Can I just say that I'm getting a bit antsy waiting for UD Series 1 to come out already? I've gone full-immersion hockey, and all I have left to do is start to build a card set. I've already bought a couple of packs of O Pee Chee hockey. And now I went and bought a few rack packs of UD Artifacts Hockey. I mean how could I not? Look who's on the packs?
Fleury is definitely a way to seal the deal. So I picked up some packs. So what? I know that I'm not going to build the set. I know that I'm not going to pull a relic or an auto. Sometimes you just need to open a sealed pack simply for the smell of it. Those of you who know what brand-new card smell is can relate. They only smell that way once. After they've been in the air for a while it's just not the same. And at best I can hope to pull a Penguins player. And look here, I did.
I got Fleury on the wrapper and Sidney in the pack. Only Evgeni eludes me. But I'll get him. The thing is, I really like the design, it's the product itself and its target audience that confuses me. First off, it's not really a set builders set. For hobby boxes you only get 4 cards per pack with ten packs per box. It says that for a hobby box you should get 4 hits and all this for around $80. There are only 100 cards in the base set, but even under perfect conditions you'd need at least 3 boxes - or $240 bucks to build the base yourself without shopping for singles. Obvisously, it isn't a product to build a base set.
But then again, the hits aren't really going to be on the level of something like "The Cup". So you're paying $20 per hit, three of those hits being mem cards.....I just don't get it. I'm trying to figure out who this is catering to as far as box breaking. I really like the simple design. I like the backs of the cards. But I can't figure out based on price points and box contents who this is appealing to.
The product would've been great as a set builders set. I like the design and it could've easily been turned into a $60 product with more base and three times the checklist. But then again, if you're going to make it a product for hit-chasers, you'd have to bump the price up, low number all base and throw a ton of patches in it. I want to like the product. I want to buy more. But I'll probably end up snagging a base set on ebay for around ten bucks and let somebody else chase the hits. Maybe I'm missing something? Anyone care to fill me in on what this product is exactly?
NaBlo WriMo daily total - 528 words
NaBlo WriMo monthly total - 3619 words
4 comments:
The only UD set I'd really look at is the main set plus the Young Guns (50 short-printed rookies per series - not numbered). The rest are nice to have, but if you only do one set, do the main one.
That said, I probably won't bother with it this year unless it's absurdly great. This will be a vintage winter.
(500-odd words today should put me over 1500 for the month. 10%)
Well, since I've never built a hockey set before, I'll be building the main set plus the Young Guns.
And hey, writing is writing. It's actually harder to do than I thought hitting this quota.
I think that's the one to do. Then you can grab singles that look interesting out of other sets.
People go bonkers over The Cup, which is one of those $300 per pack sets. I've never found them particularly interesting.
Second-series UD usually includes the update to the Victory set, so there's a second shot at some of the rookies.
The best patches are not normally part of the main UD release. That may be where you want Artifacts. There are some decent subsets, though.
Artichokes is a brand put out for the case busters.
Increasingly, there are more and more hockey products put out with the casebusters in mind. And there are lots of them.
If you need Flower... I have one of him I can swap you. No Geno tho...
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