Manufacturing trading card packs is a highly mechanized process where cards are fed into hoppers, inserted into packs and then sealed. But once a year our hockey team heads out to our production facility in North Carolina where they take part in a unique event. The group will actually pack out NHL The Cup product by hand. Upper Deck does this for a few reasons. First, it is a great opportunity for us to pull any damaged or error cards out so we are delivering a quality collectible to our customers. On that note, it also allows us to avoid situations where cards are damaged in the process of being inserted into packs through a mechanized process. Most of all however, it helps us make sure each pack delivers value because when you are paying over $300 a pack for trading cards, you want to make sure you are getting your money’s worth.

While the team is on site, they take a lot of images of the cards that we have been sharing on our Facebook page all weekend long. Check out this link if you would like to see some of the greatest hockey cards of the season. We will only take pictures of the cards. We do not scan them because handling them too much, especially by sandwiching them in a scanner, can cause damage that we want to avoid. While 2010-11 NHL The Cup is not a product that every fan can afford, most love to see the different cards we create for the product as we have seen from the responses thus far.

Upper Deck loves having the opportunity to deliver high-end thrills to collectors with autographed collectibles of NHL young guns like P.K. Subban!

While we have created a lot of new and exciting content for the product this season, the fans still love to chase the rookie cards from the set. These will without a doubt be the most expensive rookie cards of the season and we think it is important to show them off for our fans. Six of the rookies are limited to just 99 copies and they usually consist of the more popular players of the season. For the 2010-11 NHL The Cup product, the rookies selected to be in the subset numbered to 99 are Sergei Bobrovsky (Philadelphia Flyers), P.K. Subban (Montreal Canadiens), Jeff Skinner (Carolina Hurricanes), Jordan Eberle (Edmonton Oilers), Tyler Seguin (Boston Bruins) and Taylor Hall (Edmonton Oilers).

P.K. Subban has always been one of our favorite players. Besides becoming an emerging star on the ice, we have enjoyed time with him off this ice as you can see here.

Please enjoy this first look at every 2010-11 NHL The Cup rookie card of P.K. Subban!