a new box break review....

Hot damn it's time for a box break.... I haven't busted a box since around the Super Bowl, and I've been dying to. Why haven't I? Because there hasn't been anything worth my time since last football season. If you read between the lines and determine that Topps is doing a horrible job with their exclusive baseball license, that's odd, because I feel the same way. Eerie how we think alike, isn't it?

Anyways, onwards with the first hockey product of the new 2010/11 season. Upper Deck Victory. Now normally I don't buy this entry level stuff... but re-read the first paragraph, and the fact that it contains the first rookie cards of my new favourite player, P.K. Subban, and add in the low, low cost of this box, and voila! Or is that Voici!? Whatever.... here it is in all it's glory.
Hey look! UD put Sidney Crosby on the box. Just like they have for the last 4 years. How unique. How daring. And if that ain't enough.... why not put him on the wrapper too?

Oy. Moving on to the base cards.... everyone loves base cards. (at least I do, so sit back and fake it if you have to)

Everyone's favourite Fin, Miikka Kiprusoff. The man may need therapy after the amount of vulcanized rubber that will be flying at his face this coming year....

Defending Stanley Cup Champ Patrick Kane. Do NOT ask the man for spare change. Trust me.

Montreal's uncontested number 1 netminder. No pressure kid. Everyone is allowed to make a mistake now and then. Uh.... except you, that is.

Rookie phenom John Tavares

and of course who everyone outside of the greater Pittsburgh area calls "whiny little bitch." Or at least, that was the nickname given him by Montreal fans during the last playoff run. The man whines more than Gretzky ever did. And believe me kids, that's a lot.

and we'll round out with the best player in the game today.... Alexander "I date a different Russian Supermodel every week" Ovechkin. Hey. I would if I could too.....

Now the box has 36 packs, 6 cards per. 5 of those cards are base cards, so you get 180 out of the 200 card base set. Less one gold parallel.

The other 36 cards are divided up into 3 catagories. Rookies. Found 1:2 or 18 per box. Game Breakers. Found 1:4 Or 9 per box. And Stars of the Game, also 1:4 or 9 per box. Apparently there are memorabilia and auto cards to be found, but UD isn't man enough to post those odds which means to me and you, It ain't gonna happen.

I did pull all I was supposed to.... including my 18 rookies. (50 of them numbered 201-250 to complete the set)

Brandon Yip and look! A Montreal Rookie!!!

Initials and everything. But the wrong initials. J.T. Wyman is no P.K. Subban.
Here's the gold parallel I pulled. Could've been a lot worse.

and here's what the two insert sets look like, first the Stars of the Game....

and Game Breakers.

So all in all a fun break. Nice cards. Slippery little suckers though. These will never stick together.

So if you're looking to bust some hockey, pick up a box. $22.95 at Blowout, $28.95 at DACardworld, $34 CDN at my LCS.

Or, I suppose I just could've spent my money on the guy I wanted. There's a Black bordered P.K. Subban rc (black parallels found 1:1440, so P.K. is found 1:72000) on the bay right now at $39.95. So there ya go.

is it just me, or in this day and age of over political correctness and fear of offending ANYBODY, isn't it kinda odd that the best P.K. Subban is a BLACK parallel? Maybe it's just me... kind of an inside joke if you don't follow hockey.

"Uh, Can I get a coffee, Black?"

"Can't you see I'm talking, White?"

maybe too obscure of a reference........

I went to the World Cup and a box break broke out...

At the last trade night at my lcs, one of the main reasons I went was to grab some more sticker packs of Panini's 2010 World Cup set. Aside from the 10 packs of those, I also grabbed a box of this...
Not stickers, actual cards. I wasn't going to do it... I had resisted it the last time I was there... but someone else bought a box and broke it right then and there. After seeing all those cards, I was hooked.

The details - 36 packs per box. 6 cards per pack. 4 base cards and 2 sp's. Now the sp's come in four different forms. The first is a shiny foilboard team logo found one per pack. The sixth card of the pack could be one of three varieties, all featuring star players. A shiny foilboard version, a glitzy, 3D relief style card, or a clear acetate card.

Unfortunately, my scanner does not do any of these cards justice. they are amazing looking cards.
Card #1 - The Header card
What it's all about....

one of the foilboard logo cards. There are 32 different ones of these....

The regular base cards, 100 of these...

Stadium cards... 10 different to choose from.

here is one of the shiny foilboard player cards....

and a clear acetate card, that really did not scan well.... it also happens to be that round headed boy.

and finally, the bumpy, foily, glitzy player cards. These are awesome in person, each card matching the player's team colours.

I'm really happy with the design and quality of the cards. What I am not happy with is collation. Absolutely horrible. How did I do out of one box?

