2012-13 SP Game Used Box Break

2012-13 SP Game Used BoxIt’s easy to figure out why someone would want to buy a box of SP Game Used Hockey by Upper Deck. Each and every pack in the box includes a card containing a game-used memorabilia card. A 5-pack box costs around $150, meaning that each 5-card pack costs $30. That heightens the expectations for getting great memorabilia cards instead of the lower-end memorabilia cards prevalent in Upper Deck’s more inexpensive sets.

Five packs is not a lot to play with, so this was one of the quickest boxes I ever opened.

2012-13 SP Game Used #24 - Marc-Andre Fleury 2012-13 SP Game Used #53 - Wayne Gretzky
As expected, my box had 20 base cards–4 in each pack, with the 5th card being the “hit”. This year’s SP Game Used base set contains 100 cards, so you’d need 5 boxes to try and complete a base set, which is a mix of current players and retired greats.

2012-13 SP Game Used #24 - Marc-Andre Fleury (back) 2012-13 SP Game Used #53 - Wayne Gretzky (back)
The back of each card has the player’s last 5 seasons of statistics and their total. Pretty standard for sets like this. No one buys SPGU for the base cards, right?

Moving on, here are the 5 hits I received–one in each pack.

jersey_panthersAuthentic Fabrics Dual – Florida Panthers – Stephen Weiss & Kris Versteeg – It may be hard to get excited about a jersey card featuring the Florida Panthers, but let’s look on the bright side: it has TWO swatches that ARE NOT white. jersey_niedermayerTeam Canada Fabrics – Scott Niedermayer – Because of the 2012 NHL lockout, Upper Deck chose to emphasize Team Canada in many of their products, such as this year’s Artifacts and National Hockey Card Day sets. Niedermayer is no slouch, having played in 7 international tournaments and 18 seasons in the NHL. And this card looks nice with it’s tight black, white and red color scheme. If I was Canadian, I’d be humming “Oh Canada!” right now.

jersey_canadaTeam Canada Fabrics Dual – Jarome Iginla & Ryan Getzlaf – Two more players that have enjoyed awesome international and professional careers (Iginla more so than Getzlaf). I like that both jersey swatches are the same color; now if only the two players were wearing the same type of jersey (home or road). Plus, I never really got into the black Team Canada jerseys.

jersey_millerInked Sweaters – Ryan Miller – It’s like the peanut butter cup of hockey cards:

Fan #1: Hey doofus, you got an autograph on my jersey card!

Fan #2: Hey dummy, you got a jersey swatch on my autographed card!

Fan #3: Guys! Guys! Relax–it’s an autographed card and a jersey card.

For $30 a pack, I’d expect the jersey swatch–though larger than usual–to be blue. I also think a sticker autograph on a product like this is inexcusable. What really annoys me is that the clear sticker cuts across the black outline around the jersey swatch. You don’t see it on the scan so much, but when you see the card in person it is extremely noticeable.

Also, it is worth noting that this card is serial-numbered 19 / 50.

tandem_twigsTandem Twigs – Wayne Gretzky & Marcel Dionne – Now, I certainly wasn’t expecting this. I’m so used to seeing jersey cards and their less-frequent cousins, the patch card. So getting a game-used stick card–a DUAL game-used stick card at that–is really an eye-opener. But getting a dual game-used stick card of Wayne Gretzky and Marcel Dionne is something else.

SP Game Used is definitely for the high-stakes “gambler” who wants to score bigger hits than those found in most other sets. I’ve said it a million times, and I will say it again: I am not a fan of jersey cards. However, these jersey cards found in SPGU are better than average–and there are much better ones out there than what I pulled, including patch cards, triple memorabilia cards and quadruple memorabilia cards.There are also cards featuring game-used nets, pieces of game-used gloves and autographed jersey letters. So, if your luck is better than mine, you may score better with your hits than I did.

Special thanks to Upper Deck for providing the box for this break.

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Author: Sal Barry

Sal Barry is the editor and webmaster of Puck Junk. He is a freelance hockey writer, college professor and terrible hockey player. Follow him on Twitter @puckjunk

2 thoughts on “2012-13 SP Game Used Box Break”

  1. WOW Sal! Did UD mention whether the free boxes were picked randomly? 😉 Jk, that’s awesome. If you want, take a quick peek at my tradelist to see if you like anything for the Gretzky/Dionne. 🙂 I doubt I have anything, but…

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