Product Review: 2014 Upper Deck National Hockey Card Day

January & February is a special time to collect hockey cards. For the past few years Upper Deck has provided fans across Canada and the US free cards to collect to celebrate National Hockey Card Day.

Hardcore collectors try and challenge themselves to complete the set within the day of going to different retailers or hobby shops and ripping open packs. Some even after a week are still trying to track down those one or two cards they missed to complete their set.

This years set featured Rookies, Stars of the game and Legends. There are two sets to collect and both the Canadian and US versions have different players. We'll focused on the Canada side of this promotion since we live in Canada and had an opportunity to participate.

The Canadian set is made up of Canada's Rookies (1-10), Pride of Canada (11-15), Hockey Heroes (16-20), and Memorable Moments card #21. All of the cards are found in the 5 card packs except for card #21. Those are given out to those who spend $10 or more at shops.

With 5 cards per pack you can finish your set pretty quickly if you don't run into any doubles. We ended up with only 3 packs this year to try and have a sample of what the average collector would receive. Also since this promotion is trying to draw in more younger fans of the game that don't collect, it's a good sample to see if Upper Deck could attract this new generation of collectors.

Here's how we did:

Pack #1
Rookies: 3 - MacKinnon, Hamilton, Gallagher
Pride of Canada: 1 - Giroux
Heroes: 1- Hawerchuk
Checklist

Pack #2
Rookies: 2 - Galchenyuk, Monahan
Pride of Canada: 2 - Stamkos, Crosby
Heroes: 1- Lemieux
Checklist

Pack #3
Rookies: 2 - Conacher, Schultz
Pride of Canada: 1 - Crosby
Heroes: 2 - Lemieux, Yzerman
Checklist

A pretty good assortment of cards out of our packs. We managed to only find 2 doubles which is great and they were of the two of the best players in the set. The design of the cards are nice and fun looking. The checklist of the set is amazing with all of those big time stars and legends included. Having rookies from the Double Class included is also a treat.

We did spend over $10 for the packs so we also received card #21 with MacKinnon and Huberdeau as the Canadian Memorable Moments.

Pulling 13 of the 20 cards in the set is very good for any collector. Looking from an inexperienced or novice collector, National Hockey Card Day is a great thing. Your bound to receive a really well known player in each pack and it can temper new collectors to try other products in the future. Upper Deck has done a great job with this tradition and really look forward to it continuing for years to come.

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