NHL Collection progress after season #2

The NHL season ended last night, and it was great. It seems like it went by really fast, but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. Of course, I'd be happier if my Rangers or Golden Knights were celebrating, but there's no team in the league I truly hate, so I'm pretty much going to be happy no matter who wins.

Last year, I took a look at how my NHL collection was progressing. Since the season is done now, let's take a look at where my collection stands now, and how it's changed.

As an added bonus, with the new computer I had to get back in November, I can fit more lines of stats on the screencaps of the Trading Card Database stat pages! Don't forget, you can click on the image to see it larger.

Wayne Gretzky still leads, with exactly 20 more cards than last year at this time. Lundquist makes a big jump from 39 to 74 cards! Messier drops from second to third, only 9 new cards added. Brett Hull stays 4th- jumping from 39 to 52 cards, he actually passes Brian Leetch, who fell from 3rd to 5th. Jagr moves from 8th to 6th, and Joe Sakic jumps from 14th to 7th, thanks to a RAOK from Robert of $30 a Week Habit. Mario Lemieux falls from a 3-way tie for 4th to 8th, with only 7 new cards added. Teemu Selanne drops from 7th to 9th, and Patrick Roy jumps from tied for 12th to tied for 9th. Ray Bourque and Pavel Bure fall out of the top 10. The name that is noticeably missing to me is Mats Zuccarello. I thought for sure he would be in the top 25 by now, but he's actually in a 3-way tie for 44th with Chris Chelios and Paul Coffey, with 25 cards.

Not much changes at the top of the leaderboard for the teams, and I suspect that will stay the same for the foreseeable future. The Rangers jump from 588 to 871 cards- you can tell they are my favorite. The Canadiens move past the Devils and the Bruins do as well. When I first started collecting a friend on the Database sent me a whole package full of Devils, and that gave them an early lead. Now they are settling out as I get more. The Kings are actually higher than I would have guessed, moving into the top 5. The Penguins jump from 8th to 6th, and the Red Wings stay 7th. The Maple Leafs jump from 12th to 8th, and the Canucks and Blackhawks stay in 9th and 10th. The Lightning plummet to 15th, after being 5th last year! That's a huge drop. The Islanders only move from 15th to 13th. The Vegas Golden Knights move from tied for 40th to holding down 35th all on their own, with 138 cards. I'm not sure they will make it onto this leaderboard next season, The Mighty Ducks only have 11 cards on them for 34th, but the Phoenix Coyotes and have 24 cards on them and the North Stars have 48 on them- with my current rate of new card additions, I don't know if it will happen. Time will tell.

The top 2 swap, but the real story to me is that 2018-19 is so high! I have not been buying as many cards this year, so it truly surprises me that it's so high. I didn't even do a hobby box of either series of Upper Deck's flagship! The only hobby box that I did this year was MVP. My brother also got me the factory set of MVP, with was 255 cards in and of itself. I got two blasters of O-Pee-Chee for Christmas, as opposed to one last year, which is a bunch of cards as well. That's just a huge surprise for me, and I am really, truly shocked. Gee, maybe the Knights do have a chance to make the leaderboard next season if I'm as lucky again next season.

Not a surprise for me here. 1990-91 Pro Set's lead may not be insurmountable, but it holds on for another year. 1991-92 Upper Deck remains in second, but closes from 299 cards to 406, a big difference. 2017-18 Upper Deck jumps up to third, and 1990-91 UD moves into 4th- with a big assist from AirPete, who's been sending me 20 or so at a time lately, which I am a little backlogged but plan to post about as soon as I can. This year's Panini Stickers is MUCH higher than I realized- a thank you to my Mom and to Kenny of Torren up Cards- I didn't buy myself a single pack of the set this year. In fact, I've never seen one of them in the store at all. I added 45 cards to 1992-93 Ultra but it still dropped from 3rd to 5th!

Looking at the brands, Upper Deck still has a huge lead over O-Pee-Chee. The margin actually expands, though. Last year, UD led OPC by 1452 cards. Now, UD leads OPC by 2177. OPC has plenty of room to grow though- they issued several sets with more than 600 cards, and I have less than one pack's worth. MVP jumps from 7th to 3rd, and Topps moves from 5th to 4th. Pro Set drops from 3rd to 5th. Panini Stickers makes the biggest jump- 18th to 8th!

Now, having concluded screencapping the stats the Trading Card Database provides, I move to the two stats I came up with.

Lowest SN:

How's 1 of 1 strike you? This is the Blue Cyan plate from 2011-12 Rookie Anthology of Henrik Lundqvist. This is the card I mentioned having in my COMC folder waiting to be shipped last year.

Oldest card:

1951-52 Parkhurst, that I got at my first card show since circa 2005, which happened in February of this year.

And that's where my collection stands as of right now. According to the Database, it's 14,218 cards, although my stats don't quite jive with that- but I don't know which one to go by, because I've found plenty of input errors on both places I keep my stats.

As I said last year, my collection would not be where it is today if not for the generous help of my fellow collectors. I'm not sure what I've done to deserve such kindness, but I am forever grateful. Of those 14000 cards, at least 8 or 9 thousand of them came from other collectors. Probably more, and I'm not exaggerating.