Category: Box / Pack Breaks

2021-22 Upper Deck Series One Hobby Box Break

The one set that I look forward to is Upper Deck’s flagship release — a.k.a. Upper Deck Series One, Upper Deck Series Two, and for the first time last year, Upper Deck Extended Series. This season, I had to look forward a bit longer, as production delays pushed Upper Deck Series One’s release date from November 2021 to March 2022. 

But it’s March and I finally got my hands on a hobby box. Like last year, a hobby box of Upper Deck Series One has 24 packs. Each pack has eight cards. Let’s take a look and see what was inside my box of 2021-22 Upper Deck Series One Hockey. 

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2020-21 Upper Deck AHL Box Break #2

I have been a fan and collector of minor league hockey cards ever since I bought a ProCards Saginaw Hawks team set in 1989. I enjoy cards of future NHL players, as well as “borderline” players who are sometimes called up to the parent club but never got their own hockey card.

Needless to say, minor league hockey cards have evolved a lot over the past 30+ years. They no longer use dark photos and have plain, black-and-white card backs. Upper Deck’s 2020-21 American Hockey League card set is every bit as good in quality as its other hockey card sets, with crisp, color photography, glossy coating, and silver foil. At first glance, you might mistake these for Upper Deck Series One, save for the fact that they picture AHL players instead of NHL players. 

Last week, I opened a box of 2020-21 AHL cards; you can read about that here, as that break gives more details about the set. Let’s see if this box is better, worse, or about the same as my first break. 

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2020-21 Upper Deck AHL Box Break

2021-22 has been a strange year for hockey card collectors. This season, there were still cards from the 2020-21 season coming out in the middle of the 2021-22 season. One such set is 2020-21 Upper Deck AHL, which features cards of future NHL prospects, as well as star players from the second-best hockey league in the world. 

2020-21 Upper Deck AHL hockey cards costs around $50 for a 12-pack box. Each pack has 10 cards. Each box promises six “Star Rookie” cards, an autographed card, a numbered parallel, and an additional chase card. 

I recently opened a box of 2020-21 Upper Deck AHL. Here is what I got. 

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2021-22 MVP Hockey Box Break

Hockey cards for the 2021-22 season finally started hitting store shelves at the end of 2021. First up was 2021-22 Upper Deck MVP Hockey, the company’s “lower-end” card set that isn’t too expensive to buy or too difficult to complete. It also doesn’t have any rookies from the 2021-22 season; the 30 rookie cards are of players who made their debut in the abbreviated 2021 season. A box of MVP has 20 packs with eight cards per pack. The current online price of MVP is around $50 for a hobby box. I recently got a hobby box. Here is what I found inside. 

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Video: 2020-21 Pro Set Memories Hockey Box Break

Sal Barry breaks a box of 2020-21 Pro Set Memories Hockey. Released in August of 2020, a box of 2020-21 Pro Set Memories Hockey has two autographed cards of hockey legends and two “buybacks” of old Pro Set Hockey cards from the 1990s. A box currently costs around $150. 

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2020-21 Allure Hockey Box Break

Not long before the 2021-22 season started, Upper Deck released 2020-21 Allure Hockey. All of Upper Deck’s hockey card releases have been pushed back due to the COVID-19 pandemic, so it is sometimes an odd feeling to open last year’s hockey cards during this season — especially when you pull a card of someone who has since changed teams.

Anyway, a hobby box of 2020-21 Allure Hockey contains eight packs. Each pack contains eight cards. A box is guaranteed to have one jersey card and one autographed card. Boxes of Allure debuted at around $160 per box but are now selling for around $140 from online retailers based in the U.S. 

I’m a bit late to the party here, but I finally had a chance to open a box of 2020-21 Allure Hockey. Let’s see what I got. 

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2020-21 Upper Deck Extended Series Hobby Box Break #3

Can you have too much of a good thing? Maybe so. My third and final box — for now, anyway — of 2020-21 Upper Deck Extended Series gave me some new surprise insets, as well as inserts that I’ve already grown a bit tired of.

As much as I love the retro-esque inserts in Extended Series, I seem to get the same types over and over, while there are other types of inserts that I have yet to see. And I don’t mean that I’m getting doubles of any insert cards. Collation for Extended Series has been great overall, and I did get a few types of insert cards that I didn’t get from my previous two boxes. 

So, let’s take a look and see what surprises were inside my third box of Extended Series.

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2020-21 Upper Deck Extended Series Hobby Box Break #2

Since I am “all in” on building a set of 2020-21 Upper Deck Extended Series, I know that I will need at least two boxes to build the 200-card base set. Extended Series also has a plethora of insert sets designed to look like popular late 1990s Upper Deck releases such as HoloGr-FX, Ovation and Ultimate Victory, among others. (Click here for my first box break of 2020-21 Upper Deck Extended Series and for more general information about this set.) 

Since the inserts you get in 2020-21 Upper Deck Extended Series can vary from box to box, I’ve decided to post another box break so you can see some of the inserts that I didn’t get in my first box. 

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2020-21 Upper Deck Extended Series Hobby Box Break

I was excited when I learned that 2020-21 Upper Deck Extended Series — a.k.a. “Series 3” — was coming out this summer. The Upper Deck flagship set has been my favorite hockey card set to collect over the past 30 years, and I think that expanding the set from its usual 500 cards to 730 cards makes a great thing even better. 

Upper Deck Extended Series consists of 200 base cards and 30 Young Guns rookie cards — instead of the usual 50 Young Guns per series like there are in Series One and Series Two. A lot of the cards in the 200-card base set picture players from the 2020 NHL All-Star Game, which took place about six weeks before the league shut down in March 2020 due to COVID-19. Like Series One and Series Two, there are eight cards in a foil pack and 24 packs in a box.

Making Extended Series really appealing to myself and other old school hockey collectors is the inclusion of numerous insert sets based on popular sets from the late 1990s and early 2000s, such as HoloGr-FX and Ultimate Victory. 

I recently purchased a hobby box of 2020-21 Upper Deck Extended Series. Here is what I got. 

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2020-21 Upper Deck Series 1 Hobby Box Break

So much hype surrounded the release of 2020-21 Upper Deck Series One Hockey. The season hadn’t started yet, but that didn’t stop hockey card collectors (as well as speculators) from wanting to buy the latest release from Upper Deck — mainly in the hopes of finding a Young Guns rookie card of first-overall pick Alexis Lafreniere. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t hoping to get a Lafreniere rookie card — or three — as I opened numerous retail packs from blasters and “mega boxes” that I purchased at my local Target.

Unsuccessful with retail packs, I decided to try my luck with hobby boxes. While the odds of getting a Young Guns card are the same (1 in every 4 packs), there are more inserts in hobby packs, better odds at getting jersey cards and the chance of finding an autographed card. The price of a hobby box is higher, but the trade off is you get more inserts and a jersey card. 

A hobby box of 2020-21 Upper Deck Series One Hockey has 24 packs. Each pack has 8 cards. Here are the results of my first hobby box break of this set. 

Oh, and I must apologize in advance for the sheer amount of Rangers in this box break; it seems like practically every insert card I got was of a Rangers’ player. 

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