28-Pack Break: 2014-15 MVP

Why not a round number, you might ask? Well, I'm kinda glad I didn't fork over that extra couple of bucks, all told, considering. I know I got the ''retail'' packs (5 cards) rather than the ''hobby'' ones (8 cards), which have less chances of pulling ''hits'' than I'd like, but it was a nice way to test what the new season had in store, with the first set of the year, Upper Deck's 2014-15 MVP - and to stack up on base cards featuring more current uniforms for players than last year's sets, should I mail some cards out in the next few weeks.

At $1.25 (plus tax) for 5 cards, it's likely to be the best deal this year, apart from O-Pee-Chee, who lost me with their awful-on-purpose designs.

The cards themselves look fine, with the UD logo switching sides depending on the angle of the picture; here are the base cards, of which I had 118 in total, including 14 doubles:

I also had double Checklist cards of Sidney Crosby:

I had one 3 Stars Of The Month sub-set card, featuring Anton Khudobin, Phil Kessel and Joe Pavelski:

And one 3 Stars Of The Week card featuring Taylor Hall, Semyon Varlamov and Max Pacioretty:

I had 15 Silver Script cards, which look like this:

They include P.K. Subban, Theoren Fleury, Tommy Wingels, Bryan Little, Mikkel Boedker, Matt Niskanen, Jeff Skinner, David Backes, Alexander Semin, Jason Pominville, Brayden Schenn, Brad Marchand, Darcy Kuemper and two of Marian Hossa.

I also had three Rookie cards, one of Calle Jarnkrok and these of Greg McKegg and Vladislav Namestnikov:

As for my hometown team, the Montréal Canadiens, in addition to the Subban Silver Script, I landed Tomas Plekanec, David Desharnais, and departed captain Brian Gionta.

I like that for its return as a stand-alone set, MVP decided to keep the facsimile autographs to the Silver Script inserts and left the base cards alone for collectors to be able to have signed on their own without them looking weird. The photography is pretty good, but I would have taken less space for the design, and bigger pictures.

I also don't understand why current players aren't enough and I had to pull that Fleury SS and a base card of Joe Sakic. Don't get me wrong - Sakic was my favourite skater growing up, but he retired six seasons ago. I would gladly have taken an up-and-coming second or third liner instead of retired veterans, particularly those who do not need the merchandise licensing revenue to pay their bills.

A double per other pack was also a bummer, and takes another point off my grade; when I posted initially, I thought I would give this product a good 7/10, but with the caveats of player selection, and the fact that Upper Deck's new logo is reminiscent of when the brand made Looney Tunes baseball cards in the early 1990s and looks a tad unprofessional, I had to revise my final note:

6/10