Old School: Upper-Deck 99/00 Gold Reserve

A few weekends ago I went in search of different card stores in the Calgary area. It happened to be the Free Card Day where participating card stores were giving away packs of the Canadian National Card series, which prompted the search for more card stores in order to acquire the full set. In this quest I came across a small shop that had boxes of older Upper-Deck cards for about $20 each. From their selection I decided on a box of 99/00 Upper-Deck Gold Reserve which I had never purchased before. The cards look OK and I pulled the entire set including sp's from the one box. The drawback was that I was left with numerous doubles, off cut cards, and zero subset or chase cards. Then again, the box was only $20.

Base Cards: From the one box I pulled all 135 of the base cards. The cards have a shiny foil design on the front with the player taking up the vast majority of the photo. The photos are fairly generic of action shots and often have the player's image slightly bleeding off the side of the card. Some of the shots are also off-center and the overall composition is uninspiring. The backs of the card are incredibly dark with a dark blue back ground and tiny, sometimes blurry white lettering. The cards are often off cut and the information is fills up the majority of the card whereby an off cut becomes more pronounced because the text is frequently cut away. This is probably one of the worst card designs I've seen but the product is cheap and it is fun to see older players when they were still actively playing.

Star Power: This is a short-printed set that continues the base card numbering. The design is very similar to the base cards and suffers from all of the same problems. The redeeming feature of the set is how it highlights older players such as Shanahan and Sakic.

Young Guns: Again the design is the same as the other cards and suffers all the same problems. What is special about these young guns, however, is that the Sedin twins and Luongo are featured in the set. It is great pulling their young guns but it is odd that their rookie cards were actually produced a few years earlier in other products. It's also annoying that the cards were over produced so while these are three of the biggest stars in hockey, these particular cards are virtually worthless. Nonetheless, it is fun to pull a young gun of these top players in today's hockey.

Upper-Deck Gold 99/00 is a somewhat fun product to break as a box provides you the full set of cards, including the sp's. The overall design is too dark and pretty bland, with numerous off-cut and damaged cards; it also doesn't help that the card stick together when opening the packs. Regardless of over production, damages, and dark designs, it is still fun to pull some classic players and suedo rookies of the Sedin twins and Luongo.

UD Srs II 10/11: Buyback

Today I picked up a bunch of baseball and hockey cards because of a boxing week sale at my nearby card store. I'll be bringing up a number of posts from this box and pack breaking extravaganza, and here I begin with 6 packs from the Upper-Deck srs II 10/11 product that I opened.

I keep buying UD srs II 10/11 because of the high-frequency of case and box break cards that you pull. I've pulled some seriously great cards such as 2 black parallel Victory rookies (short printed to about 5) and an exclusive Parjavi UD Young Gun rookie serial numbered to 100. So with the sale I decided to try another 6 packs. Amazing I only pulled two duplicate Young Gun rookies while finding 1 that I previously didn't have. I also pulled 3 Victory rookies that I didn't have, making that 6 rookies from 6 packs! Pretty awesome odds considering rookies fall roughly 1 in 4 packs. On top of these rookies, I also pulled an UD Exclusives base (of Chris Kelly) numbered 87/100 and another Young Guns, this time a UD Exclusives Ryan Reaves rookie numbered 40/100. This blows the odds out of the water considering Exclusives fall one per box!

Buyback

The big hit of the box was a case break Buyback card. These cards are previously released Upper-Deck cards that have been purchase through the secondary market by UD to be re-released in current products. I had only pulled one buyback before in an OPC 08/09 box, which was a signed 07/08 OPC rookie. This time around the buyback was an Ilya Kovalchuk jersey card numbered 73/100 from their 07/08 Black Diamond product. The card is unaltered and was packed within a plastic sleeve and had a Buyback certificate inserted alongside it (pictured left). The card itself looks OK, but it is lackluster in that it was not signed like my previous buyback. Further, the card itself seems pretty random and I don't understand of why UD would go through such a hassle of buying back an average jersey card. The whole thing isn't helped either by me not being a Kovalchuk fan -I actually loathe the player and will probably sell it, back to the secondary market!

Upper-Deck Series I Hockey: 2011/12

Upper-Deck series I & II hockey are perhaps the best sets available for this sport. It is an affordable product where the base set is easy to build and rookies and subsets add an element of chase, not to mention some very attractive case breaks. While this is traditionally a great product, it has become stagnant over the years and UD has addressed this by offering three types of parallel cards, more types of case breaks, and overhauled the Hockey Heroes subset which is a mainstay of this product. On all of these revamped fronts the 2011/12 product has hit a bulls-eye, however the base cards are perhaps the most poorly designed ever.

The other day I picked up 6 packs of UD srs I. My superstition, which is shared by many card collectors, is that I always grab the last few packs in a box. Again, this was a case where I wasn't disappointed!

Base: As per usual with UD srs products, we have here a 200 base card set, with another 200 base card set tacked on with the srs II. The base cards feature a few of the key players from each team and nothing else too fantastic. This year's base cards are no exception, but for perhaps some of the best photos I have ever seen in this product: loved how Getzlaf is turned into a pretzel in his photo! My criticism for this year's base set is that the front design is very bland, with an uninspired silver outline puck shaped area that presents the player's name at the bottom. The graphics around this puck shape are also very bland and blend into background, which does feature a great photo that is not obscured by the graphics or text. The other weak note is that the backs of the cards have little to no colour, making them again very bland. The text stands out well and even features french translations. The worst part of the backs is that there is a massive negative space between the stats and blurb about the player. This negative space is non-existent on players who have been in the league for more than 8 or so years, but on sophomore players this space is massive! I don't know if UD didn't have enough to say about each player or if someone was too lazy to move the text up a centimeter to match where the stats ended. Either way, I greatly disliked the look of the base cards.

Hockey Heroes: I pulled one of the Hockey Heroes cards and they look superb! For series I, the subset features the great players of the 1950's, and here I found a Bobby Hull card. I love the graphics and the whole concept of this subset! This is a must collect set for sure.

UD Exclusives: I pulled on parallel card from the 6 packs. These parallels are numbered out of 100 and fall roughly one per box. I didn't find a great parallel card (Zidlicky), but it was still nice to pull one. On the side of criticizing the base cards, this parallel base differs from the regular base only in the addition of the gold foil, numbering, and statement that it is a parallel card. Again, the design is weak and the gold foil does little to improve it.

UD Game Jersey: While not a favourite player, Ilya Kovalchuk is a star player and I was delighted to pull it! The jersey card is pretty much the same as every year except that the design is different. The design differs in the geometric patterns that appear behind the player's photo and in the shape of the jersey window. As per usual, these memorabilia cards are not numbered, but do look pretty sharp. On average these cards fall 2 per box.

Young Guns UD Canvas: I pulled a second short print but un-numbered parallel. This time it was of a rookie card instead of the regular base. The card has a textured front, similar to a canvas, and is printed on thicker stock. The design is also slightly altered from the regular edition rookie cards. This fall one per 2 or so boxes, so I was definitely lucky to pull one of these.

Overall UD srs I is a fun-as-expected product to break. I definitely lucked out on the cards I pulled, and will be returning to this product shortly. I love the price point and the canvas cards are very cool looking; perhaps even better than last year's retro rookie cards. The only down fall of this product is that the base cards have a horrible design, but the rookie and subset cards are what most people collect this product and I am really no different. This is a sweet if slightly soggy pickle of a product!