UD Series 2 11/12: 2 Box Breaks

Over the past month I picked up 2 boxes of UD srs II. It is a weaker product from last year's srs II in respect to it not short-printed and hence loaded with big hits in each box; last year I was pulling parallel young guns in almost every box, not to mention auto and buy backs. Compared to other years of srs II, besides the 10/11 edition, the 11/12 product stands as one of the better years. The card design is very attractive, with bar-none the best photography found in any sport card product, much like this year's srs I UD. In continuation from previous year's UD srs II, each box reveals one rookie jersey, one regular player's jersey, and of course the rest of the year's crop of young guns cards. I'm not sure about who exactly is included in this product's young guns list, but I do know (from pulling the card) that Zack Kassian is one of the rookies. In addition to the young guns rookies, srs II again delivers an update to the Victory product. While I do not buy the Victory product, I do enjoy pulling the update cards from the srs II product because it adds some diversity to the box. The addition of Victory cards adds more rookie cards to each box than found in the srs I product which does not include update cards. New to this year's srs II are update cards for OPC and MVP. I really like the idea of adding these other update cards as it adds that much more diversity to what is being pulled and multiplies the number of rookies one finds in a box. Despite this year's srs II not being as loaded as last year's, UD still put out a solid product that is very fun to break and provides a decent bang for your buck.

Young Guns: The box wrapper suggests you will find 6 Young Guns per box, and upon opening my two boxes I found exactly that in each. I also did not pull any duplicate rookies from the two boxes, which is always a relief when trying to build a set! I didn't find any huge names, but it is pretty common that the bigger rookies are seeded in the first UD series.

Canvas Parallel Set: I pulled 6 canvas base cards, 1 young guns card, and 1 retired stars sp card. The base and rookie canvas cards all have the same look as those released through the srs I product. I really like this parallel set and is something unique to the UD srs product. Last year UD had retro parallel sets and it would seem that the addition of parallel sets will continue. My only complaint is that the words 'young guns' on the canvas cards blends too much into the background and I would prefer to see the words stand out more with the usage of a lighter or brighter color or with the use of some foil. As a side note, the retired star card I pulled (from a separate box than the young guns) was of Gretzky. I knew this was a sp card and wasn't something I particularly collect. I after pulling the card I quickly sold it on ebay for a nice little sum that greatly offset the price of the box. The selling of this card demonstrates that the srs II product does produce cards of value! *on a side note, I only received one UD Exclusives serial numbered parallel card. I realize on the box that they only fall 1 per 2 boxes, but I think that they should up it to every box as it does add a little bit more of excitement to opening the product.

Gretzky Canvas sp that I sold.

Subsets: The srs I UD products introduced a new, 1950's theme for the Hockey Heroes cards. This was used instead of highlighting one particular player and UD will continue this theme of highlighting decades in chronological order until at least next year with the 70's and 80's. The srs II, logically, gives us the 1960's theme set and again the cards look great; there are on average 2 cards inserted per box. UD wrote that inserted into packs will be hard-signed Hockey Heroes but it would seem that these will be incredibly scarce; maybe on 10 or so of each signed card. The Hockey Heroes set had become quite bland and overused for the past two decades. It is very refreshing to see a new take on this subset instead of taking the easy way out of not producing them at all.

Jersey Cards: The regular jersey cards have the same design as the srs I product, which is sharp looking with the usage of a geometric pattern and medium-sized photo of the player. The jersey swatch is of an average size for a product of this price range -thumb nail size- and features some strong players; I pulled a Tanguay and Dadonov card. The Rookie Materials cards have perhaps the best design out of any of the previous year's UD srs II products. The jersey swatch is thumb-nail size and put into a 'R' shaped window. The design is simple and has a small player photo on the left with an additional close-up on his face in the right corner. The cards look really great and as per usual, fun to pull.

Red card is the OPC Update parallel.

