2008/09 Upper Deck Collector's Choice Hockey Box | 36 Packs | Factory Sealed

Collector's Choice was the bottom of Upper Deck's range, and it is built on volume. 36 packs of 6 cards, 216 cards in all, with a Choice Rookie every second pack and a Choice Reserve parallel in every single one. The base set runs to 200 cards.

The insert worth looking at is CupQuest, a set within a set laid out as a playoff bracket: First Round, Second Round, Semi-Finals, Finals. The scarcity climbs with the round — First Round cards fall 1:10 packs, Second Round 1:14, Semi-Finals 1:16 and the Finals cards 1:32. The odds are the design.

And the stickers came back. Stick-Ums are peel-and-stick cards of the kind that had largely left the hobby after the early nineties, revived here on purpose. Upper Deck advertised one per box; the stated odds of 1:18 packs would give two across 36 packs. The two figures do not agree, so treat one as the floor.

Rookies in the set include Steven Stamkos and Drew Doughty, first and second overall in the 2008 draft, along with Luke Schenn, T.J. Oshie, Blake Wheeler, Nikita Filatov, Brandon Sutter, Mikkel Bødker, Nikolai Kulemin and Steve Mason. Two subsets fill out the checklist: Three Star Selections at 3:10 packs and Chippy's Choice at 1:5.

Released 23 February 2009. Factory sealed and never opened.