Second Box of Score 2011/12

A few days ago I picked up second box of Score 11/12. The first box revealed an autographed rookie and a short printed rookie, along with a stack of nice looking base, glossy parallel, and subset cards. Score is one of the most affordable products in the realm of hockey cards and offers some good value. This second box left me scratching my head and was the opposite of what the first box offered.

The biggest problem with the second box was that I was left with a mountain of doubles. The product's base set includes 500 cards and an additional 50 rookies. A second box for a product with such a big base set should never leave you with a mountain of duplicates, but Score 11/12 did. Additionally, the second box even had duplicates within it -roughly 6 duplicate base cards and 1 duplicate rookie card. I really do not like finding duplicates within one box, let alone finding a mountain of duplicates for cards I busted from just one box previously! In the case of the rookies, I found a total of 17 rookies in the second box. Sixteen of these cards were duplicates from what I had previously pulled! This demonstrates poor random placement of cards in Score boxes. Also, I found 2 duplicate rookies in the second box itself. You should never find duplicate rookies in the same box, and I had never had this happen in last year's Score product. Overall I am not impressed with Score after busting this box!

Word glossy not included around #.

Upon looking at the glossy cards I pulled from the second box I noticed that not all of the cards said glossy on the back. Glossy cards from the 11/12 Score product should have the word glossy above and below the card number on the back, along with the front actually being glossy. I noticed that all of the Boston Bruins cards had the glossy front but did not have the word glossy on the back. I searched various web sites to see if this was a known error or perhaps a variant short print, but thus far I have not come across anything about this, except for a message board on Beckett cards where people think it is a misprint and seems to have occurred to all the glossy Boston cards.. It would seem that this is an error that occurred on all the Bruins' glossy cards. To me, this is a sign of poor quality.

I picked up roughly the same number of subset cards in the second box, expect did not find any NHL Shield Die-Cuts or First Goal Cards. I believe the Shield cards are not found in every box, much like the snow-dome of last year's product. However, I did find a Score B subset card which I believe falls one per every other box like the Shield cards. Score B is a nice looking card with a black and white photo of Brodeur on the front and a small blurb about him on the back, however I have no idea why this subset is called Score B. It seems pretty random. It seems even more out of place considering that all the other subsets have themes that are logical to what is shown on the card, for instance Making an Entrance depicts how marquee players are shown coming onto the ice prior to a home game.

Sateri Front

Sateri Back: # should be at top left.

The best card from the second box of Score was a short-printed Harri Sateri rookie card. This short print appears exactly the same as the other rookie cards but the number on the back is missing. According to various web sites, this is a purposeful error by Panini and were short printed to somewhere under 100. While it's nice to pull a short printed rookie, I'd much rather have it be stamped with a serial number, marked with a higher number like the Landeskog I pulled earlier, or have a completely different look to it (foil trim or different graphics).

Despite pulling a short printed rookie I am very disappointed with this second box of Score. The only saving grace is that the product is so cheap that I can afford to take another chance on it.