Product Review: 2014-15 UD MVP Hockey Hobby Box

Hockey is in full effect in the collecting world for 2014, and another popular products has arrived a few weeks ago that has been a staple, MVP. The comparable low-end product to O-Pee-Chee, MVP brings new technology to its brand and offers boxes below $60 each.

The 2014-15 set is 200 cards strong, but also has 100 short print cards making it 300 in total for complete sets. SPs land 1 per pack so building a set shouldn't be too hard and won't break the bank.

Like all products MVP comes with a slew of parallels and die-cut parallels of the base cards. Silver Script are found 1 per pack but you can also search for Super Scripts which are serial numbered to only 25 and Gold Scripts that are found in Blaster boxes.

Spectrum Light F/X technology is brought into this years set and look better than ever. Each card under the Colors & Contours title are die-cut and have different levels to collect. Teal, Gold and Purple each have three levels all found at different pack ratios from 1 in 8 packs up to 1 in 520 packs for the most rare.

Three inserts make the MVP checklist this year. Players of the Week, Players of the Month and Rookies of the Month . Players of the Week are most common coming in at 1 in 8 packs, but the Rookie of the Month and Players of the Month are only 1 in 40 packs making these both tough insert sets to collect.

MVP isn't known for their Autographs or Relics but this year they do have a couple of sets to hunt down. Your better off finding these online or at card shows than pulling them in your box. The lowest odds of either is 1 in 128 while the others are looking more like buying a case to actually finding one or maybe two.

Each box will come with 24 packs with 8 cards per pack. You also are guaranteed to find either a Super Script, Autograph or Relic in each box. Since the Super Scripts are numbered to only 25 those aren't too bad of a pull overall.

Lets see how we did on our box;

Base Card: 132 (0 doubles)
Base High Series SP: 24 - Sakic, Nugent-Hopkins, Crosby, Lemieux, Kane, Gretzky, Lundqvist, Teravainen RC
Silver Script: 16
Silver Script SP: 8 - Tavares, Couture, Kessel, Rinne, Van Riemsdyk, Giroux, Lecavalier, Selanne
NHL 3 Stars of the Week: 4 - Malkin/Kronwall/Keith, Scrivens/Seguim/Harding, Ovechkin/Jones/Hutton, Nyquist/Lundqvist/Iginla
NHL 3 Stars of the Month: 1 - Steen/Crosby/Niemi
Colors & Contours Teal L3: 3 - Zuccarello, Foligno, Campbell
Colors & Contours Gold L2: 1 - Robert Lehner
Colors & Contours Gold L1: 1 - Kevin Shattenkirk
Colors & Contours Purple L2: 1 - Pavel Datsyuk
Super Script: Brock Nelson /25

The Base cards this year have a decent design to them. I like the technology type pattern and they don't feel or look low-end too much overall. The Silver Scripts are also nice with the autograph facsimile on the front. On the Rookie cards I like the Rookie at the top of the card as it sets it off nicely against the design.

Short Prints are not easy to tell unless you look at the numbering of the card. From the 24 we pulled we hit most of the top hits in the product which was nice including Teravainen and Gretzky.

We pulled 5 inserts in the box and one of them was a 1 in 48 packs shot. 4 of the inserts were the Players of the Week and the Players of the Month was a nice one with Crosby on it. Being that these are touch inserts to put together I thought they would have been a little better designs and types of cards. 

Colors & Contours is my favorite parallel so far in 2014. I love the awesome technology and die-cut shapes on these cards. In a product like this you don't expect this type of high-end look and feel but this was very surprising and made me want more.

From the 6 cards we pulled we came across 3 that were harder pulls overall. Lehner is a 1 per box pull, Shattenkirk is a 1 per 2 box pull and Datsyuk is a 1 in 6 box pull! Very nice on all three of these cards.

Our main hit in the box came as a Super Script (as we assumed it would be) of Brock Nelson. Upper Deck did a nice job on numbering these only to 25 cards and using a technology foil to brand the card. Even though these are 1 per box they will still bring in decent secondary value with the low numbering.

The 2014-15 MVP product did a decent job. This is a very affordable box and you can expect a little of everything from decent base cards, Short Prints, cool die-cut parallels and a low numbered parallel or if your lucky a relic or autograph. This is a great little set for beginners or set collectors as the set isn't too big and you can have a lot of fun tracking down those SPs you need.

Most cards/hits pulled in our breaks end up on our site storefront www.packgambler.com, or our COMC account ThePackGambler. If you are interested in any of the cards we have mentioned please send us an e-mail at packgamblersales@gmail.com

Gambler Overall Rating: 4.2 out of 5

Cost: 5/5

Box Hit: 4/5

Design: 4/5

Parallels: 4.5/5

Inserts: 3.5/5

Fun Aspect: 4/5