Retro Legends, Batter-Dipped

You know, I have been trying for the life of me to figure out what these cards reminded me of.  When I pulled the first one, I felt there was something familiar about them but I couldn't put my finger on it.  I looked through my guides and my vintage card box, thinking I may have come across something like these, but nothing popped out at me.

I'm talking about these 12-13 O-Pee-Chee Retro Legends cards and their colorful yet quirky design pattern.

Here is what I mean...

But it donned on me as I was watching reruns of Pawn Stars this evening.  These wonderfully ridiculous cards remind me of ...

Those wonderfully, delicious breaded meat tubes that I used to love as a kid but can't stand the sight or smell of now.

I can't even walk past one in a mall without wanting to throw up.  Literally!!  I'm not kidding.  I hate hot dogs.  I saw them being made once...in person (the hot dogs, not the hot dog on a stick).  Live!  It wasn't pretty.  And while I generally live by the philosophy that anything is better batter-dipped, deep fried and put on a stick, even I can't stomach these concoctions.

But the uniforms...That is what these remind me of.  The hats specifically.  Even Bathgate and Doug Wilson up there have hair shaped like those hats.  

So forever, these O-Pee-Chee Retro's shall be know as the "OPC On A Stick" cards.  At least, that's what I am calling them.  Feel free to use that term as well. 

(Sorry, ladies. If you are in any of these pictures and are offended by being compared to a hockey card, I totally understand.  I will remove you from the page if requested to do so.  But you should be more careful about what pictures you let the Google Search Engine find of you in your work clothes.)

Box Break - - 2009-10 O-Pee-Chee Hobby Box

Yes, you have all seen these before.  I've even done a box break on here of one, blaster box that is.  I am still quite a few cards away from the complete set for 2009-10 so I thought another hobby box might help.  Plus, this stuff is getting dirt cheap now that we are a few years into the future.

I don't want to waste everyone's time with a long, drawn-out detailed write up since you can find them all over the place.  I will just take a few moments and highlight what came from this box.  Lot's of pictures to follow...

A hobby box is jam packed with cards.  There are 36 packs with 6 cards per pack.  Thats 216 cards for the math illiterate.  216 is a lot for a hobby box but you have to remember that this set is 600 cards with a dozen or so insert sets, plus parallels, and variation parallels.  So in the grand scheme of things, 216 isn't really that many cards.

Here is what I pulled:



Base Cards:   127

 Look!!  Brodeur is Tebowing years before it was popular.  So should it be really called Brodeuring?


Inserts:   19

9   Canadian Heroes; Kellar, Ouellette, Phillips, Sostorics, Ward, St-Pierre, St. Louis, Roy, Szabados

3   Team Checklists; Blackhawks (Toews), Islanders (Streit), Blue Jackets (Nash)
2   League Leaders; Carcillo (PIM), Thomas (GAA)

1     In Action; Dany Heatley
1   Trophy Winner; Ovechkin (Richard)

1   Record Breaker; Iginla (Flames PT. Leader)
1   All Star; Marian Hossa

1   Canadian Heroes Foil; Mike Richards


Rookie Cards:  9
Galiardi, Weber, Quick, Caputi, Niemi, Vernace, Chorney, Van Der Gulik, Rechlicz

                                                                  Ohhh, look!!  I have a puck!

Legends Cards:   9 
Esposito, Kurri, Bouchard, Howell, O'Reilly, Bowman, Lindsay, Bucyk, Mikita

  
Game Used:    1 
Florida Panthers Team (Vokoun, Horton, Booth, Weiss; 5 colors)

 These are 1:144 packs

Base Parallels:    8 

 You can't really tell but these are foil.  Lots of foil.

Rookie/Legend Parallels:    1   Phil Oreskovic (Who? I'm not scanning this...)


Retro Parallels:    36

Retro Parallel Variations:    3
Nikolai Zherdev, Jordin Tootoo, Justin Pogge

More foil, please.

Add 'em up and you get...3 cards short.  Hmmmm.  I bet this is one of those "Packs with a GU card are shorted, yada, yada, yada...".  It's ok.  I'm not hating over 3 cards.

If you can get past the busy design and all the holo-foil on the inserts, this is a nice set, in my opinion.  I know there are a lot of you out there that don't like it for one reason or another.  Mostly, the gripe I hear is that the picture is overtaken by the framing.  That is true to some extent but not in the extreme way that this years set (2011-12) is.

I think these are a great value now that we are under $40 per box, and under $30 in many cases.  If you are a set builder and are looking for a challenge, Upper Deck will meet that demand every year with O-Pee-Chee...wow, that sounded like an advertisement.  You can even pull autos in here, although they aren't very easy (1:216 packs) but I have pulled a few now and again (just not this time).  You will be disappointed if you pull a redemption auto.  They expired last September and Upper Deck is kind of picky on what they decide to honor after the fact.  You may get lucky though.

Now that I have a chunk of the Retro cards, I may try and see how easy it would be to put this set together.  Although, I am privy to the prior years set.  2008-09 looked like the 1979-80 set which were awesome.  Unfortunately, the fall out with Topps and their trademark on the design forced Upper Deck to stop using exact copies.  These look like...well, I'm not really sure what they look like.  But they are cool nonetheless.

UPDATE:  In case you were keeping score, the box gave me 16 cards that I needed toward the set completion.  Only 61 more to go.