Upper Deck 2013-2014 Hockey Series 1 2 Tin Break

I happened to be in my local TRU because, well, I was.  I love looking for the cool sales right before Christmas, and today's card special was $16.99 for any collectible card tin, I grabbed a tin of the current and red-hot Upper Deck NHL series one and it rang up $39.99 on the price check, but I took it up to customer service and they price-matched it for me.  It was such a good deal I bought two.

Here's the breakdown: 12 packs of 8 cards each = 96 cards.

Tin 1
Topper - 5x7 MVP #35 Mario Lemieux

86 x Base.  No doubles (4 Kings Greene, Carter, Clifford and Kopitar)
3 x Young Guns (1:4) #209 Jean-Gabriel Pageau, #223 Alex Killorn, #238 Nathan MacKinnon

Inserts:
2x MVP (1:8) #2 Adam Henrique, #21 Jeff Skinner
1x MVP Rookies (1:24) #60 Vladimir Tarasenko
2x UD Canvas (1:6) #C4 Milan Lucic, C21 Brayden Schenn
1x Shining Stars Goalie (1:12) #G7 Martin Brodeur
1x Case Hit (1:600) Hockey Heroes Header


Tin 2
Topper - 5x7 MVP #42 Wayne Gretzky

84 x Base.  No doubles (1 King - Voynov)
3x Young Guns (1:4) #201 Carl Soderberg, #212 Tom Wilson, #250 Checklist

Inserts
2x MVP (1:8) #1 Tomas Fleischmann, #2 Adam Henrique
2x UD Canvas (1:6) #C7 Carey Price, #C44 Mark Letestu
1x Shining Stars Goalie (1:12) #G2 Henrik Lundqvist
1x Hockey Heroes (1:12) #HH42 Mark Messier
1x UD Game Jersey (1:24) #GJ-BS Borje Salming

All told: 190 Cards

170 Base (2 Doubles)
6x Young Guns (1:4)
4x MVP (1:8)
1x MVP Rookie (1:24)
4x UD Canvas (1:6)
2x Shining Stars Goalie (1:12)
1x Hockey Heroes (1:12)
1x UD Game Jersey (1:24)
1x Hockey Heroes Header (1:600)

When you're paying about $40 for the equivalent of a box of brand new Hockey cards that retails for around $80 you're already ahead of the game.  I'm actually pretty happy with my purchase, I'm really close to a full set when I include the few packs I picked up prior to today.  Nothing I pulled outside of the Hockey Heroes Header is all that exciting though, and really the header isn't all that much either.  Sure it's fun, and it reminds me of the early 90s trying to pull the Baseball Heroes sets, but since this is my first foray in Hockey cards in several years, I'm not even sure who most of these guys are, outside of the Los Angeles Kings.

So here's my list of base needs.  All the inserts I pulled above, plus an Ovechkin MVP and a Bossy Hockey Heroes are up for trade.  Not trading  Young Guns at the moment.   I also want ALL Los Angeles Kings cards.  From any year.  I've got a large collection in storage of the pre-Kopitar/Brown era, so I'm really looking for more recent Kings.  My current and up-to-date Needs list is located HERE and I promise to update this as needed.

2009 Topps Heritage Retail (Target) Box Break

8 cards per pack/24 Packs per box (Packs with relics have only 7 cards)
MSRP: $2.99 per pack/
Total Cards: 191

Base Cards 166 / 425
Short Prints (1:3) 8 / 75 (Dye, Creede, Victorino, Reds Coaches, Yankees Coaches, Kearns, Jones AS, Fukudome AS)
Mayo Target Exclusive (1:4) 5 / 10 (Jones, Pedroia, Ramirez, Santana, Braun)
Chrome Parallel (1:10 #ed to 1960) 3 (Kazmir, Martin, Y. Molina)
Chrome Refractor (1: 31#ed to 560) 1 (Rick Ankiel)
New Age Performers (1:15) 2 (Tim Lincecum, Cole Hamels)
Then & Now (1:15) 2 (Friend/Halladay, Podres/Lincecum)
Baseball Flashback (1:12) 2 (Marichal, F. Robinson)
News Flashback (1:12) 1 (JFK)
Flashback Stadium Relic (1:390) 1 (Brooks Robinson)




I so rarely have the opportunity to actually purchase a blaster box of cards these days, let alone a full box, thus I don’t really post these very often. But this morning the stars, the moon and the sun all aligned properly and I managed to snag a box of Heritage for a very, very, very reasonable price. So reasonable I cannot divulge it, suffice to say, it was cheap.



