Hockey cards, collectibles and culture
On Monday, I posted my first box break of 2009-10 Champ’s Hockey, as well as some general info about the product. Read that post before continuing this one. I’ll wait…
Done? Good. Let’s see what I got in my 2nd box of CHAAAAMMMMPPPP’S: Continue reading “2009-10 Champ’s Hockey box break #2”
I thoroughly enjoyed last year’s Champ’s Hockey set. Sure, some of the cards–of dinosaurs and passenger pigeons and such–were a bit odd. And the rookie card mini set was nearly impossible to put together. But the standard set itself had a classy, early 20th century look that I enjoyed.
This year’s Champ’s set looked just as cool–and boxes are around $70, instead of $100 like they were last year. So I decided to jump in with both feet and purchase two boxes.
This is what I got in the first box:
49 base cards
This year, the base cards have a muted blue border. In fact, none of the jersey or other colors are bright, either. If he subdued colors don’t bother you, then you’ll probably like this design. Personally, I like the muted hues because it adds to that old-timey feel. 100 of these make up the base set.
5 light blue parallel cards
Unfortunately, this year’s Champ’s set is heavy on the parallels. You get one light blue bordered parallel card in every four packs. But if that isn’t bad enough…
2 orange parallel cards
…then there’s also orange-bordered parallels, falling one in every ten packs. And yes, I did get the normal (blue), light blue and orange versions of Nikolai Khabibulin in this box…which would be great if I collected variants of Russian goalie cards, or something to that extent.
1 yellow parallel card
Does anyone else see the uselessness of these parallels. I’d rather be 8 cards closer to completing a base set than get 8 cards with variant border colors. These yellow variants come one in every 20 packs. I guess that matters if you have a fetish for yellow-bordered cards.
18 mini cards
The mini cards are closer in size to the cigarette cards from a century ago.There are 192 of the mini “non rookie cards”, so it will take you some time to put together this set.
1 “blue back” mini card parallel – the only difference is that the ink on the back is printed in blue instead of black. A dumb variation that is not even worth scanning.
5 mini Champ’s Rookies
This year’s Champ’s set skips out on the regular sized Champ’s Rookies, and instead only offers the mini-sized rookie cards. The slightly shiny gold border of these mini rookie cards somewhat betrays the early 20th century design. Also, only 5 rookie cards per box is kind of depressing if you think about it.
5 Natural History
For some inexplicable reason, I like these cards. Yeah, they are kind of pointless in a hockey set. Maybe that’s why I enjoy them.
4 Historical Figures
Presidents and Prime Ministers? Apparently, Lester B. Pearson was a Canadian Prime Minister, and not just a trophy name. I learn something new every day.
1 Wonders of the World
Why? Seriously–why? Oh, and at one per box, you know some idiots will be trying to get $10-$20 for one of these on eBay.
Mini Jersey – Chris Osgood
Osgood has played a long time, and red-colored Red Wings jersey swatches are quite plentiful. So, it’s not like this card is super rare or anything. Nonetheless, Osgood has had a mighty fine NHL career.
Mini Jersey – Daniel Alfredsson
Rockin’! And it’s a black swatch too–which looks a lot nicer than a white swatch against the tan card background.
So that’s two decent-looking jersey cards of two stellar NHL players. Onto the autographs, then…
Mini Autograph – Oscar Moller
Uh oh….you know you’re in trouble when you pull a signed card of a guy you’ve never heard of. Of course, people in Los Angeles know who this guy is, but until now I didn’t. Maybe I’ll get an autograph of a “known player”…
Mini Autograph – Andrew Ebbetts
Andrew Ebbett? Come on! Yeah, I know this guy…he played 10 games for Chicago this season–a season where he started in Anaheim, went to Chicago and is now currently with Minnesota. Sorry if I can’t get too excited about pulling this signature (FYI, I wrote to Ebbett a few months back, and he is very fan friendly with TTM autographs).
Balancing out the two decent jersey cards are two mediocre autograph cards. You’d expect ‘graphs of these guys in lower-end sets, but in Champ’s? Of course, at the $65-$70 range, Champ’s is more of a “mid-range” product now; a step above Upper Deck proper, and a few steps below Black Diamond or Artifacts.
Later this week, I’ll post what I got in my other box of Champ’s, as well as some other goodies I scored at the card show this past Saturday.
After buying a single pack, and later a rack pack, of this year’s Fleer Ultra, I have to admit that the set has grown on me. That said, I bought a blaster box at Target last week. Yes, we all know that blasters suck harder than 36-count “retail” boxes…but I had a 10% of coupon, and figured that, you know, maybe this blaster would be special.
Yeah right. (Well, it did happen to me once.)
I don’t wanna scan all the cards I got. I’m not even going to scan the best card from each of the 12 packs, but rather just the best “type” of each card.
Here is what I got:
A few days back, I purchased some hockey cards at Target. Like DFG, I too have been trying to swear off the retail packs this year. And I remember Card on Ice, saying the product wasn’t all that. But I had a 10% coupon on Target, and I was deeply intrigued by this 3-pack blister pack of 2009-10 Black Diamond Hockey cards.
