Live pack break!

Today, three regular type packs - 1 2005-06 Upper Deck Ice Hockey, and 2 2005-06 UD SPAuthentic hockey. Also, have a blast from the past.... brought to the present. NHL Pogs! Also, at the end, one surprise pack that I've heard of, but never seen in person. More on that at the end when I open it. :)

First, the POGS pack. Don't know much about it, but it has a Shane Doan card in it, so if I pull that, we call this a success. "Collect all 60" it says. 5 POGS per pack, 1 "slammer" (whatever that is) and 1 "series card" (whatever that is.....). Anyway, on to opening:

The opening tab on the side of the pack is nice. It's also in a blister pack. Ooh.

The series card is a checklist, probably should have figured that out. An Ovechkin in here, but no Crosby. I guess Upper Deck owns Crosby. The slammer appears to be a plastic mini-puck about a 1/4 inch thick, with the NHL logo on the back. I guess this IS supposed to be a game of some type, so this slammer must facilitate that.

Pogs? Daniel Briere, Jarome Iginla, Keith Primeau, Mark Recchi, Glen Murray. Funky holograms on the back, much better quality than the previous ones. This was a loose pack I saw at Superstore. No price tag. I hope I didn't pay much. Oops, looked at the sales slip. $4.98. Well, once is fine.

UD Ice pack - I reviewed this already :). On to the pack: Esche, Nabokov, Poti, Antropov, Luongo. You know, I don't really like the one insert per pack idea..... but crap, if you don't pull an auto or jersey, you get nothing from these.

SP Authentic. One of the sets rookie collectors look forward to every year. Feast or famine, really. You get something great, or you get..... well, cards. Anyone who's collected hockey cards knows the drill on these, so I won't go into detail. Let's look at the two packs and see what's there:

Pack 1 -Palffy, Lindros, Ribiero, Stajan, Roloson
Worse than crap. Unimaginable.

Pack 2 - Biron, Gomez, Gionta, Khabibulin, Yzerman
Slightly better than pack 1. Slightly worse than eating thumbtacks.

Cards look nice. High quality card stock, no damage. But again, feast or famine. In my case, famine.

Now for the odd one. I found a pack of 2003-04 UD Manchester United soccer cards! Match-worn shirts 1 per box, autos 1:96 packs (1 in 4 boxes). Definitely a rare item. Finding it alone is tough, so really, even if I get all commons, finding it was a reward. Although it would be nice not to find crap. Here we go:

Opening..... A checklist card. Sir Alex Ferguson hoisting a trophy. To be honest, I have no idea which one, and I've been unable to find out. It's got kind of a crown thingy on top. Four regular cards, Diego Forlan, Bojan Djordic, David Bellion, and Wes Brown. Then, a "Ruud Awakening" insert card, seeded 1:12 packs.

Unique cards, but the design reminds me of UD's golf card offerings, or the old Collector's Choice hockey. The red foil should have been yellow or gold, not red. They tried to use red and black for everything, it just makes it difficult to see properly. Pics are rather boring. The Diego card is the only one with actual in-game action. The rest are practice, or in the insert card's case, a pic, but no background. I give them points for being different to me, but there isn't much special about them.

Overall, not a great pack busting episode. I basically got nothing except something unique in the ManU cards. Oh well, I guess there's those days.