2015-16 Upper Deck Black Diamond Hockey preview

Upper Deck has shined up Black Diamond Hockey for the 2015-16 NHL season. It will be released as a high-end product for the first time ever with one hit filled five-card pack per box.

One of the new features in 2015-16 Black Diamond to give the product a high-end feel is the inclusion of cards with actual diamonds in them. Diamond Relic Rookie cards will be numbered out of 99 and contain one to four diamonds based on the level of prospect on the card. Parallel versions include Yellow (#’d to 5) and Black Diamond (#’d 1/1). Diamond Relic cards will land one per case. Upper Deck has also produced a flashback Diamond Rookie Relic of Wayne Gretzky which will be numbered out of 99. An additional 50 veteran players will have Diamond Relic cards numbered out of five plus a one-of-one Black Diamond parallel edition.

The base set for Black Diamond is only 50 cards. On top of the base set there are Rookie Gems inserts numbered out of 399 plus a Pure Black parallel numbered out of 25. There are two tiers of signed versions of the Pure Black parallels that numbered to 99 and 49.

2015-16 Black Diamond has a variety of additional signed cards and memorabilia cards. Upper Deck continues its recent trend of including some phenomenal jumbo-sized patch cards with Team Logo Jumbos. These will have three levels of numbered parallel versions: Black Diamond (#’d to 15), Upper Deck (#’d to 5) and NHL Shield Logo (#’d 1/1). Double Diamond Booklet Relics feature a pair of swatches on a book card. Base versions are numbered to 99 with a Premium Memorabilia parallel numbered out of 10. Base cards will also have signed and memorabilia versions numbered to various quantities.

Every box of Black Diamond also comes with a one-card pack of Exquisite Hockey, which will be included in Upper Deck hockey products throughout the season. Exquisite base cards are numbered out of 149. Rookie Previews are broken into two tiers with a Spectrum parallel level. Material relic cards come in single, dual and quad editions. (#’d 49 or less for veterans, 149 or less for rookies).