Box Break Review: 2015-16 Upper Deck Hockey Series 2

Before I get into today's post, I want to mention that I have now given the NHL it's own section on my website. One of my goals for the year was to give the NHL, MLB and NFL their own sections on my website to match the NBA and NASCAR sections, and I spent most of the 29th of January creating the section for the NHL. I was planning to do it when I was recovering from a medical procedure I have coming up, but considering that I've scanned more than 200 NHL cards during the month of January, I wanted it to be done and ready before I do my monthly uploads on the first of each month. You can see it here. Each season has it's own album, and I will be creating albums for earlier seasons as I add them to my collection. Most of my collection has not been scanned yet so it's definitely a work in progress. Previously all NHL cards and the few minor league cards I've scanned were all in one big album.

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I'm not sure if this is considered a hobby box or not, but it was on sale at my local card shop, and I could afford it, so I got it.

Alex Ovechkin is not actually in Series 2. I got both checklists and I did indeed check. Maybe some of the inserts. The scratches on the very top of the tin were UNDER the factory shrink wrap.

I decided to scan 9 base cards to show, and comment on- a full page, plus the inserts and Young Guns. I will probably do a full "page" of base cards from each Box Break Review going forward, unless I really need to post about more of them.

My favorite photo of the break. Great wide angle shot, and shows the ceiling of the Barclays Center quite nicely. The banners hanging there are great to see too. It may be a little hard to tell but the opponent is the Chicago Blackhawks.

The first game I saw all of was the Winter Classic on January 1st of this year. I had seen portions of several other games before hand but not the entire game. Tarasenko was the deciding factor that got the Blues the win in the game.

Great action shot!

This is the first and only card I know of to show the Fox Sports 1 logo, formerly the Speed Channel. Which it should still be, of course.

I know the Islanders do not have purple in the team colors, so I am sure there is a story behind this one...but I don't know it.

I have a friend named Doug Hamilton so learning there was a hockey player with this name cracked me up.

I think this is the only hockey card I have where the puck is actually on the stick.

A good shot showing the puck, I knew there was something printed on them but I couldn't tell what. It's clearly the NHL logo but I don't know about the words going around it yet. I blew it up but it didn't help.

This is such a great photo. It really makes it seem like something you could have seen during the Roman Empire.

Now, I also scanned the rookies...I like what UD does with the NHL for the most part, but short printing the rookie cards in the flagship set is not one of them. I pulled three rookies in my tin:

I don't know yet which ones are the ones that would be too expensive for me to buy as a single card, but each them are the first and only cards I have of each person.

 I got 2 of the Canvas inserts, which I like, and ran the full gamut of O-Pee-Chee Update cards- 1 base veteran, 1 base rookie, 1 Retro and one Rainbow.

One thing I was very surprised to see- the first thing I saw when I opened the tin- was an oversized box topper! That takes me back, to circa 1994. I didn't read the odds on the inserts as I wanted to be surprised. I sure was! Now, just showing an oddly shaped card on the Blogger format doesn't really work, it auto-sizes things. So here is an unedited scan instead, which shows it on the page with standard sized cards.

The oversize box topper is actually a card from series 1.

There were also two cards from the UD Portraits insert. I'm not really sure what the point of them is. I have nothing against the players I got- it's just, well...kind of like UD phoned it in with these.

Even though the design is unique, it seems like I've seen it before, which really means that they could have done better. Don't get me wrong, I'm still glad to have them- I'm glad to have every card I get- but I would rather have gotten the base cards of either person, of which I got neither. Maybe it's just because I'm a base card guy?

This was a very enjoyable box break- it got me less than half way to the complete series 2 and it was only $30, so I'm considering getting another.

This was the first Upper Deck sports box I have opened since late 2006. It's been over 10 years, which is pretty hard to believe. But since the NBA took away their license during the 2009-10 season, and I was away from that sport from 2006-12, I have not had much to choose from. That is certainly not going to be the case going forward. I did do two boxes of the Captain America set (on sale for the price of one!) and one of the Thor set, all retail boxes. I still need cards from both of those sets too.