My first National Hockey Card Day!

Editorial note: The first part of this post is a copy and paste from my post on A Pack to Be Named Later. The new material starts after the Auston Matthews card. 

Today, February 18th, 2017 is National Hockey Card Day in both the USA and Canada. How it works is, if you visit a participating hobby shop, you get some free hockey cards. Pretty simple, no? They've been doing it since 2009 in Canada and 2012 in the USA, but since I just began to collect hockey, this is my first one participating. I'm not sure how big a deal it is, but I didn't roll into my local shop until 3 PM and I was the first one to ask for them. Hopefully it will continue because let's face it, all card collectors love oddball issues. I was afraid they were going to be all sold out-even more so when I discovered that somebody had come in and purchased just about every hockey box in the shop since my last visit a month ago-but I was lucky.

The set primarily includes American born players on American teams, but the Toronto Maple Leafs make an appearance with Auston Matthews being both card #1 in the set, and a special bonus card #16 that usually only comes with a purchase of UD cards, but since I've been a regular at my shop for 17 years, and they had no more hockey cards to purchase, I got one of them too.

The set is not just current players, there are retired legends as well. There are also some super rare autographs as well but I was not lucky enough to pull any of them.

One thing to watch out for, about half the cards I pulled had damage on the back, this was something done at the UD factory, because of the fact that the cards underneath them did not always have damage.

First out of my first pack was Jimmy Vesey, a rookie on the New York Rangers.

Following him was Bill Guerin, one of the legends in the set.

Dylan Larkin came next...and appeared in my second pack as well. I know it's a small set at only 15 base cards, but a duplicate is still a bit disappointing.

Zach Werenski followed Larkin

And the final player card was another legend, Ed Olczyk

Although not counted as part of the pack, each pack I opened also included a checklist card, which is great. I love checklists.

Here's the back of the regular cards. The one thing I would have done differently was include the player's hometown. After all, the set is built around American hockey players, so it would have been nice info to include.

As an added bonus, here is the Auston Matthews bonus card that doesn't come in a pack. It is my first official hockey card of him, as he previously only appeared in my multi-sport collection. My first cards of Vesey and Werenski as well!

 

Now, here's pack two...minus the spare Larkin of course.

The New York Rangers led off again, with legend Brian Leetch

 Two straight Chicago BlackHawks came next with Patrick Kane and Tyler Motte

Last up was another retired legend, Mike Modano

Now, I went to the shop with the intention of buying another tin of 2015-16 Series 2, which I got one of last month and when I left they had 4 more on the shelves. They were gone, as was pretty much everything else. As I mentioned they sold most of the hockey in the store. But I did not come away empty handed. I have been a big fan of my local shop since I started going there in the year 2000. But the one bad thing is that they didn't do single cards...only boxes. That has now changed. I was able to add some singles to my NBA collection. Although I've been posting about hockey more than NBA recently, NBA is still #1 for me...I wasn't sure if these were all new or not, but I decided to take the chance on a couple I wasn't sure about, because I figured, even if not new, they were still serially numbered, and I've got a serious SN addiction. 

 I've been finding a lot of Araujo autographs for cheap recently, this is the third I've added for $5 or less in the last year.

 This is my second card from this relic set. The first one I got when I did a box when the set was new back in 2005.

 Today is also his birthday.

 This is one I wasn't sure if I needed or not.

 I've written about Dajuan Wagner before. Had great talent but poor health.

 I've always felt bad for Lampe. He was a player similar to Kristaps Porzingis, but he never got the chance to get on the court to show what he could do. He even wore #6 on the Knicks...Lampe was expected to be a lottery pick, but fell to the 30th pick in the draft...the New York fans actually cheered for him, he was there at the draft. (Highly ususual, the NY fans boo everybody). But...the Knicks, at that time, refused to play rookies. He sat on the bench without getting a chance to play. Not even a single game did the Knicks bother to play him. Then, he was traded to the Suns in the Penny Hardaway/Stephon Marbury trade. The Suns finally did play him...barely. He got into 37 games over two years for the Suns, before they traded him to the Hornets where he again mostly benchwarmed, before they traded him to the Rockets, who played him in a grand total 12 minutes over 4 games, before releasing him. He never played in the NBA again. We have no real clue what he could have accomplished because his coaches never bothered to find out. I've always felt bad for him, like I said. According to Wikipedia, he's playing in China now.