Three-pack blister? That’s a pack of packs! Just the sheer novelty of that would be hard for me to pass up.
Including sales tax–but minus my discount at Target–it came out to $10–a cool $3.33 per pack. Worth it? Probably not. But then again, Jonathan Toews of my Chicago Blackhawks is on the card wrapper. Would “Tazer” steer me wrong?
These shiny, foil-y cards never look good when scanned, so I only scanned what I deemed the “best” card from each pack:
Pack 1
Krejci gets “best card status” from this pack because I know some guy who blogs about him.
Pack 2
A Triple Diamond card seeded 1 in every 4 packs, I beat the odds by getting one in the 3 packs I purchased. Plus, it is always great to get a card of a retired great like “Ducky.”
Pack 3
Hmmmm….none of these guys really stand out to me, so I’ll arbitrarily pick Abdelkader as the best card in the pack because it is colorful.
The backs of each card are actually pretty well laid-out. I guess I’m a sucker for symmetry.
The back accommodates up to 5 lines of stats. As much as I prefer complete statistics, I almost expect these kinds of sets to only show a few years.
I don’t know if this is a set that I will collect. Retail packs suck, and a hobby box goes for $90 to $100–but their only upside seems to be jersey cards or parallels, neither of which I am particularly fond of.
I purchased a pack of 2009-10 Upper Deck MVP hockey cards the other day. $1.99 (plus tax) gets you 8 cards. That’s pretty good, considering that a pack of Fleer Ultra only nets you 5 cards for that price, while an 8-card pack of Upper Deck costs $1 more at $2.99. Fittingly, last year’s Stanley Cup MVP Evgeni Malkin is on the MVP card wrapper. Anyway, on to the cards!!!
Card #248, Jarome Iginla, Calgary Flames – Getting “iggy” with it. A good way to start off this pack. Not only is the guy a superstar, but he’s an Olympian too. 2010 will be his third Olympic tournament.
Overall, this was a pretty sweet pack. Some superstars and some Olympians, and a rookie card.
My biggest problem with Upper Deck MVP is the shiny foil silver facsimile autograph on the front of each card. I collect autograph cards TTM, but I don’t like getting MVP cards signed because they already have a pre-printed ‘graph on it…and that just looks silly when you get a real autograph on it.
I can also do without all the other shiny stuff. The Upper Deck logo in the corner I can live with, but the MVP logo should have been smaller. Instead, that garish blob of silver becomes the first thing your eye notices.
But believe it or not, I still like these cards. They’re pretty good looking (for MVP, anyway). Hey, at least Upper Deck retired that shield-type design that they used every year since 2006.
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.
1 Limited-to-100 Parallel: Dimitry Kulikov, numbered 069/100. Great…now I got the regular and parallel versions of this guy.
I’ve had this pack of 2009-10 Fleer Ultra for a few weeks now, and finally got around to opening it. Let’s see what my $1.99 ($2.20 with Chicago sales tax) nets me…
Card #114, Mikkel Boedker, Phoenix Coyotes – Despite watching a ton of Coyotes games last year, I don’t have an opinion on this guy one way or another. I’m not a huge fan of sets that flip-flop between vertical and horizontal photos, either.
Card #66, Tomas Vokoun, Florida Panthers – It looks like Vokoun is being screened by the Fleer Ultra logo.
Card #34, Christobal Huet, Chicago Blackhawks – Hey, one of those Gold Medallion cards. Parallel inserts suck–especially when you get one in every single pack. That means you’d have to buy 50 packs instead of 40 if you were going to try to complete the 200-card base set. Of course, Upper Deck knows this fact. As for the card itself, the photo is from the 2009 Winter Classic, so that makes it 10% cooler.
Card #110, Scott Hartnell, Philadelphia Flyers – I’m not sure why the Nashville Predators traded away this guy. Oh yeah–because his contract was about to expire. By the way, I’ve never been a fan of the black Flyers uniforms.
Card #236, Peter Regin, Ottawa Senators – An elusive Ultra Rookie card. You get one in every six packs. Too bad it had to be this one. It’s hard to get excited about–or even try to build–the rookie subset if it is just a bunch of leftovers from last year.
One thing I dig about these cards is that they show all of the player’s stats. Not sure how it deals with the stats of a super veteran like Mike Modano or Chris Chelios, but the layout looks like it can accommodate 20 seasons or so.
The back of the Gold Medallion parallel cards replace the big uniform number in the lower right with a “Gold Medallion” insignia.
Like most other sets with “hard-to-get-rookies,” I might just wait until I can find a base set in the $5 to $10 range. Then again, I did buy a jumbo pack too. If I get around to opening it, I’ll post the highlights from that too.
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.
I recently won a complete set of 2009-10 O-Pee-Chee hockey cards on eBay, including all short-printed Rookies and Legends cards.
