2021-22 Series 2 Case Break(down)

UPS came early this morning, and dropped off a case of Upper Deck Series 2 Hockey. I wasted little time and broke that thing.

Technique

Everybody's breaking style is a little different. Here's what I did:

• Pulled obvious hits out of each pack, putting commons in a stack per box.
• I learned early on to check the card before and after the obvious hit, since sometimes an extra hit snuck in there.
• Went back and looked through each stack for French
  • These are still way too hard to spot – white text on light grey strip with a silver border – and I'm sad that many probably end up donated or in landfill. I miss the red foil maple leaves of years past.
• Sorted by team to spot any photo vars or missed French (sadly, I found none).

Quality

As good as or better than previous releases:

• A couple of soft corners on base canvas cards.
• No dings, stamping, creases, or miscuts.

I really don't like the new, stouter serial number stamps. They seem cheaper and sloppier (click to enlarge) than the ones Upper Deck has traditionally used since very early this century:

Collation

9/12 boxes had both checklists (and none had dupes), which is not a great measure of collation, except that I think about the kid who breaks a single box and it's the highlight of their year. They are inevitably missing a couple dozen or so cards to complete the base set, and this makes it harder for them to figure out who they need. By simple math it's obviously not possible to get a full base set into each box, but maybe the checklist cards – at least the base ones – could have a higher print run.

Young Guns and Rookie Portraits were spread out pretty nicely, with some expected doubles in the former. Honor Roll fell pretty consistently at one rookie and one veteran per box (or two rookies in a few boxes). Very few doubles across most subsets, outside of Young Guns and OPC updates.

Hits

Overall, not bad, but there was no real banger "case hit" – this case certainly fell in the "below average hit value" category. The notable ones:

• Seider YG
• "Snow Spray" base auto Barabanov
• Exclusives Jordan Eberle

That is all. Some other decent hits but nothing notable. I remember a time where we would get multiple Exclusives parallels per case, and way fewer "filler" inserts. Now volume is way too high to expect more than one Exclusives per case, so if you're chasing your team (like I am), good luck. Don't buy a case; spend the same money on team breaks.

Here is the overall breakdown:

I don't recall any blank packs, though there may have been one. Most boxes had 25 hits, with three having "only" 24. Here is the box-by-box breakdown (for those that care, and I'm a nerd so I care, I opened the case face up, and took boxes facing me from left to right):