Has it been 35 Seasons Already?

Back during the 1991-92 season, Upper Deck released a few 8.5 x 11 cards including this one below which is for Devils fans and commemorates their 10th anniversary in the NHL. I can't remember all the other cards released but as you can see from this one, fans at the Blackhawks vs Devils game on December 21st 1991 would have received one of these cards. I'm not sure what happened to any extras or if there were other ways to get this card but giveaways like these are always cool in my opinion. I looked the game up on Hockey Reference and it looks like they battled to a 1-1 draw.  

That was of course 25 years ago which would make this their 35th anniversary and I curious to see if the Devils do anything to celebrate that this season or if the rebuild means we will just continue business as usual and maybe have something worth celebrating in 5 years.

1991-92 Upper Deck Devils vs Blackhawks Commemorative All-Star Sheet /24000

What I like about this sheet is you get a bunch of cards pictured that weren't apart of the 91-92 Upper Deck Set. What I also love is they are in *All-Star uniforms and players like Walt Poddubny and John MacLean are getting a little love. This card was a must have for me and when I found it on eBay I threw a bid at it and was the only bidder winning it for 0.99 plus shipping! This card is now framed in my office since it is a blank back card anyway and will soon be hanging on the wall once I finish decorating my office.


*Worth pointing out, if you look closely at the photos, the colour of the players gloves gives you an idea which team they were actually playing for in the NHL during the time the photo was taken. Walt was with the Leafs for example or Stastny was with the Nords.

When is a Henrique Auto not a Henrique Auto

The answer is right here:

12-13 SP Game Used Adam Henrique Auto  Alex Pietrangelo Auto

This card is one that definitely proves that sticker autos are a bad idea. I showed this one to Upper Deck and a fellow collector of Henriques. Thankfully the fellow collector was able to shed some light on it. Apparently they all came out this way and while the production was pretty limited but with all coming out of the factory this way it isn't like it is a one of a kind. Upper Deck has offered to have replace it of course which is great but the question is what would I get in return? If others have done this does it make this card more rare? I am faced with a tough choice and to complicate things more, I do like Alex Pietrangelo and I don't have any other autos of his.

What do you think I should do?

2012/13 SPx Jake Allen Autographed Rookie Jerseys /175

Part of keeping the hobby always fresh and fun is player prospecting. I love it when you can trade for, or buy a rookie really early before their careers bloom and then you find yourself owning a significant piece of cardboard a few years later. 

Many hockey writers are projecting that Jake Allen is going to have a break out year this season. You can't help but think the Blues are believing the same thing because they let Ryan Miller go after trading a small portion of the farm to get him late last year. Clearly the Blues feel between Brian Elliot and Jake Allen they have all the goaltending they require. 

Jake is a pretty good goalie thus far into his career with the highlight to this point likely being his silver medal at the World Juniors or being named CHL goalie of the year in 2010.  

2012/13 SPx Jake Allen Autographed Rookie Jerseys /175

Here is his SPx rookie in all its glory. While he has already had some fan fare at the NHL level (All-Rookie Team), I think the best is yet to come so if you are into prospecting yourself, now might be the time to grab yourself one of his rookies because by the end of this season I wouldn't be surprised if they will cost you twice as much as they do now in money or trade!

13/14 Upper Deck Team Canada Brett Connolly Auto

When Upper Deck released their Team Canada set this season I was pretty excited. Sadly, I haven't done much more than purchase a pack or two. I guess I am torn on value. Is it worth buying a box or two? Or should I just buy a complete base set for under 10 dollars and a couple hits and still be better off? True I miss out on a chance to get a big hit. But then again, I am likely not going to hit it big anyway. Tough call, in the meantime...Here's Brett! 

13/14 Upper Deck Team Canada Signatures Brett Connolly

 Check out this picture! Upper Deck did use this one before as part of his Artifacts Team Canada card. Don't believe me, check it out.

Now wouldn't this card and my Team Canada one above look much nicer with the auto from yesterday's post? I think so! Why doesn't Upper Deck manage to plan their stickers better? They are paying players directly or indirectly to sign, you think they would make a request to try and match them up with the right picture. It is minor details like this I would concentrate on if I owned my own card company.

Here is the back side of the card. Again, wish we had some stats back here. Maybe a blurb about his performance for Team Canada in the U17 or U18 tournament. Or talk about his two medal winning performances at the WJHC in 2011 and 2012. Instead, more Richard P McWilliam.

A little recognition from Upper Deck

A little over 3 years ago my life changed as the birth of my first son happened! Quinn came into my life and as unlucky as I was to have had my parents divorce (and other subsequent divorces too) but at the same time I had two fathers who I would have considered to be very influential in my development as a man. My biological father was key in nurturing my scholastic abilities and athletic interests and my step father was key in nurturing my athletic abilities and collecting interests. Neither father was pushy on my and both did their best to bring the best out in me. They had radically different approaches but both have had long lasting impacts on my life and as a father myself now I am trying my best to use the best parts of both of them.