Finally we have TJ Ford from 2003-04 Ultra. I really liked this Ultra design, but I didn't like that the lottery picks were short printed. (Each of the Lucky 13 is SN500 on the back). I have most of them but I didn't know if I had this one, so I took the chance. Turns out I needed it! In fact, I only guessed wrong once, the only card I had before was the Jarvis Hayes from Sweet Shot. Not too bad considering.

My first NHL blaster

Due to health related financial considerations, I really can't do hobby boxes all that often anymore. I'm limited pretty much to blasters. Not that there's anything wrong with that, really, other than the fact that you don't have the opportunity for some of the inserts- but hey, I'm a base card guy anyway, and I'm thrilled I'm able to get anything, so every blaster I can get my hands on is a treasure.

I did my first blaster of NHL cards last week, one of 2016-17 Upper Deck Series 1. I don't normally break down blasters, but since it is my first one ever for the sport, I will give it the full Box Break Review treatment. Which means, of course, that I will select 9 base cards to showcase, plus inserts and rookies.

My very first card from the season where I became a hockey fan. That's something special!

 My first card showing the electronic sign boards, which I didn't know even existed until very recently.

 Jaromir Jagr has been in the NHL since 1990. That's unbelievable and I'm glad I discovered the sport while he was still active. To put things in perspective, in 1990-91 I was in Kindergarten. (I was already a card collector by that point as well...although not sports cards)

 Now I have the famous puppy card!

 Just a great photo.

 Brent Burns is in the early lead as a favorite player. He refers to himself as Chewbacca, makes Chewbacca noises, and wore a Chewbacca mask at last year's all-star game. How could you not like that?

 I think that's the face my mom made when she read the blog where I announced I was now a fan of the NHL...something I had managed to keep secret (somehow)

 One thing I'm particularly enjoying is seeing the ads on the boards. Oscar Mayer! Yum.

 My second card of the year. While my favorite logo is that of the Senators, the Jets' logo is pretty high up there too.

Now, we move on to the Young Guns rookie cards, of whom I pulled two.

 If what I've gathered is correct the Maple Leafs have several of the top rookies of the season.

 I can't say I've ever heard of either of them, but...I've only been "all-in" on the sport for about 3 weeks, so I still have a whole lot to learn. There are teams I have not even seen play yet. When I got into the NBA it took me until my second season to see every team and it might be the same here. I hope not, but the NHL doesn't have as much TV presence as the NBA does.

 I only got one UD Canvas card.

This year's UD Portraits insert is slightly more interesting than the 2015-16 set, mostly because of the blue border. The 2016-17 set is very blue in theme. This is currently my only card of Kucherov.

The last insert I pulled is a Shining Stars of Brent Burns, card #SS-1 in the set. I'm happy to get another of him, but I am not a big fan of mirror foil cards. However, it didn't seem to have as much a problem with scanning as most mirror foils do.

One thing I am curious to see, and I won't be able to know for years, is if NHL will hold true to the first two sports I follow, in that the second year I was in the sport is the favorite. For NASCAR, 1993 was my first year collecting and 1994 is my favorite year of cards, for the NBA I began collecting in 1995-96 and 1996-97 is my favorite year of cards. So, I got into the NHL in 2016-17, so will 2017-18 be my favorite year of cards? Only time will tell- I didn't stop and think about it being the second year as my favorite until only a year or two ago so it will take time to find out. I don't know even now if it was because it was my second year, or if it was because it was the 1990s, the best decade for cards.

Thanks for reading- I've certainly enjoyed the opening process, and I've really been enjoying the sport. To be honest I've been watching it more than the NBA lately, but that may just be because it's "new"...either way come tomorrow I'll be trying to watch three sports live on a regular basis, so I have to plan each day's TV watching in advance!