2008/09 Upper Deck Black Diamond Hockey 6-Pack Box | 30 Cards | Factory Sealed

A factory-sealed 6-pack box of 2008/09 Upper Deck Black Diamond Hockey — 6 packs of 5 cards, 30 cards in total. One Double Diamond card per box on average. Look for Triple and Quad Diamond cards and Quad-Swatch jersey cards.

The same player, four times over

Black Diamond is built on an idea almost no other set uses: the base cards are tiered by rarity rather than by player.

Every card carries one, two, three or four diamonds. The set runs 84 Single Diamond cards, 42 Double (1:4 packs), 21 Triple (1:8) and 21 Quadruple (1:24), with the Rookie Gems running their own parallel ladder at Triple and Quad.

So a collector chasing the complete set is not hunting different players — they are hunting the same names at four escalating levels of scarcity. Finish the Single Diamonds and you have a checklist; finish the Quads and you have something very few people have.

On top of that sit the colour parallels, and the numbering is brutal: Ruby to 100, Gold to 10, and Diamond to one single copy. For every card in the set.

What six packs actually means

Worth being straight about, because the published odds were written for the 24-pack hobby box.

At 1:4 packs, a Double Diamond in six packs is close to certain — hence the box guarantee. At 1:8, a Triple Diamond is roughly an even chance. At 1:24, a Quad Diamond is a long shot: a quarter of a box's worth of odds.

The jersey and autograph rates are steeper still. Quad-Swatch jerseys run 1:13 packs and Gemography signatures 1:48 — which is one in every two hobby boxes, and correspondingly rarer here.

This is a retail format: fewer packs, lower price, the same cards, honest odds. It is not a hobby box, and a page that implied otherwise would be selling you something it cannot deliver.

The 2008 rookie class

Rookie Gems in this set cover one of the strongest classes in modern hockey. Steven Stamkos and Drew Doughty went first and second in the 2008 draft — 555 goals and two Cups for Stamkos, two Cups and a Norris Trophy for Doughty.

Also on the checklist: Luke Schenn, Blake Wheeler, Nikita Filatov, Fabian Brunnström, Brandon Sutter, T. J. Oshie, Mikkel Bødker, Nikolai Kulemin, Colton Gillies and Steve Mason.

Specifications

6 packs per box · 5 cards per pack · 30 cards · 1 Double Diamond per box · Factory sealed · Manufacturer: Upper Deck · Brand: Black Diamond · Season: 2008/09

Stated insertion rates reflect an average across the entire production run; no ratio is guaranteed in any individual box.