In North America, collecting hockey means trading cards. In Germany it has long meant something else: the sticker album. The Deutsche Eishockey Liga has had both, and our catalog holds sealed products from each tradition. This is how they fit together.
Two ways to collect
A trading card is an object on its own: printed on card stock, sold in packs, collected for its rarity, its serial number or the signature on it. A sticker is part of something larger. It exists to be stuck into a numbered space in an album, and the goal is the finished book.
Europe grew up with stickers — cheap, swapped in schoolyards, collected by the season. The DEL, founded in 1994 on an American model as a closed league, has tried both.
Upper Deck, 2001/02
For a few seasons around 2000, Upper Deck, the American company behind Young Guns, made cards for European hockey leagues, the DEL among them. Our sealed box holds 24 boosters of 6 cards, 144 cards in total, from the league's eighth season. It did not become a lasting series.
City-Press and Playercards
The league's cards have since been made by City-Press of Berlin, its long-standing photo agency, under the Playercards name.
The 2013/14 Inside Edition box, 14 packs of 7 cards, was built for the DEL's twentieth season rather than around the current squads. Its subsets include an Alumni Game, Retired Jerseys, anniversary players and goalies — and Lockout Memories, 33 cards recording the winter of 2012/13, when NHL players locked out in North America came to play in Germany.
The 2023/24 Playercards box holds 24 packs of 5 cards from a 350-card base set. Each box carries one Gold pack with a redemption card for a Jersey card (limited to 60), a Stick card (50) or a Signature-Jersey card (40), and one Silver pack with a numbered parallel or a one-of-one printing plate. A matching binder is available.
The stickers
Playercards also publishes the league's sticker album. We have the 2023/24 sticker box and album and the PENNY DEL 2021/22 sticker box of 30 packs — the other half of how German hockey fans have always collected.
Which cards or stickers a box contains is random, and no specific player or card is guaranteed.
See the 2001/02 Upper Deck DEL box
See the DEL Playercards Inside Edition 2013/14 box
See the DEL Playercards 2023/24 box
See the DEL Playercards 2023/24 binder
See the DEL sticker box 2023/24
See the DEL sticker album 2023/24
See the PENNY DEL sticker box 2021/22
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