2020-21 O-Pee-Chee hockey cards will be released in the following four configurations:
- hobby box: 18 packs, 10 cards per pack, 180 cards total
exclusives: retro black borders, playing cards, probable Easter eggs - blaster box: 10 packs, eight cards per pack, 80 cards total
exclusives: tall boys yellow border - retail box: 36 packs, eight cards per pack, 288 cards total
exclusives: none - fat pack box: 18 packs, 32 cards per pack, 576 cards total
exclusives: none
I’m going to break down what is included in each configuration, the various odds, and the relative value of each configuration depending on what prices you’re seeing and what cards you want out of O-Pee-Chee. I have to first give a shout-out and full credit to Stryker Breaks for the inspiration. Stryker does really cool comparisons like this for baseball cards, and I’m directly borrowing their method.
Looking at the chart below, you can see the four configurations listed across the top row and relevant info for each below. Using US dollars and plugging in the best pre-order price I can find on-line as of August 17th, 2020 into the second row, I get this:
To clarify what is in the chart: Under the “expected” heading is the amount of each type of card you can expect to pull in a perfectly average box. Under the “$/per” heading is the amount of money you’d have to spend to expect to land one copy of each type of card in a perfectly average box or boxes. For instance, if a hobby box sets you back $61.90 and you pull 134 base cards, you got one base card for every $0.46 you spent on the box. (Which is not to say that the base cards cost you $0.46 each – every card in the box cost the same $0.34 each, as seen in the fourth row down.)
On the other end of the extremes, you can only expect to pull 0.14 Aces from the playing cards inserts in one hobby box, so you’d have to spend $416 on hobby boxes before you’d expect an average of exactly one Ace.
Hopefully this will be helpful to fellow O-Pee-Chee collectors! The thing that strikes me the most about my August 17th chart above is what a good deal the $100 box of fat packs I’m seeing on eBay seems to be if you’re going for base, short prints, and/or retros…mighty tempting, even if I already have a case of hobby heading my way…
Click here to shop 2020-21 O-Pee-Chee on eBay
These prices will obviously fluctuate over time and will depend on shipping, sales/promos, etc., so I’m happy to post a link to the spreadsheet that (I think!) will let you input the prices you’re seeing available to you in your unique pocket of the space-time continuum, and the rest of the numbers should automatically recalculate:
Click here to visit editable spreadsheet to compare current prices you’re seeing!
If I set it up correctly, you will be able to edit only the prices in the second row and nothing else. (Please let me know if the spreadsheet isn’t behaving like I want it to.)
Finally, here is a chart showing the different odds in each configuration:
Happy collecting.
You definitely know more about this than I do, but I was always under the impression that fat pack odds were no better than retail pack odds, and yet your chart suggests that in some ways they are? And with a fat packs typically costing more than retail packs, retail packs seemed the better option unless you’re looking to build the base set? Does it vary from one set to another? Has this changed over the years? I’ve looked but never really been able to find fat pack odds before, so just assumed they were the same odds as for retail packs?
Thanks for stopping by Zednik! Retail and fat packs are different beasts with different odds. I think the format has stayed pretty consistent over the years with Upper Deck-era O-Pee-Chee but I’m not 100% sure. I like the hobby exclusives so I mostly stick to hobby, but I’ve gotten the impression that fat packs usually offer the most bang for your buck when it comes to base, SPs, and retros, and the worst bang for your buck when it comes to parallels and inserts.