I have mentioned a few times about my step-father and our shared passion of collecting and that is something I hope to do with both my boys Quinn and Rhett. Quinn is 3 now and he knows about my cards and he likes to look at them from time to time. He also have a few of his own, which he will put in and out of pages and he seems to really like to "organize" them. Rhett is now 7 months old and he loves looking at his mobile while I am getting his bath all ready or doing some work in his room. People would often comment on how cool they thought the idea was, so I finally sent a tweet to Upper Deck showing my handiwork and it actually snowballed into a pretty cool post, check it out here! Thank you Upper Deck for the recognition, I do believe that kids are never too young to start collecting. However, Panini and their 9+  age suggestion on packs may disagree!

My Hockey Card Mobile


I made this mobile from a shower gift that I was given. Having not liked the little flowers hanging from it I used fishing line and a few of my extra hockey cards kicking around. I was purposeful in my card selection, at the centre was Martin Brodeur and David Clarkson (see Clarkie you cut me deep). I had some cards from 89-90 OPC, 90-91 UD because those are sets I really liked. Then I picked current and former Devils both in and out of Devils uniforms including the Niedermayer Brothers which is very appropriate considering I ended up having two boys.

Both boys loved the mobiles as infants and like my fathers I will not push them to play hockey or collect but if they choose to pick up the game or hobby, I hope to help create similar memories to ones I had and hope that they will have as much fun as I did.

Hockey Card Day In Canada Results

Well my day can be categorized into three sections: Good, Bad and Ugly

Much like my favourite movie, there was much going on and some surprises to say the least.

For starters, there was no card shop within an hour of my house that was participating (mainly because there aren't any real card shops) so I had a bit of a trek to begin.

The Good:

First place I went to was my favourite shop in Halifax and they gave us two packs (one for me and one for my wife) and from there I opened the pack with the one and only card I wanted. Jordan Eberle. (though I wouldn't mind completing the set)

To me this kid is a Canadian Hero! He has already scored more important goals than Alex Ovechkin and he is not even 21 years old.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8v8C3scwvg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQ8iHM30rSE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIRV0ATzW8Q

The last one is really funny!

The Bad:

The only other two stops I had time for did not EXIST! Clearly someone has scammed Upper Deck into thinking they are an operating card shop because when I went to the advertised locations, I found myself at someone's house or worse yet a locked and empty building.

The Ugly:

This happened after my second disappointment of the day when someone backed into my new car 10 min after my "second" failed stop. Luckily, the damage was minimal (scrapped bumper) but this just seemed to be a continuation of a stretch of some bad luck for me.

The silver lining in this is there is a card shop in Dartmouth that has been nice enough to set aside a couple of packs for me so it looks like I might be able to complete my set after all.

What are your chances?

Well based on my experiences I decided to statistically work out the probabilities of not getting a young gun rookie in either a blaster box or a hobby box. Based on my Upper Deck letter, they basically state the odds are for the ENTIRE production, so in theory you could have a hobby box loaded with YG's or a hobby box devoid of the coveted rookie cards. Using my math skills (I teach the stuff after all) I worked out the probabilities of both.

Starting with Hobby Boxes

Each box has 24 packs (both hobby and retail) and both seed YG's at a rate of 1:4. Based on those odds you could in theory have 0 YG's and 24 YG's if they put at most one in a pack. Here are the odds:

#Young Guns Odds

0 0.10%

1 0.80%

2 3.08%

3 7.52%

4 13.16%

5 17.55%

6 18.53%

7 15.88%

8 11.25%

9 6.67%

10 3.33%

11 1.41%

12 0.51%

13 0.16%

14 0.04%

15 0.01%

>16 Very small chances.....Some a little as winning the lottery

Blaster Boxes 12 packs with 1:6 chances

# Young Guns Odds

0 11.22%

1 26.92%

2 29.61%

3 19.74%

4 8.88%

5 2.84%

6 0.66%

7 0.11%

8 0.01%

9 0.001%

10 0.000076%

11 0.0000028%

12 0.000000046%

So it appears the odds of having a blaster box like mine aren't too outrageous which is a shame for anyone who pays $25 for one and ends up with base cards. With that being said, of course there are various different types of blaster boxes some seed 1:4 and give 8 packs, and I think they do a little QC to help avoid the 0's and 24's especially with Hobby boxes. Has anyone beat the odds before and had a huge number of hits? I am curious, let me know! If there are any other odds you think would be fun to work out feel free to make a request!

Upper Deck makes it right!

In perfect Mike Holmes style, Upper Deck decided to make it right for me. Just before Christmas, Zellers had a sale on blaster boxes (I appear to be a sucker for them) where I got a 12 pack one for 8 bucks. The odds on the box said 1:6 have young guns in them, so I of course think that I should get two. To my surprise, after opening the box I receive NONE.

I know it is an average of 1:6 but I figured I should at least get one. In the past I have had both good (3 yg's in a blaster box) and bad luck (4 yg's in a hobby box and 1 game used instead of 6 and 2) with these averages but I felt I should have had at least 1 for my purchase.

