1991-92 Upper Deck Hockey Set Details

Once again split into a Low Series and a High Series, a complete 1991-92 Upper Deck Hockey set has 700 cards. The first series is comprised of 500 cards while the final 200 came in High Series packs.

No doubt in response to the popular Team Canada cards from the World Junior Championships in 1990-91 Upper Deck Hockey, the international flavor is expanded even further. The Low Series checklist also has subsets dedicated to Soviet Stars and the Canada Cup. These gave collectors the first cards of Teemu Selanne, Nicklas Lidstrom and Alexei Zhamnov.

The WJC cards include several teams, not just Canada. Rookie cards in that part of the set include Keith Tkachuk and Nikolai Khabibulin. Other key rookie cards in 1991-92 Upper Deck Hockey include Peter Forsberg and Dominik Hasek.

The design is, once again, very clean with a strong focus on photography. At the time, the glossy look was high-end, setting it above nearly every other hockey card set. The white borders and general layout are very similar to the 1990-91 set. The biggest difference is the NHL 75th anniversary logo along the bottom of the card.

Base card backs have another large photo, vitals, stats for the previous five years and career numbers.

A separate French release was once again issued, though the cards carry little premium today.

1991-92 Upper Deck Hockey has a couple of different inserts as well. Upper Deck's trend of an SP card, made popular by the Michael Jordan baseball card in 1991 Upper Deck Baseball, is brought over to the ice. Hockey's SP1 is called "Glasnost on Ice" and features Wayne Gretzky, Brett Hull and Valeri Kamensky.

Brett Hull is the focus of the first Hockey Heroes set. These also introduced a limited number of autographs. Other inserts include Award Winners holograms and Euro-Stars, an 18-card set exclusive to jumbo packs.

Today, 1991-92 Upper Deck Hockey can be found at very reasonable prices. That's a result of the high print runs that were typical of the time. Although it may not carry a lot of investment potential, the overall quality of the cards and checklist make it one of the strongest releases of the time.