Base Cards - 4 per pack - 71/100 with 70 duplicates. Yes. 70.

Foilboard team logos - one per pack - 21/32 with 5 duplicates.

Foilboard Player cards - one per 3 1/2 packs - 7/25 with 3 duplicates. How hard would it be to make all 10 different????

Acetate Player cards - one per 2 packs - 18/48 - NO duplicates. thank you

Glitzy metallically shiny bumpy player cards - 15/25 with NO duplicates.

I have to find someone to trade with.... it'll be impossible to put together by busting packs.

Final score - 4/5

Amazing cards, but Panini screwed the pooch by not having someone with at least a Grade 12 education write them a basic algorithm to give them proper collation.

OR

They did it on purpose. In which case they're douchebags.

a box break meant for somebody else...

You ever buy a box of cards, rush home, rip into it, and at the end felt a little let down because you knew this box was meant for someone else? This just happened to me. And I feel a little let down over it too. I've seen dozens of box breaks for this product on the various forums, all with cards I've drooled over... but not this one. This one was meant for someone else.

But let's get back to that later. First up the standard review. Of what? Why 2009/10 In The Game Between the Pipes of course. For a refresher on last year's version, go to my review HERE. It went a little better than this year.

The base set is divided into four subsets.... the first, Future Stars. These are the guys that either have been drafted in the last year or two, or are about to be this summer. I chose Leland Irving as my example. Why? Well he's the Flames heir apparent, and if Kipper keeps playing the way he did this morning, we may be seeing Leland sooner than later.
Stars of the Game features today's current players, this year in a "painted" look. Here's Marc being told that if he agrees to take a quick vacation in Vancouver, talk to some pretty girls, and generally smile for the cameras... they'll pay him with a Gold Medal. No catches.

Next we have Greats of the Game. Some cool cards here... although some duds as well. They may have tried too hard in expanding the checklist. Allan Bester? Grant Fuhr? Putting these against the likes of Johnny Bower and Georges Vezina is close to sacrilege.

I know you are all wondering how you get a nick name like Rogie. Well, if you have a name like Rogatien, you gotta be called something.

and last but not least, in my opinion, are cards from "The Rival League" We're talking WHA here people.

Gary "Bones" Bromley from the Cowboys. Yes Flames fans, Calgary had a pro hockey team before we borrowed one from Atlanta. You all just never went to see them, so they left. Shame on you! You go to the penalty box, you hang your head, and you feel shame!

That takes care of the base set, now onto the inserts... There are six insert sets to chase. The first five on the list fall at 1:8 packs combined. The Masked Men fall at 1:8 themselves.

1. Gold Medal Masks. - didn't get any, although I did win one over at Cards On Ice!

2. Martin Brodeur Tribute - pulled 1

3. Net Brawlers - didn't get any

4. CHL All Stars - pulled 1

5. AHL All Stars - didn't get any

6. Masked Men - Pulled 3


First up, my CHL All Star

Then my Martin Brodeur tribute. There are several of these, mine is #6. Get used to seeing Marty... he owns this box.

Masked Men - Tim Thomas (I bet a lot of card companies are wishing they hadn't jumped on the bandwagon of this flash in the pan backup....)

Martin Brodeur (again, but not the last Marty insert)

Ilya Bryzgalov. If the voters vote with their brain cells, and not their ass, Ilya will be league MVP at the upcoming Awards Ceremony.

Next up we have the autographs. Seeded 1:8 I pulled 2. It's always fun to pull these and wait to see when/where they get drafted...

wow. Jamie Tucker, although I have never met you, you sir, are a Douche. A Douche of the highest standing. How often do you see someone's jersey number being 2/3 of their signature?

Show some pride you cockknocker, at least pretend you went to school.

Your auto makes the next one look like calligraphy.

James Reimer, the Leafs future saviour. Good luck with that James. Work hard and someday you too, may have a career that rivals Allan Bester.

Now the relics, again seeded 1:8

Martin Brodeur.

Somewhere in Calgary is a Brodeur super collector. In two boxes, purchased at the same shop as mine, he pulled nothing. Not one Brodeur. I now know why.


And we end with Chris Osgoods goal pads /60

Pretty cool stuff, but not of a dude I collect. None of these are dudes I collect. Story of my life.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have some base cards to sort and put in pages.

2009 Icons Break

as mentioned before, I was instructed by the Boss to bring home a football box for us/her to bust. I chose UD Icons because it was the cheapest box in the store besides base Topps and Upper Deck.

