toronto Sport Card Expo. We really “ran the gambit” of topics, as Tim would say. 

We had listeners from all over the world tune into our show in 2024. About 53% of our audience hails from the United States, while 38% are from Canada. Rounding out the top three is Germany, which accounts for 2% of our audience. We also have listeners from Finland, China, Singapore, Sweden, Australia, Norway and France. (This might be the only time that China ranks higher than Sweden in anything related to hockey.)

For what it’s worth, most of our listeners get our show from Apple Podcasts, followed by Spotify. 

Below are the five most listened to episodes of the Puck Junk Podcast that were released in 2024. If you are a new listener, or you missed some of these episodes, give these a listen to tide you over until our next episode comes out at the end of the week. 

Continue reading “Puck Junk’s Top Podcasts of 2024”

The Case of the Resold OPC Case

Just imagine owning an O-Pee-Chee Wayne Gretzky rookie card, pack fresh and with four sharp corners. Now imagine owning 24 of them.

For one recent auction winner, that dream could become a reality. On December 5, Heritage Auctions sold a full case of 1979-80 O-Pee-Chee hockey cards for $2.52 million USD. A case has 16 boxes. A box has 48 packs. Each pack has 14 cards. If the entire case is opened, it could have anywhere from 24 to 28 Gretzky rookie cards inside. 

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Clemente’s Corner: Talking Hockey Cards with ChatGPT

There’s so much talk about artificial intelligence these days. In fact, AI is all the rage. Some of you use it; many of us fear it.

I had a thought recently: What does ChatGPT think about the sports card hobby and could collectors learn anything from it? 

The following is a conversation with ChatGPT about the hockey card hobby and what we should know as we enter a new year.

Continue reading “Clemente’s Corner: Talking Hockey Cards with ChatGPT”

Clemente’s Corner: Oddball Collectibles Highlight the Fall 2024 Toronto Expo

The National Sports Collectors Convention may be the show everyone wants to attend each summer, but the Toronto Sport Card Expo is the show I need to fly to each fall.

The four-day show, which concluded this past weekend, is Canada’s biggest card and memorabilia show – and one that I have made a point to attend each November.

Held twice a year (there is also a spring edition), this fall’s get-together was packed with collectors and featured sports cards and memorabilia from the past and present. The show, however, is known for its hockey cards.

While I did buy cards for my collection, I also spent hours looking through bins rummaging for oddball hockey collectables that are the norm at Canadian shows.  

Here are some cool items I saw at the show (all dating back to the 1990s) and their backstory: Continue reading “Clemente’s Corner: Oddball Collectibles Highlight the Fall 2024 Toronto Expo”