2008/09 Upper Deck Series 1 Hockey Blaster Box | 8 Cards Per Pack | Factory Sealed

A factory-sealed blaster box of 2008/09 Upper Deck Series One Hockey — 8 cards per pack, with 2 bonus packs included. Bilingual English and French packaging for the Canadian market. Sidney Crosby on the front.

The oversized Young Guns card only comes in these boxes

Every blaster box of this release contains one 3½ × 5 inch Young Guns card — roughly double the area of a normal trading card, and available nowhere else.

Hobby boxes do not have them. Packs bought loose do not have them. Upper Deck made the card a retail exclusive specifically to give the cheaper channel something the expensive one lacked, which is the opposite of how the hobby usually works — retail normally gets the thinner version of everything.

The reasoning is commercial. Hobby boxes sell themselves to collectors who already know what they want; blaster boxes sit on a shelf in a shop competing with everything else on it, and need a reason to be picked up. An oversized card of the set's headline subset is that reason.

It also means a sealed blaster from this year contains a card that cannot be obtained by opening anything else.

Young Guns, and the Stamkos rookie

Young Guns is the rookie subset Upper Deck has run since 1990/91, and it is among the most collected rookie card series in any sport. Cards fall roughly 1 in 4 packs.

The 2008/09 class is one of the strongest ever printed. Steven Stamkos went first overall in the 2008 draft and scored 555 goals with two Stanley Cups; his Young Guns card is his first true rookie card and one of the most sought-after of the modern era.

Alongside him: Drew Doughty, second overall, two Cups and a Norris Trophy. Claude Giroux, drafted in 2006 and overlooked for most of the first round, whose rookie season came late and lands him in this set. Plus Jakub Voráček, T. J. Oshie, Luke Schenn, Blake Wheeler, Alex Pietrangelo, James Neal, Wayne Simmonds, Steve Mason, Kyle Turris and Mikkel Bødker.

What else is in the set

A 200-card regular set, plus UD Game Jersey memorabilia cards, and the Winter Classic and Hat Trick Heroes insert series.

Superstar inserts — Hat Trick Heroes, Winter Classic, Sophomore Sensations and Captains Calling — combine to roughly one in four packs.

Specifications

8 cards per pack · 2 bonus packs included · 1 oversized 3½ × 5 Young Guns card per box · Factory sealed · Bilingual Canadian packaging · Manufacturer: Upper Deck · NHL and NHLPA licensed

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