It’s not easy to be innovative when you’re canvas is only 2 ½” x 3 ½”. Trading cards however have evolved a lot over the years and behind a lot of that innovation was Upper Deck. From the top down, employees are constantly challenged to develop ways to reinvent the trading card and create compelling new content collectors will love.

A point of contention collectors had with the SP Game-Used product was that there were just too many jersey cards that watered down not only the product, but jersey cards as a whole. The Upper Deck product development team went to work to come up with a unique new memorabilia card series for the product using event-used memorabilia Upper Deck had been stockpiling for several years.

“We had negotiated to get media banners from major events like the Draft, All-Star Game, etc. from the NHL® a couple years back, but the strategy for those assets wasn’t fully formed at the time,” shared Billy Celio, associate product manager for Upper Deck. “We’re constantly looking for new ideas for memorabilia sets and these banners had some amazing logos and designs that we knew would look great in trading cards. We felt like SP Game-Used was the perfect home for these cards and it’s been a great addition this season to the product with these cards carrying strong secondary market values.”

Media banners from events like the NHL Draft were procured by Upper Deck.

Upper Deck cut those banners and incorporated them into the new Banner Year insert set.

Even media banners from events like the NHL All-Star Game found the chopping block at Upper Deck.

Now these banners make for an incredible new insert set, including some versions that are autographed.

For players who were drafted in previous years, but haven’t made their NHL debut yet, you can expect to grow to your collections once they do. For future SP Game-Used releases, there will be new versions of these cards using banners from those events for those players making this a living set. And in terms of construction, these cards a very thick and feel like a quality collectible.

You can see here how much thicker these cards are than a standard hockey card.

When these cards were cut, the team worked hard to make some very cool swatches which added a nice element to the final product.

Collectors have shared their feedback for these new inserts with us through our various social media platforms:

David Bonneville LOVE the BANNERS!

Richie Pile The Banners are CRaZyyyy!!! Hope I find one of those puppies!!

Check out more of these new Banner Year inserts from 2016-17 NHL® SP Game-Used including rare autograph versions.