Left is the common, Right is the parallel.

The ebay guide doesnt really give enough room for larger pictures. So to see other scans just use ebays internal email to contact me.

1997 / 1998 Upper Deck Hockey

Game Dated Parallels

For over 9 years now. I have  been authenticating what is, or is not a REAL Game Dated Parallel. On average I contact about 100 people a year. Of those about 90 - 95 have commmons, and not the parallel. So hopefully this guide will help save the rest of you from the listing fees. Or at least from negative feedback when it turns out you dont have what you think you have?

I myself am a collector, I dont have a store, though I do sell on ebay. I own 12 of the actual parallels. And what I am stating here are the facts not opinions about this series.

First understand almost everyone in the collecting world knows nothing about these. Becketts and Upper Deck just didnt explain this series very well. I have even seen dealers say things that werent true at all. Because they didnt check things out. But also because they never opened the product. So all they see now, is one card that looks different from the others. (So that must be it) Is what I hear from most out there.

Becketts calls it a skip numbered set. Well it is and it isnt. When I first heard that I thought ok, all odds or evens? No, that means some are Game Dated some arent. So both odd and evens are represented. Basically they only had Moments for some of the players, and not for the rest. Here is the biggest thing. Just having the Game Dated moment stamp on the front of the card, doesnt make it the parallel! That seems to be the greatest cause of confusion. And only cards from the series with a Game Dated Moment on them have a Parallel version. So there arent parallels for the other cards from 97/98 Upper Deck. Now in a few cases, error cards are around of the Game Dated stamp being left off, or something. But those are just your typical error cards. And shouldnt be confused with the Game Dated Moment Parallel card.

So to summarize, this series has cards marked Game Dated. But they are also the commons. Its just that Upper Deck didnt select a Moment for every card. Only those players who have A Game Dated Moment also have a Parallel card issued.

Here are what make up the actual parallel:

- Parallel Card stock is 3x thicker than the regular cards

- Both Card backs are identical, (no difference between common & parallel)

- Parallel Card front has a "Foil" or "F/X" effect across the entire front

- Parallel when scanned makes the players position at bottom corner appear almost invisible. Because of the Refractor type effect.

The Parallels are extremely rare. I have never seen official production numbers, but most seem to think they were inserted 1 or 2 per case. With a production run of 10 to 25 of each. Becketts has revised their Plus guide to help identify the real things. And they now list all the parallels in the Plus guide, so its easy to look them up. I have seen the odds stated at 1 Parallel to 1,500 packs.

I hope this guide helps with the lack of information on this series. I believe all the information applies to other sports, but I only deal in Hockey. So I didnt want to presume anything. Thanks for your time, if you have any questions. Feel free to ask. I always have several scans ready to email out, if you want to "see" the differences! They are very noticeable when you put a common next to a real parallel.

pat-alaska