Two Josh Hamilton cards today from a set that I had no inclination of breaking. Spectrum is one of those sets that I just can’t get behind. The base cards look cool – lots of foil board, which calls to mind McDonalds Hockey sets of past years. Yeah, I somehow don’t think that is what the designers were looking for.
I have been incredibly busy the past few days, so posts have been a bit sporadic. I have a small stack of cards from blogger trades / generosity that I need to get posted up here – but scanning has just not made the schedule yet.
I’m not sure what exactly Hamilton has for cards in Spectrum. I’ve seen a base card (courtesy of Marie over at A Cardboard Problem), some parallels (I picked up the red /250 off the Beckett Marketplace for about $1.00 with some other Hamiltons). I’ve seen a jersey card with a few parallels as well, and I have also seem some pretty amazing looking multicoloured patch cards that are serial numbered /25. Of course, all of the Hamilton GU cards in Spectrum feature Hamilton in his Reds duds.
Don’t mistake that ‘of course’ for approval on my part. I’m more than a little annoyed at seeing all the Reds cards. I understand that UD has to picture the player with the same team that the memorabilia is from. I really do. However – UD obviously has Rangers GU memorabilia. They used it in last year’s Ultimate, they used it in 2009 Series 1 as well. Why can’t they just keep on using the Rangers swatches and save the Reds jerseys for a flashback product, or maybe a ‘Then and Now’ type design?
Hopefully this post will get me over the hump a little bit, and I can showcase some more of the awesome cards I have picked up from my fellow bloggers. Thanks Marie for the Spectrum base card (way to take one for the team and pick up a Spectrum set), and thanks to everyone else who has helped with my collection. I really appreciate the help.
Posted by thehamiltonian 
The Natural History minis in Champ’s Hockey were a sticking point for many collectors. There was a lot of negative response. Basically ‘who wants animals in hockey card packs?’ Personally, I think it is an awesome idea. Kids like animals. Kids like dinosaurs. Champ’s isn’t exactly priced at a kid-friendly level, but I believe there is a retail portion of the product upcoming that is hopefully more accessible. On some hockey card message boards, the reaction of people who have opened these packs with their kids is ‘My son/daughter and I are going to put together the Natural History minis’. To me – that’s great.
Obviously, the big hits in this product are the fossils, but I didn’t end up with those. For Champ’s, the fossils and artifacts are case hits, so they aren’t as rare as in products like Allen & Ginter. For more average breaks – you should get 2 autographs and one memorabilia card per box. I hit those odds exactly.
The jerseys are very similar, and in a nice change – they are slightly harder to come by than the autographs. There is a basic set of jerseys featuring mostly current and recently retired NHLers, inserted approximately 1:box and then there are Legends memorabilia cards inserted at a rate of 1:case. My jersey hit was Vesa Toskala. One nice change is that UD now notes on the back of the card that the jersey piece was worn in a “Sharks game” rather than just an ‘official NHL game’.
Another stop on the box review for 2008-09 Upper Deck Champ’s Hockey. The minis. There are base set minis, and then there are parallels for all the base minis. The base mini cards have black printing ink on the back of the cards. The parallels are Brown (1:25 packs), Red (1:144 packs), Blue (1:288 packs), and Purple (1:576 packs). So, long odds on a lot of these for sure. The parallels combine to fall 1:24 packs. In my box, I hit a blue back parallel of Brian Gionta. Nice to get one of the rarer parallels. Not so nice to get a guy that doesn’t get much hobby love.
Continuing with my piecework review of the box of 2008-09 Upper Deck Champ’s hockey that I broke early today, let’s finish off the base set with the slightly SP’d rookies (1:2 packs). There are 100 of these as well. One more vote for expanding the base set – there shouldn’t be the same number of rookie cards as base cards in a product.
As I mentioned earlier, the rookies are slightly SP’d, falling one in every two packs. I hit these odds bang on. I opened a box (24 packs) + four loose packs and I have 14 rookie cards. No issues there. I like SP’d rookie cards – they add a bit of a challenge to the set, and also give a bit more value to the RCs. You’d need to open up 8+ boxes with perfect collation to nail the entire set, so these cards should have decent value. Maybe not as good as the ever popular Young Guns, but if this set proves popular with set builders, Champ’s Rookie Cards should be able to pull themselves out of the low – mid end quagmire we sometimes see.
Also commonly known as the Upper Deck hockey version of A&G. For those die hard hockey card fans out there – its much closer to 03/04 Topps C55. Right down to the box design actually. The only thing it is missing is the box topper containing all minis.
This is a set I wouldn’t mind seeing doubled or tripled in size. It would improve the chances for TTM sigs (and the set has the perfect finish). Also, with the large number of minis, and other things in the packs – breaking more than one box would get less repetitive with a larger base set.
