Upon realizing that the market is going crazy over
Alexis Lafrenière rookie cards - in a "
Pro Set signed
Patrick Roy mask card" kind of way, not just a "hey, it's a fun year", which makes me think the bubble will burst soon - and that
Upper Deck's
2020-21 Series 1 boxes might not be around for long and may see a dramatic increase in price, I shelled out the $129 for one, of the "Retail" variety. My first thought was that this was the best-looking flagship set in a long time:
I really like the full-frame pictures with the silver foil column with the player and team names and the fact that the backs show the complete career statistics.
As usual,
Upper Deck used an array of cool photography, including their classic wide angles:
There are also ice-level shots with regular lenses that capture the action well or make
Alex Ovechkin look like he weighs 350 pounds:
There are players in cool or awkward positions:
And there are nice, fun celebrations:
As a jersey enthusiast, I appreciate the chance of looking at the pretty ones that mark special occasions like outdoor games or milestone seasons:
Which means I have to suffer through the terrible ones as well:
But it's all worth it for the vintage jerseys:
As for as the usual chase sub-sets, just about one in every five packs had a
Young Guns rookie card, so I pulled
Olli Juolevi,
Nick Robertson,
Alex Belzile,
Reid Duke and
Jake Oettinger:
There were also three
Canvas cards, of
Nikita Gusev,
Elias Pettersson and
Jakub Vrana:
And because UD loves to mix-and-match, a
Canvas Young Guns card of
New York Rangers prospect
Vitali Kravtsov:
As is customary in my boxes, I pulled both
Checklist cards:
But at least I also got the
Young Guns Checklist, featuring teammates Lafrenière and Kravtsov:
I was also lucky enough to get an
UD Game Jersey card of
Viktor Arvidsson:
The design is pretty neat this year, incorporating the jersey swatch into the image of a stick, as if it were the tape, giving it a purpose of sorts.
The
Portraits are a bit of a mess, with
O-Pee-Chee-levels of ugliness, but instead of harking back to the 1960s and 1970s like OPC is wont to do, this is chock-full of 1989-1991 pretend-lasers and bright colours, making
Connor Hellebuyck,
Quinn Hughes,
Auston Matthews and
Matthew Tkachuk seem like they're in Sixth Grade:
A new sub-set is
Dazzlers, with firework/departtment store TV section foil designs meant to act as an epilepsy detector, here with
Tyler Seguin putting himself at risk to protect us (just kidding, UD, but there is a lot happening there):
Had that been all, I would have graded it as a near-perfect set, but the collation was awful. Apart from the insert which changed in every pack (a handful of packs did not contain any), no fewer than five of my packs had twins, which means that out of the 192 cards I bought, 35 were doubles, so 18% of the box. To put it another way, only 122 of the cards were unique - or 63.5%. Those are shitty odds at over $100 a pop, especially if the doubles are of
Jeff Carter wearing the ugliest
Los Angeles Kings jersey ever and similarly hard-to-appreciate cards.
That being said, I did get half a Lafrenière card, and I was pleasantly surprised at how much I liked the cards and how happy they made me feel.
This one is a solid 8.5/10.
Good job,
Upper Deck!
