A look inside the birthday blasters

 The other day when I wrote up the post about the blasters I got for my birthday, I hadn't actually opened them yet when I published that. I did right after I got the post up, and now I'll share some highlights. I got 251 new cards so naturally I will not show them all, just the highlights.

I'll start with MVP, which is the first 2022-23 season cards I've gotten! 

This was my first card from the new season, #106 in the set. This year's MVP eschews stats and unfortunately the pronunciation guide, which I really found helpful, and just has a small blurb about the player.

The Ice Battles parallel returns, and I'm not entirely sure about the concept of it, but more parallels is never a bad thing to me. The orange theme is more visually interesting the last year's slightly different blue than normal. 

the tradition MVP Parallel of Silver Script returns, and for the first time in several years they have foil again! It really makes these cards look very nice. This Gaudreau was in my first pack. There were two in both blasters I opened. 

Gold Script is once again a blaster exclusive parallel and they generally fall one per blaster...

but I got lucky and pulled a short printed rookie, which falls at 1:70 packs, the rarest card I got on the day. This is the first Kraken parallel in my collection also, an added bonus. 

there are some inserts as well...

and even a parallel of the inserts, of which I got one between both boxes. There is also a "Domains" insert which I got two of but didn't get scanned yet. 

My favorite card from the MVP blasters is this one, though:

my first Rangers card for Ryan Reaves! He may not score much but he's got such a great personality, he's one of the "heart and soul" guys that every successful team relies on. I'm so glad he came to the Rangers. And he's one of the last enforcers...at the end of the 2020-21 season, Capitals player Tom Wilson bodyslammed and injured Artemi Panarin, and though the Rangers at the time did try to take him on, they lacked a true enforcer. We brought Ryan Reaves in for the 2021-22 season and Wilson literally cowered during the game, not even registering a single hit during one of the games! 

Moving to the 2021-22 Upper Deck cards, I believe I've talked about that set already...I can't remember if I did...I have not gotten many of them scanned yet. 

Here's the base card as a reminder

the Dazzlers inserts...these are spectacular! They come in multiple colors but green has always been my favorite color, so this is probably my favorite card I got for my birthday. Scans cannot do these cards justice. 

I also got an Orange one. 

I think the checklist for UD Canvas is actually short printed, so that's cool. This is not a Rangers card to me, this is just a checklist, but still....I collect checklists so I'm happy to have it.

Now, the 2020-21 SP set. I hadn't seen any of these before, even though now a couple of years old. 

This is the base card. Like all modern SP/SP Authentic sets, there isn't much to it but that makes them very easy to scan. 

You get one numbered rookie card per box.

The blue parallels fall one or two per pack

with one of them being a Rookie card. I really like this one because I like the purple and yellow uniform shown here. 

I also got a rarer parallel, the Patterned Foil which falls 1:50 packs. I got the blue version of the Pius Suter card as well, which is kind of cool. 

Thanks again Mom!