Upper Deck.NHL-licensed hockey cards

The NHL cards and the series

Upper Deck's NHL cards are under hockey cards. The series and the rookie cards are described in the hockey guide, and how they differ from the Topps and Panini series is compared in the guide to the card manufacturers.

The card shop and the hologram

The company was founded by, among others, Paul Sumner and Bill Hemrick, who owned the card shop The Upper Deck in Yorba Linda, California. The first set came in 1989, with baseball cards, and had a hologram on every card to make the cards hard to counterfeit. The set also had a glossy front, thicker card stock than other cards and an extra colour photo on the back. Card number one went to Ken Griffey Jr., who at the time had not yet played a game in MLB. Outside Japan, Upper Deck published Yu-Gi-Oh! until 2008, before Konami took over publishing themselves.