2019-20 Parkhurst Hockey: Three Blaster Boxes 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)

It was Boxing Day at Walmart and I was in the area, so I figured I'd stop to see which, if any, hockey card boxes were on sale; it turns out the 2019-20 Parkhurst blaster boxes from Upper Deck were nearly half off - at $19.99 instead of $34.95 - so I went ahead and picked up... three boxes.

Instead of following in last year's footsteps and making this a semi-"prime" set, UD decided to scale the Parkhurst brand - if not its price tag, which went up a couple of dollars per box - back into less glossy and more low-range ballparks, with a feel to the hand that is reminiscent of Panini's take on Score cards; the base cards do keep the general look and greeniness of the Parkhust modern era, however:

As far as statistics go, only the last season and the player's career statistics are featured on the backs of cards, but at least every player gets a short blurb. What's really cool for autograph seekers like myself is the fact that Parkhurst is the first brand to feature players who switched teams in the summertime in their new uniforms:

Out of 36 packs and 360 total cards, I pulled a fair amount of insert cards, including eight All-Stars (pictured below are Erik Karlsson, Sidney Crosby, Connor McDavid and Patrick Kane, missing are two each of Auston Matthews and Nikita Kucherov):

You'll notice the players are wearing their All-Star Game jerseys, but the stats on the back are of the regular season; perhaps ASG stats would have been a nice touch here.

I also landed 36 "regular" rookie cards, including the four pictured below - Nick Suzuki, Noah Dobson, Kevin Bloyle and Jack Hughes - plus Blake Lizotte, Will Borgen, Teddy Blueger, Karson Kuhlman, Carsen Twarynski, Nico Sturm, Nikita Gusev, Tobias Bjornfot, Jacob Middleton, Zach Senyshyn, Barrett Hayton, Dominik Kubalik, Rudolfs Balcers, Josh Teves, Mario Ferraro, Joel L'Espérance (twice), Adam Johnson (twice), Hughes (again), Kole Sherwood (twice), Taro Hirose, Dante Fabbro (twice), Erik Brannstrom, Filip Zadina (twice), Carl Grundstrum, Victor Olofsson, Ville Heinola and Max Veronneau:

As is customary in this day and age, there were also "Silver" versions of the base cards (Nazem Kadri, Ryan Pulock, Dylan Strome, Brock Boeser, Aaron Ekblad, Jason Zucker and Andrei Svechnikov):

There were also Silver inserts of Crosby, Kuhlman and Vitaly Abramov:

And since you can't have Silver without Gold, I landed three of those as well, rookies Ryan Kuffner and Max Jones, as well as the base card of Nicklas Backstrom:

As per years past, a lot of rookies also found their way into the Prominent Prospects sub-set:

You can see via the Suzuki card that the picture used on these cards is the same as that of the "regular" rookie card, but used differently; other pulls in that sub-set: Rasmus Sandin, Adam Fox, Ilya Mikheyev, Zadina, Dobson, Trent Frederic, and Alexandre Texier. These cards have a nice, rigid feel and are all-foil.

A nice semi-foil sub-set is Hail Storm, as can be attested by the cards featuring Vladimir Tarasenko, Brent Burns, Elias Petterson and Johnny Gaudreau:

A returning sub-set is View From The Ice, rendering stunning photographs of Drew Doughty, Nathan MacKinnon and Connor McDavid via foil treatment:

And, last but not least in the foil inserts, the Parkies, featuring McDavid, Ryan Poehling, John Tavares, Matt Murray, Alexander Radulov, Alex Ovechkin, Zadina and Jonathan Marchessault:

I wasn't all that impressed with the first few packs and halfway through my first box, I was seriously doubting the relevance of my purchase - and the collation is pretty weak, as I have a bunch of doubles - but the fact that the cards aren't overly glossy and will be easy-ish to get signed felt more and more like a plus as the break went on, and the plethora of inserts just seemed to add to that as I kept digging.

This has turned into a solid 8/10.

2018-19 Parkhurst Hockey 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)

Well, they've finally made the Big Time!

I usually buy this series as a means to acquire many cards that I can get signed, but the 2018-19 Parkhurst set by Upper Deck finally feels like a quality set: the cards are thicker than in the past, the design drifted from the usual green-based contour, the player selection remains decent and the sub-sets are original!

What an improvement!

First off, here is what the regular-issue cards look like:

They're reminiscent of old Victory or Topps Total sets, just a tad glossier.

Among the usual sub-sets, I pulled twelve Rookie cards: Maxime Comtois, Brady Tkachuk, Isac Lundestrom, Tomas Hyka, Dylan Sikura, Anthony Cirelli, Casey Mittelstadt, Robert Thomas, Oskar Lindblom, Henrik Borgstrom, Maxim Mamin and Brett Howden:

I also landed six All-Star Game cards, of Anze Kopitar, Pekka Rinne, Jack Eichel, Braden Holtby, Auston Matthews and Connor McDavid:

I found it a bit weird that the All-Star cards showed the same five years' worth of basic statistics as the regular-issue cards when they could have shown All-Star Game stats instead, but I guess UD had other things in mind.

More, uh, original inserts included Original 6: Past, Present & Future, of which I pulled Jonathan Toews:

Don't get fooled by the scan, this one is actually a silver foil, not predominantly blue, as is the Parkhurst Permits series (again, Toews):

There was another sub-set of rookies dubbed Prominent Prospects, of which I lucked into Eeli Tolvanen, Brady Tkachuk and Dillon Dube:

For these as for the rest of the set, whenever a card also has a picture on the back, it's the same picture as the front, but with a different crop.

One set that looks cool but is just a pretext to feature the same stars in different angles is View From The Ice, although the signed versions (which I didn't pull) look even better:

These would feel at home in Upper Deck's Tim Hortons sets... That's an extra card of Alex Ovechkin, Jonathan Toews and Auston Matthews.

The most original insert is Tis The Season, as can be seen on this Auston Matthews card:

There are also two Checklist cards (and I got both); they feature Ovechkin and Matthews.

You probably see where I'm going with this...

Pro: great hand feel.
Con: too glossy.
Pro: great player selection.
Con: awful collation, as can be attested by all the Toews and Ovie cards (and way too many Matthews cards).
Pro: finally worth $30 for 120 cards (12 packs of 10 cards).
Con: 220 total cards in the regular set, so why bother with TWO checklists?

It's a terrific buy. If I had $30 to spend on more cards this year (and just $30, not a multiple of $30), this is the box I'd spend it on. It exceeded my expectations and, in doing so, surpassed Artifacts and O-Pee-Chee as the affordable set to buy. This is a solid 8.5/10.