Typically bloggers complain about Topps collation issues, especially in their Non-Sports sets. I have to say, I have NEVER had a box have perfect collation before today. There were NO DOUBLES in this box. None whatsoever, and with the exception of the “News Flashback” and the Mayo insert sets, I got more than my share of the standard inserts. In fact, I did a little bit better than average I think. The SPs fell perfectly every third pack. I should have gotten one more Mayo since they were supposed to fall once per four packs, but I’m not going to complain. I also should have gotten one more News Flashback given they fall two to a box. I did pull a refractor which I wasn’t guaranteed and one extra each of the New Age Performers and the Then & Now sets.





I really like the Baseball Flashbacks, so I’m glad that my relic was from that set, and it’s a pretty nice relic too. Any time your relic is a HOFer you should be pretty happy. Sure, it’s a piece of a seat from Memorial Stadium, but honestly it looks like it’s two different cuts. There’s no legalese on the card either, which is different. Looking at eBay I see that there are more than a few of them available right now, starting at less than a buck. The nice thing, however, is that there have been 10 completed single-item auctions in the last 90 days, the highest selling for $40 and the lowest selling for $11.99 with an average of about $18.50.





One last thing about the inserts is that there were 25 total inserts or SPs, which to me is great, since it averages out to at least one per pack. Problem is that they didn’t actually fall one in each pack, in two of the three packs that contained the Chrome parallels also contained a Mayo card, and at least three packs had no inserts at all.



The only real issue I had with the box is that there were a whopping THREE Angels cards. Out of 191 I got 3 Angels. That’s not nearly good enough for me. With 30 teams in MLB, one should expect at least 5 or 6 cards of any given team, but not in this box. I also didn’t pull ANY of the Super-Seven Variations, but that’s not surprising. I don’t have much luck pulling those, with the exception of the Fukudome Japanese card from last year’s UD.
I’m not planning on set building this one, though I think I’ll keep the Mayo inserts and try to build that set since it’s only 10 cards. If you’d like any of the base (besides the Angels) or any of the inserts, I’d be happy to trade for Angels, UCLA Bruins Basketball Alumni, Topps American Heritage, Indiana Jones Masterpieces or Barack Obama cards.

2008 Upper Deck Series 1 Retail Box Break

Originally Posted on my Livejournal account May 29, 2008


I don't get to purchase boxes of sports cards anymore, I'm not even sure when I purchased my last box, but it may have been in the 90's. In any case, Upper Deck has a program where each card they produce has a code on it, you enter the code on their website and you get points. When you have amassed enough points, you get a reward. As rewards programs go, this one isn't all that special, except for a couple things.

1. It's for kids only. If you're older than 18, you're not eligible. Fortunately I have a 2 year old, so it's HER name on the account.

2. EVERY card has the same code. What I mean is that each Vladimir Guerrero card #6 has the same code, so you don't NECESSARILY have to actually own the card to get the code. What that means is that you can find thousands of codes on the internet. I have in my possession over 4000 codes right now, a good 1000 of them I haven't used yet.

3. You can only enter 100 codes per day and get something like 50,000 points in one month. I've hit that limit twice.

4. It cost 220,000 points for a box of cards, but shipping was free. Currently I have 80,000+ in my account, but I can't enter more codes until the first of June.

5. The rewards fufillment was pretty darn quick. Two or three weeks at the most.


SO here we go, here's the breakdown on my 2008 Series 1 box of Upper Deck Baseball.

24 packs per box, 18 cards per pack. Total cards: 432

Towards Set: 330 of 400 (83%)
Doubles: 63

Inserts:

StarQuest Commons: 23 of 30 (77%)
StarQuest Super-Rare: 1 of 30 - Johan Santana (dinged)

Presidential Predictors: 4 of 9 - Guiliani, Edwards, Gore, Wild Card

Yankee Stadium Legacy x6 - 174, 179, 2193, 2263, 2288, 6142

Game Used Jersey x1 - Ben Sheets #97-BS (White swatch)



All together, a VERY pedestrian box if I do say so myself. Still, at least it was free, and HOPEFULLY I already have enough of this set to make a full set. If I can I'll probably sell it on eBay.