A few days back at a card show, I purchased a box of 2009-10 Upper Deck Hockey. Here is what got:
169 Base Cards: Thankfully, I did not get any duplicates. This gives me about 85% of a complete base set.
6 Young Guns: Artem Amisimov, Jamie Benn, Dimitry Kulikov, Matt Pelech, Sergei Shirokov and James Van Riemsdyk. Other than Van Riemsdyk, a disappointing lot. Sure, we all want a Tavares rookie card, but I would have been happy with an Anti Niemi YG.
And now, onto the inserts that most of us don’t want anyway:
2 All World Team: Pekka Rinne and Patrick Kane. Looks like every hockey card set is going to have some sort of quasi-tie-in with the Olympics.
2 Draft Day Gems: Pekka Rinne and Theoren Fleury. What, is Rinne in every insert set?
2 Faces of the Franchise: Joe Thornton and Ales Hemsky. WHY?????????? What makes these any different than the typical “Hometown Heroes” inserts?
1 Top Guns: Thomas Vanek. Another useless insert set….
1 Season Highlight: Evgeni Malkin. Yawn.
2 Martin Brodeur Hockey Heroes: Looks like New Jersey’s “fat goalie” (as Sean Avery called him) gets his own insert set.
1 Limited-to-100 Parallel: Dimitry Kulikov, numbered 069/100. Great…now I got the regular and parallel versions of this guy.
2 UD Game Jersey: Jason Pominville and Jason Spezza. Two jersey cards of two Jasons. As much as I detest jersey cards, I am glad that the swatches at least match the uniforms the players are wearing.
Overall, I like Upper Deck brand-cards, but can do without the inserts . None of them really “grab” me, though the Draft Day Gems insert set is an interesting idea. It is lame that you get only 6 Young Guns in a box, but 10 insert cards. No one buys Upper Deck in hopes of getting a Pekka Rinne All-World Team insert card. Maybe that will all change if someone else gets a license to do hockey cards next season.
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I pulled a Mike Richards Face of the Franchise insert the other day. Ugh, I don't know which of the insert sets is the worst…
Tell me about it. That card of Vanek flying through the clouds is pretty bad too.
I broke a series 1 box and the the best card card was a Brian McCabe Exclusive. The two jersey cards were Halpern and Lupul. $90 well spent. FML.