I also bought some packs–specifically one rack pack and one blaster box. It may seem pointless to buy packs if you already have a complete set. But if I want to be the world’s best hockey card blogger (dare to dream!), then I have to experience all aspects of the hobby…including the Sisyphean task of buying and opening packs.
Dave at Waxaholic recently wrote a 2009-10 box breakdown, so I’ll skip doing that too and talk about a related topic: the cost of building a 2009-10 O-Pee-Chee set. Please note that my examples do not account for sales tax, since it varies from state to state / province to province.
Option One: Rack Packs
This is the way to go if you only want to build the 500-card base set. A rack pack contains 31 base cards and 1 short-print–either a Marquee Rookies or Legends card. Your cost per card boils down to 15.6 cents each.
You’d need to buy 17 rack packs (17 x 31 = 527 base cards) to get enough cards to make a complete set. Of course, a few of those might end up being other inserts, like team checklists or Canadian Heroes. Most likely, you will not get all 500 cards you need for a base set; you’ll probably end up with some double or triples, falling short of a complete base set.
The good news is that you will easily be able to trade those 17 short prints that you end up with. Collectors trying to get cards 501-600 will gladly trade you 5 or more base cards for one of your short-prints.
Option Two: Blaster Boxes
These are the types of boxes you find at Target, Toys R Us and Wal-mart. A $20 blaster box has 14 six-card packs. 14 x 6 = 84 cards – a cost of 23.8 cents per card. A blaster box will net you 62 base cards, 7 short-prints and 15 inserts–give or take.
At a cost of $20 each, 9 blaster boxes gets you 558 base cards, 63 short-prints and 135 inserts. You’ll spend $180, will fall short of getting all of the short-prints, and again most likely won’t get one copy of each base card. At the same time, you’ll have a lot of inserts that you could probably trade away for the rest of the base or short-prints you need.
Option Three: Hobby Boxes
Hobby boxes have 36 six-card packs. My local shop sells them for $70, and the best price I can find online (including shipping) is $60. Without checking every single online store, card shop and eBay auction, let’s just say a hobby box sells for $65.
The only upside to buying hobby boxes is that you vastly increase your chances of getting a jersey or autograph card. In fact, you are three times more likely to get such a card from a hobby pack vs. a retail pack.
Should the allure of the possibility of getting one of these cards be enough to sway you to go the hobby box route, you would need to buy three boxes to get 486 base cards (plus 54 short-prints and 108 inserts). Four boxes gets you 648 base, 72 short-prints and 144 inserts–hopefully, one of them is an autograph.
Option Four: Buy a Complete Set
OK, technically this is not “building a set”, but it is by far the cheapest method. I got my set for $91 shipped. Looking at eBay auctions during the last two weeks, a base set sells for around $60 shipped, and a full set (1-600) for $110. Some dealers have even put together “master sets” that contain all base, short-printed and insert cards.
No, you don’t get to open pack after pack. You don’t get the glimmer of hope for a game used or autograph card. But you also don’t end up trying to track down the last 26 cards you need, or with figuring out with what to do with your duplicates (I hear some bike spokes calling…)
On a related note, I plan on posting a review of this set in about a week or so. I have a final paper and a final presentation–both about cyborgs–due in a week for one of my grad school classes. So the hockey card talk will be at a minimum the next few days until I get all my schoolwork behind me 🙂
I’ve seen these TriStar Hidden Treasures hockey cards floating around for a few years now, and have avoided them like the H1N1 Virus. Sure, they put an alluring (if you can call it that) photo of the 1951-52 Parkhurst Gordie Howe rookie card on the wrapper, along with several other small pics of desirable vintage hockey cards. But we all know that this pack will contain mostly Pro Set, Score and other worthless, overproduced hockey cards from the 1990s. Feeling thrifty, I purchased a pack–a whopping 99 cents–to see what I’d get:
2001-02 Upper Deck Victory #161 – Josef Stumpel
Wow, a card that isn’t from the 1990s. That was kind of surprising, given that I was expecting only cards from 1990 to 1995.
2001-02 Upper Deck Victory #189 – Patrice Brisebois
Two Victory cards in the same pack? What is this–a pack of Victory?
1996-97 Pinnacle Zenith #126 – Bryan Berard
Oooooh, shiny! Plus, it’s not a Victory card.
1994-95 Upper Deck #57 – Gilbert Dionne
The surprised look on Dionne’s face says it all.
1991-92 Score Canadian #346 – Dominik Hasek
Paydirt! I was expecting to get a lame card from the early 1990s, but instead I got one of the best. Hey–any card with a “Beckett Value” of $2.00 from the early 1990s is a darn good card. The TriStar wrapper claims that you get one star card per pack. Hasek is obviously the star in this pack, but it sure was nice that it just also happened to be his rookie card.
Overall, this pack gave me exactly what I expected–five undesirable hockey cards. Or, I guess you could say four undesirable hockey cards and the Hasek RC, which was a nice surprise. But I won’t be buying any more packs of these anytime soon. I’d recommend skipping this product altogether. But if you really want to pay a dollar for five useless cards…well, I got about 20,000 such cards that I’ll gladly sell to you.
