The Parallel That Must Not Be Named... Panini's 2010-11 Score Hockey French Back

Front

Back

2010-11 Score #470 Roberto Luongo - French Back Parallel (SSP).

​Okay, so bit of a random post here. Hence why you'll find this post under the "Random" Category of my blog posts. 

For collectors out there who may stumble upon this blog post, I just wanted to quickly highlight these EXTREMELY rare cards that many of you may not even know exist. The 2010-11 Score French Back to this day remains probably the hardest parallel to spot in all my days of collecting. I missed the boat on the whole 90's junk wax era, so there are a few tough parallels in those days I'm sure are near impossible to find, but from a "modern day" hockey card product that was released by Panini in 2010-2011, this just came way out of left field when I had first heard about these Score French Back parallels and how hard they are to locate. 

Now, lets take a deeper dive on these French Back parallels below...

When looking at a player featured in this 10-11 Score base set, you would notice that they had a base card and 2 parallels that were clearly announced when the product launched. First up, the Glossy parallel (The Glossy finish on the front of the card can be physically felt and noticed when looking at it). The second parallel announced was the Score 20th Anniversary parallel ("20th Anniversary" stamped on the front in gold lettering).

​But, unaware to everyone at the time, Panini had also purposefuly slipped in a 3rd base parallel into the mix: The French Back.

Similar to the O-Pee-Chee Blank Back, the common collector wouldn't know they had hit one of these when looking at the front. It's completely identical to the base card, which means no glossy finish, no stamp, no discolouring, nothing. By all accounts it's just a base card at this point, until you turn it over...
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10-11 Score French Back - Small French Text located above the player's name. If you have a Jhonas Enroth version (card #95 in the set), please let me know!

Located above the player's name, there is a small and barely noticable sentence in french. That is the difference on these French Back parallels, as the original base cards have nothing there. I could see if the entire back was french, as it would probably stand out a little more, but no, just one small french sentence added to these parallels is what makes these cards so hard to find. 

I have seen databases list these French Backs to have a print run of 10 copies, but hearing one story makes me question that. I've heard that a rep from Panini was asked about these parallels a few years ago at the Toronto Expo, and while they initially didn't want to give anything away, they hinted that the print run of these French Backs can be "counted on one hand", which leads a lot of people to beleive they are out of 5. 

Either way, these parallels are so hard to find. I've spoke to plenty of hardcore player collectors over the years, and I've found that a lot of these collectors still need the 10-11 Score French Back parallel for their guy. Crazy.

I hope that this blog post helped you gain more knowledge about the hockey parallel landscape. While fun, it can be nightmareish for player collectors everywhere. 

On that note, if anyone has any leads to where I could find the French Back of this Jhonas Enroth card, please let me know...

10-11 Score #95 Jhonas Enroth - I am looking for the French Back parallel of this card. Thanks!