Upper Deck
2001/02 DEL German Hockey Cards Box | 24 Boosters | Factory Sealed
A factory-sealed box of 2001/02 DEL German Hockey Cards β 24 boosters of 6 cards, 144 cards in total. Covering the Deutsche Eishockey Liga. Published by Upper Deck.
An American company made trading cards for a German league
That sentence is the reason this box is interesting, and the manufacturer line is not a mistake. Upper Deck of Carlsbad, California β the firm behind Series 1, Young Guns and the 1989 Ken Griffey Jr. rookie card β produced a set for the DEL at the turn of the century.
It is the opposite of what the market would predict. The trading card, in the American sense, is a North American format: wax packs, a licensed league, chase inserts, a hobby shop. Europe went a different way entirely. Here the collecting habit belongs to Panini and the sticker album β cheap paper stickers, a printed book with numbered spaces, and a playground economy of swaps. Generations of European children collected that way and never touched a trading card.
Upper Deck tried anyway, in several European hockey markets around 2000, and the DEL was one of them. It did not become a fixture. The German league's cards have been made by City-Press of Berlin for many years now, and an Upper Deck DEL set is a closed chapter rather than a series.
Which is what makes a sealed box of it a document: proof that for a couple of seasons, a German league was worth the attention of the largest card manufacturer in the world.
The league at the time
2001/02 was the DEL's eighth season. The league had been founded in 1994 when the clubs broke away from the old Bundesliga to run themselves as a closed licence competition β no promotion, no relegation, an American structure imposed on a German sport.
It was a turbulent period. Several clubs went insolvent in those years and disappeared or reformed, and the league's membership changed from season to season in a way that makes historical sets genuinely useful for working out who played where.
Specifications
24 boosters per box Β· 6 cards per booster Β· 144 cards Β· Factory sealed Β· Publisher: Upper Deck Β· Season: 2001/02 Β· League: Deutsche Eishockey Liga Β· EAN: 4042323321611
German-market release. Long out of production.
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