2008/09 Upper Deck Be A Player Hockey Box | 2 Packs | 1 Autograph | Factory Sealed

A factory-sealed box of 2008/09 Upper Deck Be A Player Hockey — 2 packs of 5 cards, with one autograph card per box. Released 11 May 2009.

Ten cards, one of them signed

That configuration is the whole product, and it is almost extinct.

A normal hobby box holds twenty-four packs and a few hundred cards, of which perhaps three or four are hits. You buy the hunt. Be A Player did the opposite: two packs, ten cards, and a signature guaranteed in every box — the Signatures insert falls at 1:2 packs, which is why.

There is no base set to work through and nothing to discard. The entire box is the part other products bury.

Upper Deck could do this because Be A Player was built around the signatures rather than the checklist. The line had been running since 1994 and was, for most of its existence, the product collectors bought when they wanted autographs rather than a set.

The 2008 draft class is why this box matters

The rookie checklist is one of the strongest in modern hockey.

Steven Stamkos and Drew Doughty went first and second in the 2008 draft. Stamkos scored 555 goals and won two Stanley Cups with Tampa Bay; Doughty won two with Los Angeles and a Norris Trophy.

Claude Giroux is the anomaly — drafted in 2006 and passed over by everyone for most of the first round, he did not have his rookie season until 2008/09, which puts him in this set alongside players two years younger. He went on to captain Philadelphia and pass 1,100 games.

Also here: Jakub Voráček, T. J. Oshie, Luke Schenn, Blake Wheeler, Kyle Okposo, Semyon Varlamov, Zach Bogosian, Nikita Filatov, Kyle Turris, Patrik Berglund and Brandon Sutter.

Rookie cards in this set are numbered to 99 and fall at 1:36 packs — which, in a two-pack box, means roughly one per eighteen boxes.

The multi-signature cards

Beyond the single autographs, the set runs a ladder of shared-signature cards that gets steep quickly: Dual Signatures at 1:16 packs, Triples numbered to 35, Quads to 10, Six Star to 8, and Eight Star to just 6 copies.

Getting six or eight players to sign the same piece of card stock is a logistical problem measured in months, which is why those print runs are what they are.

Players Club parallels are numbered to 25. Rookie Redemptions fall at 1:80 packs, numbered to 99.

Specifications

2 packs per box · 5 cards per pack · 1 autograph per box · Factory sealed · Released: 11 May 2009 · Manufacturer: Upper Deck · Brand: Be A Player

Stated odds reflect an average across the entire production run; no ratio is guaranteed in any individual box.