Upper Deck
2008/09 Upper Deck Series 1 Hockey Retail Box | 24 Packs | Factory Sealed
A factory-sealed 24-pack retail box of 2008/09 Upper Deck Series One Hockey β 24 packs of 8 cards, 192 cards in total. Each box contains one game-used jersey card and six Young Guns rookie cards.
One jersey card is the entire difference from the hobby box
This is unusually clean, and it makes a good illustration of how the trade works.
The hobby box of this set has 24 packs of 8 cards, six Young Guns and two jersey cards. The retail box β this one β has 24 packs of 8 cards, six Young Guns and one.
Everything else is identical. Same pack count, same card count, same guaranteed rookies, same checklist. The manufacturer removed exactly one hit, and that single card is what separates two products at two price points through two entirely different sales channels.
It is rarely that legible. With other sets the hobby and retail versions differ in pack counts, card counts and whether the hits are guaranteed at all β which makes comparison hard and the premium easier to justify. Here the arithmetic sits in the open.
Whether one jersey card is worth the difference depends entirely on what you are buying the box for. A set builder gets the same 192 cards either way.
Six Young Guns, and the class they come from
Young Guns is the rookie subset Upper Deck has run since 1990/91 and the most collected rookie series in hockey. Six per box is the guarantee.
The 2008 class is among the strongest ever printed. Steven Stamkos went first overall β 555 goals, two Stanley Cups β and his Young Guns card is his first true rookie card. Drew Doughty went second, with two Cups and a Norris Trophy.
Claude Giroux is the anomaly: drafted in 2006, overlooked through most of that first round, and without a rookie season until 2008/09 β which puts him in this set beside players two years younger.
Also here: Jakub VorΓ‘Δek, T. J. Oshie, Luke Schenn, Blake Wheeler, Kyle Okposo, Semyon Varlamov, Zach Bogosian, Nikita Filatov, Kyle Turris and Alex Pietrangelo.
In the range
The blaster box of the same set is a smaller retail format with an oversized 3Β½ Γ 5 Young Guns card that exists in no other configuration.
Specifications
24 packs per box Β· 8 cards per pack Β· 192 cards Β· 1 game-used jersey card and 6 Young Guns per box Β· Retail configuration Β· Factory sealed Β· Manufacturer: Upper Deck Β· NHL and NHLPA licensed
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