With football Icons, you get the absolute Greatest Quarterback who ever played the game don't even argue with me or say any other name on the box and the wrappers.

with baseball, you get ..... jeter. Football? The absolute God-like greatest to ever pick up a ball! Baseball?... jeter... Another reason football is better.

This was a little unusual for me... only 10 packs per box, and 5 hits. On average. Let's see what she found...



The base 47/100

They look okay, my wife really liked them. I think that's because of the colour coding in team colours. I got Tony Romo, but no Witten, Eli but no Peyton, and AP but no Lord Favre.

The Rookies 3/50

The rookies are pictured in their college uni's with no mention of their NFL team affiliation, despite this set being released over 2 months after the draft. All RC's are #/599

The inserts - other than the Rookies and the auto, we got 5 numbered inserts.

The auto I mentioned? WR Kenny Britt. See exhibit #3,214,659 on how not to do a sticker auto.

The relics. 2 per box, both game used. Dick McWilliams pinky swears!

Donnie Avery of the hapless Rams and Braylon "Dropsies" Edwards of the Browns/Jets
Both #/299

Icons also has 2 Lettermen per box.

First up, Jerry Kramer /76 - And I swear, the letter is actually a beautiful Packer Green, but my scanner refuses to show you. Something about light refraction properties through fabric. Hey, I dunno, ask my wife. It's what she told me.

and of course, we didn't get our second Lettermen promised us. Instead my wife rips into the pack, looks up at me and asks, who's Gale Sayers?

Redemption City. An autographed Imortal Lettermen Gale Sayers. Nice.

My wife was pretty pumped at getting such a special card that you had to request it instead of UD just putting it in the packs.... (I didn't explain it to her, she was having such fun...) so I showed her where to go online to redeem it.

According to UD, it's in stock and ready to ship............ soon.....

Like someone I know says... pics, or it didn't happen. When it gets here, I'll post it for all to see.

btw, after we/she broke this, I went online to take a look at the checklist. And I swear, if I had pulled an Anthony Michael Hall or a Corey Haim Lettermen instead of what we did.... someone would pay, and pay dearly. Jus' sayin'

UD series 2 box break

No messing around with glitzy titles or false promises. Steak and potatoes. That's me. Well, actually it's the Olympic Gold medal winning women's bobsleigh team from Canada. Heather Moyse and Kaillie Humphreys are from Calgary and Prince Edward Island. Get it? Steak and potatoes? Alberta and P.E.I??? Ah... forget it. Canadian humour.

Anyways. I busted a box of Upper Deck Series 2 hockey yesterday. 24 packs, 8 cards per... yadda, yadda, yadda. Price? $60 shipped from Montreal.

The base cards are the same as series 1, as well as their baseball and football counterparts.
the backs...

8 cards per pack is a bit misleading... one card in each pack is the series 2 cards for their Victory set. Kinda like the whole updates/highlights/heritage debacle.

in each box they say you'll get two relic cards. (on average) The first one I pulled was from my favourite team!!!

but it's of the one guy I don't like on my favourite team. This one may be destined for ShoeBoxLegends. He'll appreciate it I'm sure.
They brought back the Heroes insert set. this time it's Mark Messier. Yawn. I got two in the box.

The problem with UD is their insistance on inserting 30 million insert sets. In each series. This one is called Playoff Performers. I got this Patrick kane and Marc-Andre Fleury.

a carry over insert set is draft day gems. A waste of cards... I got Lidstrom and Tim Thomas.

A new to series 2 insert is this horrible early '90's Score looking Rookie Debut card.

Bringing back a set from last year, Captain's Calling returns.

A set that I was really excited about was The Champions. I was hoping it was UD's version of the Canadian Heroes set in OPC. My first card was of the U.S. women's hockey team competing in Vancouver. I love it. I'm going to complete this set. Or I was anyways....

until this..... WTF? A card of a figure skating silver medalist??? Maybe if it was an event used relic bat card.... ( poor taste, I know, it's my blog, deal with it)

my second relic card was of potential rookie of the year, John Tavares.

But what really drives the price, are the Young Guns. These are what the kids chase after, before they discover girls, and then again after they marry one....

You get six per hobby box.

even I haven't heard of that guy. Oskars?

cool. A local dude.

my favourite team again...

Young Phil is doing well...

ooh... Tyler is a first round pick. He's played one game. He has one goal. He's on pace for an 80 goal season!!!!!!

And finally, young Jonas Gustavsson. Jonas is still having nightmares of rubber bullets coming at his head. Toronto needs to improve the "D". Acquiring Phaneuf helped.

Still with me?? I ended up with 145/200 base cards. And this is either a pro, or a con, no duplicates. Great collation, but now I have no dupes to trade.... Now I have to find somewhere that sells packs.

Who else is collecting this set???