I picked up a pack of 2009-10 Artifacts the other day at Target. Understand that buying a single retail pack won’t yield you anything but base cards most of the time, since someone has already sniffed out the 1:36 box hit. Still, I was curious about the design of the cards. Let’s see what $2.99 (plus 10.25% Chicago sales tax) gets us…
Card #23: Jeff Carter, Philadelphia Flyers – Scored 46 goals last year. But skating with your head down like that is gonna get you hurt. Hey Jeff, eyes up!
Card #43: Tomas Vokoun, Florida Panthers – He’s also looking down at the puck, but it’s totally cool because he’s a goalie.
Card #45: Patrick Berglund, St. Louis Blues – Those Blues third jerseys are cool-looking, but totally ripping off the “old time hockey” feel of the Minnesota Wild third jerseys from the past few seasons.
Card 88: Andrei Markov, Montreal Canadiens – Is this guy any good? The back of the card says that he was “arguably the Canadiens best player in 2008-09.” But I don’t know enough about the Habs to know if that is an accurate assessment of Markov.
Card #97: Jakub Voracek, Columbus Blue Jackets – Uh, whatever.
As you can see, no jersey card or autograph card or even a 1:20 Rookies/Legends card (Now if I had only bought 19 more packs). Are these five cards worth $3.00? Only to someone who pays $3.00 for them.
I’m not too hype on the design either, with the columns on either side of the player, and that weird swirly thing in the background. Last year’s design looked more like a dusty old book, which was a great design for a set called “Artifacts.” This year’s design would work better if the set was called “Illuminati” or something like that.
As for the card backs…
Nothing special here. It won’t offend anyone, but it probably won’t get asked out on too many dates either.
As a rule, I’m usually not impressed with “memorabilia” sets. It’s as if the jersey or autograph cards are–dare I say it?–more important than the base cards themselves. Artifacts has a hit-or-miss design which is definitely “miss” this year.
Edit: Great minds think alike. Shane at Shoebox Legends also plunked down $3 to bring you all a pack rip from this set. Don’t let his purchase be in vain–go check it out.
For the fourth year in a row, Upper Deck has leased the name “O-Pee-Chee” from Topps in order to brand a set of hockey cards. Overtly emblazoning the O-Pee-Chee logo and featuring Wayne Gretzky on the box and wrapper, the set is clearly meant to appeal to old school collectors who cut their card-collecting teeth during the 1970s and 1980s. And for the most part, it will. Comprising the set are 500 base cards, 50 short-printed Marquee Rookies and 50 short-printed Legends.
