The release day of Upper Deck Series 1 hockey is like a holiday for many hockey card collectors.
If you go on social media the evening it comes out, you are guaranteed to see photos of collectors waiting in line at their LCS to grab their box. You’ll see picture after picture of boxes being opened as they chase the short printed Young Gun of the year.
Well, I was fortunate enough to have Upper Deck send me a hobby box so I could open it and provide a review for you all!
The Breakdown
Tradition plays a key role with the flagship product and it starts with the hobby box and base set configuration. Hobby boxes contain 24 packs with eight cards in each pack. Once again, the Series 1 base set consists of 250 cards with the first 200 being veterans and the final 50 cards being the short printed Young Guns. The rookie cards fall 1:4 packs meaning the average hobby box will contain six of them.
There are four different base set parallels to chase. The French text parallel is the most common falling 1:30 packs. The Clear Cut falls 1:96, the Exclusives are /100 and the High Gloss are /10. The odds are bit longer on the Young Guns parallels with the first two unnumbered parallels coming in at 1:120 and 1:288 respectively.
The Canvas and UD Portraits inserts have years of history with the product, and the Dazzlers, Honor Roll, and the hard to find Day with the Cup inserts also return again.
While tradition is important, I appreciate how Upper Deck isn’t afraid to mix things up with some new insert content. Centre of Attention, Free Styles, Population Count, Attacking Zone, Defense Mechanism, and Fanimation appear to be new.
There are several other inserts on acetate and standard card stock available with a varying level of scarcity.
Checklist
Check out the full checklist here on Beckett.com
Here is a look at the front and back of the standard base cards as well as the 2022-23 Young Guns design.
Overall, my box was pretty standard. If you run down the pack odds, I think you could check all the expected items off the list. I got the six Young Guns, and it seems the Rossi was the best one of the bunch. I also landed a Canvas Young Guns which was nice and would probably be considered my “box hit”.
The base set is just ok in my opinion, however I do like the Young Guns design quite a bit. One thing I found annoying on the base cards is the team name has to be viewed from a specific angle or it can be very hard to read. The inserts were my favorite part of the box. The designs are sharp, the finish and feel seem to give the impression of a premium product, and several of them have a “rainbow” foil on them that really stands out.
I’ll be keeping a few of the Leafs and a couple notable names for the PC for sure.
Here’s a sample of all the different inserts I received in my box of 2022-23 Upper Deck Series 1 hockey.