So I called UD customer support and they were very kind and gave me a case number and told me to mail in the box top along with a letter including my information. Fast forward 8 weeks and in the mail comes a letter along with three cards. The letter had a kind message affirming UD stance on pack and box odds being for the whole run and not on an individual basis but they also stated that they wish to give me some complimentary product as a sign that they care about my issue. I believe the gesture was sincere and I think that in the long run the act of kindness from UD will continue to keep me buying their product. Don't get me wrong, I will never be exclusively one company or another, but I think a company that does these sort of acts does show some care about their customer service because I know they could have told me to "cram it with walnuts, ugly".

Here is what I received:

Young Guns Checklist featuring the big three from last season. Duchene appears to be the most successful of the lot so far.

Frazer McLaren will likely have more fights than points in his career but for some people that is OK!

I was really surprised to see this gem in there. I didn't have a Brown G-U in my collection yet and I definitely will hang on to this one. The other two young guns are available for trade if someone needs them to finish their sets.

The impact of Panini on hockey TTMs

Last year when it was announced that Panini would be joining the hockey world I really didn't know what to think. I have only ever known them as a sticker company and really that was my own collecting ignorance. It turns out they have been making sports cards for a number of years and doing a good job at it. So I waited for the hockey products to roll out, and they did slowly, and one after another the hockey world was given what Panini had to offer. After seeing Score, Donruss, Certified and Limited I must say they are decent cards and when compared to many of the UD products of years past they are of similar caliber and I will leave it up to each of you to decide who is better.

What I find particularly interesting is it seems as though many of Panini's products which sell for as much as many of UD's products inside the packs, on the secondary market (places like Ebay) the cards are selling for fraction of the value their UD counterparts are selling for.

For example: A Taylor Hall Rated Rookie could be had for 15 bucks on Ebay easily, while the Young Gun version will set you back closer to 50 (if you are lucky) from what I understand statistically speaking you have an equal chance of pulling either from a box that will run you about 70 bucks. It is clear the demand is still stronger for some of UD's products when you look at the comparables from Panini. So what does this mean for collectors?

Options, there are now more options to score rookies and autographs of your favourite players at prices that are more reasonable than in the past. In addition, for me at least, it also means I might buy one or two boxes less of cards because I know I can buy all the cards I want for less than the cost of the box.

TTMs are another area affected by this new saturation. I was very happy to land myself a Nick Palmieri Mirror Red auto from Ebay. This is an auto I have been trying to get for almost 4 months. When I didn't have luck with getting one from my Score boxes I looked elsewhere and my patience landed me this beauty for about a buck and a half plus shipping.

The card is numbered 222/250 and is a nice on card auto of an up and coming NJ prospect. He recently has been playing with Kovalchuk and Zajac and has 3 goals in his last 6 games with the club.

To get this as a TTM I would have needed to get his card (if I already didn't have it) and mail him a letter which would be to the club in the USA which in all would have cost me almost 2 dollars in postage plus the cost of the envelopes and there would be no guarantee that he would sign it.

Where instead for about 4 dollars I did get the card, already signed and mailed to me. For some players, Panini has made collecting autographs affordable especially in cases where a TTM is a longshot or difficult to attain. I do enjoy writing letters to the players and the payoff is an autograph in return but, if you want a player and a guaranteed autograph then it might be advantageous to use the secondary market and just buy the desired card especially now that there are twice as many Palmieri autographs than there were before. (not to mention ITG's products)

Holiday Hits

I love the holiday season...as in a previous post I mentioned my love for the World Junior tourney but I do also love the exchanging of gifts. I am aware it is more blessed to give then receive and I do enjoy giving, but it is also fun receiving. My in-laws know my love for collecting and I really appreciate the support that they have for my hobby by giving hockey card related gifts. This year I received a few blaster boxes and a couple random packs. For the record, I am not a huge fan of blasters because the hit odds are against you with the packs usually being of the retail variety and the odds on those are usually pretty gross. But, some of the local merchants were having large sales on the blaster boxes so I received a few and they didn't cost the gift-giver too much either. Over the next couple posts I will share with you my results.

From my "stocking" I received two repacks of Upper Deck Hockey. One was a pack of 07-08 Series 2 and the other was of 08-09 Series 2. I am fond of Series 2 no matter what year because of the increased Rookie Card odds and frankly 07-08 was my first set to get me back into the hobby so it has a special place in my heart.

The 08-09 pack yielded absolutely nothing! Even the Victory insert was a base card of Curtis Joesph and the best UD base card was Gary Roberts who is now a training guru and is responsible for the amazing growth of Steven Stamkos but not very exciting as a card.

The 07-08 UD was a much better result. No rookies but I did get a Milan Lucic Rookie Materials Jersey Card. I know there are differing opinions on these cards but personally I love them. Sure they are "event-used" but they are released during the rookie season of the player. The production numbers are lower than most of their rc's and they look much better than most base cards.

In all I would say this is a nice surprise which can also be said about Lucic's season this year. After a injury filled 09-10, he is off to an excellent start. After 35 games he is already one goal away from tying his career best of 17 and he is on pace for a personal best of 37 goals and 62 points. Definitely a great holiday hit!