Try A Pack #8: 2017-18 MVP Hockey

It appears as if Upper Deck has reduced the size of this years MVP set to 250.  I know in some of the years past it was 300 cards, and the cards #'d 201-300 were SPs, which didn't please a lot of collectors.

There's nothing worse for a budget conscious collector than a 1/3 of a set being short printed.  How does that help keep costs down? 

The cards # 201-250 are short printed this year, and I pulled one of them in my pack (John Tavares).

The base set is roughly the same, nothing flashy, just some standard shots of players in the midst of a game somewhere.  There usually isn't any multi-player shots in this set, which is fine for those looking for something simple.

What got me hooked on this release many years ago was the silver signature parallels.  In my rack pack I managed this silver signature card of Calle Jarnkrok.  This is typical of today's athlete, the 2 letter signature.  I actually passed right by this card the first time through the pack, that's how inconspicuous the card is. 

There's also the Gold Script (#'d to 100) and Super Script cards (#'d to 25), similar to past years.   There's also a Black super script parallel, #'d to 5 copies. The John Tavares SP black super script already has an auction on ebay if you want to check it out here.

I also pulled a puzzle back card, featuring Tanner Pearson on the front.  I like how Upper Deck slipped these in as an insert (they've actually been doing it for a few years now), the only difference that I'd like to see is that the photo on the puzzle back card could be different.  Tanner Pearson's card #82 in the base set has the exact same photo. 

That appears to be the left arm of Colorado's Nathan MacKinnon.  I always liked the idea of the puzzle back cards, but never had the desire to finish any of them.  Maybe I'll try one some day...

The player credentials access cards are a neat idea.  There's 4 levels of them, with level 4 being a case hit autograph.

I didn't pull any of the color and contour parallels unfortunately; I really would have liked to have had one of those to show on this post.

Not sure if I want to chase the set this year, as I've bought a couple of OPC packs already and am already hooked on those.  That post will be coming in the next few days...

Thanks for reading, Robert