What the heck is this? I found it at my local Target, but have never seen anything like it before. It has a hang tab, but it’s not a fat pack. We all know what fat packs look like–they’re tall, they’re fat, they have a lot of cards and they cost five bucks.

No, my friends, this is a FAT BOX. For $9.99, you get 42 2012-13 O-Pee-Chee Hockey cards. That’s not really a bargain, considering that two fat packs (at $10) would yield you 64 cards. This equates to about half of a blaster box, in both price and quantity of cards.

What intrigued me about this is that it promises 1 Marquee Legends Gold card, which I think you can only get in these particular fat boxes.

The 42 cards came wrapped in a cellophane wrapper. Here is what this “fat box” got me:

39 Base Cards

Other blogs have already posted their own review of this set. I’ll withhold doing a review until I have the complete set. But my overall impression is positive–at least for the card fronts. The photos on many of the cards are action-oriented. And the O-Pee-Chee logo is a whisper–as it should be–and not a yell.

Here are a few more base cards that had appealing photographs.

1 Marquee Rookies

YAY! A “leftover rookie.” Tyler Cuma played 1 game last year for the Minnesota Mild, er, Wild, going scoreless but getting 2 penalty minutes.

1 Sticker

How about that? I got a Marquee Rookie (seeded 1:2) and a Sticker (seeded 1:8) in the same fat box. I like the design of these stickers better than the base set–they look like a cross between the 1982-83 O-Pee-Chee cards and 1975 Topps Baseball cards.

1 Marquee Legend Gold

For some reason, I thought that a “Gold” card would be like a gold foil card, or be somewhat shiny. This just replaces the tan ink on the borders with gold ink. While Patrick Roy was an amazing player, this card really isn’t reason enough to buy these fat boxes.

I am still debating if I am going to buy boxes and try to build this set, or if I am going to just buy it outright.I really want all of the stickers, and I want to build the Retro Set, so packs would be the way to go. Buying a set wouldn’t be much more than $120 or so, but I’d still want the retros and stickers, too.

What are your thoughts? Are you building this year’s O-Pee-Chee set? What about the insert sets?

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Check out the One-Card Challenge contest, running from now until the end of September.

My third box of Enforcers–and probably my favorite. Continue reading “ITG Enforcers Box Break #3”

Oh yeah, I know, these cards are sooooooo January 2012. And here it is, July already. I may have busted these boxes 6 months ago, but I’m finally getting around to scanning and sorting my 3 box breaks. Continue reading “ITG Enforcers Box Break #2”

A while ago, I bought 3 boxes of In The Game Enforcers. I actually video recorded the breaks to post on my YouTube channel, but then my video editing software got all crazy and decided to crash every time I opened it. So, the first break (and probably the next two) will just be boring ol’ blog posts.

I think everyone who reads this blog and liked this idea has bought a box or two by now. For those who are not aware, a cost per box was $65. Each box contained 12 “tough” cards, including 5 autographs.

Here are the results for my first box: Continue reading “ITG Enforcers Box Break #1”

I was at my local Target yesterday and I have been pretty good about staying away from blaster boxes. But I always look for hockey card “repacks” that contain an autographed card. I found this–something called a “Hockey Cube.” For $19.99 plus tax, you get 2 autographed cards and a bunch of other cards you probably don’t want. So, I weighed the pros and cons of buying it:

Pro:: It has 2 autographed cards. I like autographed cards

Con: It probably has tons of Pro Set.

Pro: It has a Score Rookie and Traded Set that is still sealed.

Con: I already have two Score Rookie and Traded Sets (one for TTM purposes)

Pro: I want another Jeff Skinner from that set. Plus, I might get some good Gold Parallels.

So, the Pros narrowly outweighed the Cons. Here is what was inside the Hockey Cube: Continue reading “Hockey Cube Break”

It seems that whenever I buy a box of cards for $100 or more, I am left with:

• a stack of base cards
• a limited rookie card of a nobody
• jersey cards that no one wants
• a large dose of buyer’s remorse

Of course, I remembered none of that when I bought this box of 2011-12 SPx. I have never purchased this product before, and was itching to give something new a try.

Each box has 18 packs (4 cards per pack) –plus a “Bonus Pack”. Here is what I got: Continue reading “2011-12 SPx box break & Contest update”

Panini is a company that I generally like, but truth be told I haven’t really cared for many of their products from this season or last season. It’s like they try really hard, but in the end they do a few things I dislike (glossy parallels in Score, making Ice Kings really hard to get, no updates for many of their sets, and so forth). So I am generally cautious when buying any of their hockey cards.

But then I saw this box of 2011-12 Panini Contenders at a local card shop. On the box it said “Three Autographs Per Box”. I haven’t opened anything in a while, i like getting autographed cards and I had a gift card burning a hole in my pocket.

The box had 18 packs, and each pack had 5 cards. Here is what I got: Continue reading “2011-12 Panini Contenders box break”

After much delay, here is my box break for my sixth–yes sixth!!!–box of 2010-11 Artifacts. Will I get yet another Buffalo Sabres autograph? Continue reading “2010-11 Artifacts Box Break #6”

Not too long ago, I bought two more boxes of 2010-11 Artifacts.

Yes, I know that it is 2012, and that there is a 2011-12 Artifacts set. But I still really like last year’s set. I am missing numerous base cards, think the jersey cards in Artifacts are all right–and I plan on building the entire set (short prints, redemptions and all).

So, let’s take a look at this “retro” box of cards I bought: Continue reading “2010-11 Artifacts Box Break #5”

My third–but probably not final–box of 2011-12 Upper Deck Series 2.  Continue reading “2011-12 Upper Deck Series 2 – Box Break #3”