Anyways... today's post will highlight a comparison between buying fatpacks, and blasters. For today's example, I will use the brand new 2009/10 OPC Hockey.
To give an acurate comparison, I purchased 4 fat packs and 1 blaster. The price of 4 fat packs = the price of 1 blaster. Am I going too fast? Here we go....
This year's product went old school with Wayne Gretzky in his Oilers jersey. For you youngin's, Wayne was hockey's version of Brett Favre. He just kept coming back year after year wearing odd uniforms of various teams. It was a bit embarrassing after awhile.The base cards have a silver border with accents in the player's team colours.
sometimes it works....
sometimes not so much...
sometimes it just doesn't...
You get 31 or 32 base cards in a fat pack, along with a chance at a retro parallel insert, or a rookie/legend card. Both inserted at 1:3. In my 4 packs, I got 3 retros, no rookies or legends.
I have no idea why these are called retro... they don't look like any other OPC hockey set I've ever seen. Kind of a letdown after the HUGE success of last years retros. See what lawsuits do? They ruin everything. Onto the blaster. Wayne! Lookout behind you!!! Where's Semenko when you need him?
inside were 14 little packs, 6 cards each.
aside from the base cards, in the blaster I found Rainbow parallels 1:8
Rookies/Legends 1:2 (found 3 rookies...)
(... 4 Legends)
The base set is cards 1-500. Rookies and Legends make up cards 501-600.
Also found were various shiny inserts 1:4
and my favourite insert set, Canadian Heroes 1:72
somehow I managed to pull 2 of these. At 1:72 odds, 2 in 14 packs. I guess that's where the "on average" comes in.
inside were 14 little packs, 6 cards each.
aside from the base cards, in the blaster I found Rainbow parallels 1:8
Rookies/Legends 1:2 (found 3 rookies...)
(... 4 Legends)
The base set is cards 1-500. Rookies and Legends make up cards 501-600.Also found were various shiny inserts 1:4
and my favourite insert set, Canadian Heroes 1:72
somehow I managed to pull 2 of these. At 1:72 odds, 2 in 14 packs. I guess that's where the "on average" comes in.Okay, so now that the pretty picture portion is over, let's get to the hard facts.
4 Fat Packs-
125 Base Cards (1-500) 3 doubles
3 Retros ( Zach Boychuk, Patrick Marleau, and Mike Bossy)
0 Rookies/Legends (501-600)
0 Inserts
1 Blaster-
62 Base cards (1-500) 0 doubles
7 Retros
7 Rookies/Legends (501-600)
8 Inserts
So for the same $$$, fat packs give you twice as many base cards towards your set. But no rookies. Or inserts. But I wouldn't want to build the set either way. With the ratio for rookies such as it is, you need to go the hobby box route. For $45 (blasters are $25) you'll get twice as many base cards, with a better chance for rookies/inserts.
So there ya go.... I'm doing this, so you don't have to.....
