2013/14 Upper Deck Overtime Hockey Series 1 Pre-Order Pack | 4 Cards | Factory Sealed

A single factory-sealed pre-order pack of 2013/14 Upper Deck Overtime Hockey, Series 1 — 4 cards, one of which is an exclusive Rookie Profiles card.

This set was never sold in shops

Overtime was a promotional release, not retail product. It went exclusively through two wholesalers — GTS Distribution and Universal Distribution — and reached collectors through dealers rather than shelves.

Which is why it comes in two versions of the same thing.

Regular packs hold three cards. Pre-order packs hold four, and the fourth is a Rookie Profiles card that exists in no other configuration. A dealer who ordered after release could buy as many packs as he liked and never see one.

That is an unusually direct piece of commercial engineering: the reward is not rarer odds inside the pack, it is a different pack, given to the people who committed their money before the product existed. Card manufacturers normally build incentives around volume. This one was built around timing.

This is a pre-order pack. Four cards.

The double rookie class

Overtime existed because of an unusual season. The 2012/13 NHL lockout cut that year to 48 games, and a large number of rookies either never debuted or played too little to count. When 2013/14 began, two rookie classes arrived at once.

The result is a checklist far deeper than a normal year: Nail Yakupov, Alex Galchenyuk, Jonathan Huberdeau and Vladimir Tarasenko from the lost season, alongside Nathan MacKinnon, Jonathan Drouin and Seth Jones from the new one.

Overtime focused on exactly that group, which is what the set is for.

The set

Released in two waves. The first came with Series 1 and covered the 2012/13 debutants; the second arrived with Series 2, adding 42 cards for the 2013/14 arrivals.

Rookie Profiles runs to 51 cards — numbers 1 to 30 in the first wave, 31 to 51 in the second. Base cards have a Blue Foil parallel numbered to 99, and autographs are randomly inserted in both waves.

Specifications

1 sealed pack · 4 cards · pre-order version · Series 1, first wave · Promotional release through GTS and Universal Distribution · Manufacturer: Upper Deck · Season: 2013/14