Saturday, August 18, 2018

2018-19 Upper Deck Hockey MVP Blaster Box Break

(team and product links go to sponsored Amazon products, player links go to related pages on my blog, news links go to source pages)

I wasn't on the lookout for this, seeing as we're closer to mid-August than the end of the month, but when I came across a blaster box of 21 (20+1) packs of Upper Deck's classic 2018-19 MVP set, I jumped on it.

You'll recall past years had three more packs, for 15 more cards total, but I can live with that. You still get over a hundred cards for $30 (plus taxes, which comes up to just under $35 in Québec, so probably $25 in the U.S. and Canada).

The base cards are pretty cool, as can be seen below, and I didn't get a single double in the entire box:
I got three "Puzzle Back" cards, two of which I believe will form Nathan MacKinnon's card:
The other one probably belongs to Sidney Crosby, meaning both players would hail from Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia:
I fell upon three Silver Scripts cards, none of which I will likely keep long-term:
I did get a bunch of rookie cards, one of which was of the "base" variety, of Dylan Sikura:
And (count 'em!) three Copper parallels, of Dominic Turgeon (Pierre's son), Joe Ricketts, and Adam Gaudette:
And there was one that it under the Player Credentials sub-set (i.e. Entry Level Access), of Ryan Donato:
And two players I'd take on my team any day in the "regular" Player Credentials sub-set, Jamie Benn and Brendan Gallagher:
Perhaps the coolest bub-set this year, though, is the 20th Anniversary Parallels, which takes the same picture and stats line as the regular-issue card but puts it in the inaugural 1998-99 MVP template, like these cards from Drew Doughty and Mathew Barzal:
Of note, the 20th Anniversary cards includes a blurb about the player on the back of the card that is absent from the base version.

As usual, this is far from a premium set, but its affordability makes collecting the base cards a perfect starting point for autograph seekers like myself.

I'll rate this one a solid 7/10.

No comments:

Post a Comment