Back in the summer during National Baseball Card Day, I stopped into Maverick's card shop with some friends. To get the coveted Kris Bryant card, I was supposed to spend $10 on Topps products. However, seeing as Topps had nothing out that I wanted to spend $10 on, I opted on five packs of the first hockey release of the year, 2016-17 Upper Deck MVP.
MVP has really been sort of hit or miss for me, some years I like the design (like two years ago), some years I don't (like last year). This year happened to be one of those years where I liked the design. It's not a hit based product and is geared mainly towards set collectors. Here's what I got ...
The nice thing when you are done opening packs with a product like this is that you have a nice fat stack of base cards to sift through. I pulled out most of the cards of the stars to show off the base cards. Fleury started the season back as the top net minder for the Pens due to an injury to Matt Murray. Once Murray is healthy again, that should be a real interesting battle to watch, especially if Fleury is playing at a good level again. I'll always think of Rick Nash as a Blue Jacket since he was one of their first homegrown stars even though he's been a part of the Rangers for a few seasons now. It's still strange to me to see him in a Rangers uniform. I've also added him as a hockey PC guy just because.
Despite the fact I opened a sizable number of Upper Deck Series 1 packs last year, I wasn't lucky enough to pull a Connor McDavid Young Guns card. Oh well, I'll just have to settle for his second year card. I seem to get a new Tuukka Rask card everything I get a batch of hockey packs, not that I'm complaining as I really enjoy watching him when I get to see Boston games.
Believe it or not, these are actually puzzle pieces. The backs form some sort of puzzle but I'm not sure what. These are a bit strange too as the card number, legal print, and other stuff normally found on the card backs are on the front. Personally, I think it's a little distracting.
I got these nice shiny die-cuts. The one nice thing about MVP is that even though it's not hit based, there's still some really neat stuff to be had, such as these. I couldn't tell you one thing about either of these guys, mainly because there is exactly zero coverage of any Canadian teams where I live, unless they're playing Columbus on the local Fox Sports network.
I consider myself somewhat lucky when it comes to opening MVP packs. The first year I got some packs, I pulled out a Mario Lemieux silver script parallel numbered to 25. This year, it's a Jake Allen silver script parallel. Allen is going to have a good chance to prove himself as the number one goalie for the Blues, with Brian Elliott having been shipped off to Calgary.
All in all, opening these was a lot of fun. Sure you won't get any big hits but you'll get a lot of fun and enjoyment out of it. After all, having fun is what collecting is all about, right?