Update Sets: As I mentioned above, this year's srs II product offers three different update sets! You have the MVP, OPC, and Victory update sets included. The Victory cards pull more frequently than the OPC, which pull more frequently than the MVP. The differences in pull rates provides another level of depth to this product that I really enjoyed. I also enjoyed pulling big name rookies that were featured in the srs I product, and hence not available in the srs II young guns list. Most notably of these rookies is Nugent-Hopkins, whom I pulled a rookie of from the OPC and MVP sets! In addition to the Update cards are the parallels of them, which are featured for the Victory and OPC but I am unsure of for the MVP.

2011/12 UD SRS II is another strong product that sits well with its previous year's releases. The cards look very sharp and I greatly enjoy the additions and change ups from the previous year's releases. On the downside, it seems that the boxes are not as loaded or short-printed as the 2010/11 release, meaning that the 11/12 product will not be as collectible, however, also easier to collect because it won't sell out as fast. Another difference is that two boxes of the 11/12 product gave me a full set of the base cards, unlike the 10/11 product that took almost or over 4 boxes to complete. Base cards are not usually worth much, but to me it is nice to be able to complete a set with only a few boxes purchased.

In comparison to what else has come out for the 11/12 hockey market, UD srs II is one of the best products. You get a reasonable bang for your buck and it will leave you with a few bucks left to buy a new box to store your cards in! Much like the 11/12 srs I product, this product deserves a solid and fresh pickle!

Ultimate 06 /07: 1 pack

A long time ago I picked up a pack of Ultimate 06 /07. This is a middle of the road priced series of hockey cards from UD that has the same price point as a box of cards, but instead you receive 1 pack. Although it is only one pack, you are guaranteed at least 2 hits, plus a rookie card, that in some ways is the equivalent of the hits you would receive in a box of equally priced cards. Overall this can be a hit or miss product but for whatever reason I have had some good luck with this product as I have purchased in sum 1 pack of 06 /07, 1 pack of 08/09, and 2 packs of 10/11 Ultimate; I have no idea why I only purchase the product once every two years. As the 10/11 product recently came out, I felt I would post what I received in my previous packs before delving into what I got from the most recent product.

What I got:

Base: The base cards have a very elegant design with the hockey player removed from his original context and slapped onto a background with geometric and organic designs. The designs have a muted color scheme that allows the player's picture to be brought to focus, with parts of the player (hand & foot in this case), bleeding off the edges. Here I pulled a Wayne Gretzky wearing his Oilers jersey, which is perhaps the best base card you could possibly pull. The card is numbered out of 699, which isn't a bad print run for a base set. The weird thing about this card is that Gretzky's stats on the back of the card do not feature his years with the Oilers but instead his final years with the Kings to Rangers. Odd to say the least. Despite this, it is a great looking card.

Rookies: Here I pulled a Ryan Shannon rookie numbered out of 699. Again, not a bad print run as it does not feature an auto or jersey element to the card. The background differs a little too dramatically from the base set as it is very dark with a blah looking beige color and some slapped on gold colored foil along the lateral margins. Not a great player on a very blah looking card. This is probably the weakest element to the 06/07 product.

Autograph: I pulled an Ultimate Signatures of Jordan Staal that is not serial numbered. I feel that every card from a one pack product like Ultimate should always be serial numbered, so this is definitely a strike against Ultimate. This was Staal's rookie year, so pulling his auto dramatically improves this pack's excitement level. The background and overall design is dark like the rookie discussed above, but the auto is big and placed over a white with grey elements background. This allows for the auto (signed in blue) really stand out.

Patch: The leading card from the pack was a Evgeni Malkin Ultimate Patch numbered out of 75. This is a really stellar card as this was Malkin's rookie year. The patch is quite nice with two breaks and two colors, although the patch is incredibly small and should be much larger for a product such as this. The major downside to this card is that one of the corners is scuffed from the manufacturing process. High-end product like this (even with a middle-range price tag) should have high manufacturing standards. I understand a low-end product like O-Pee-Chee having some defect and error cards, but you should never find such a card when the product has only one pack per box. Great card but aggrivating that it has a defect.

Overall the Ultimate 06 /07 product is a nice looking set, with some strikes of dark looking backgrounds and small windows for patches. I pulled some excellent names from my pack, but the defect left me wanting more.