Welcome back to the semi-recurring series where we talk about hockey cards. There isn’t much going on in the world of the Tampa Bay Lightning right now (and frankly, I have slightly more than the most cursory interest in the Stanley Cup) so a decent way to pass the time is to bust open some packs of hockey cards, right?
Last time out we tackled a really, really basic offering from Upper Deck in their 2021-22 SP set. White backgrounds, limited inserts and parallels, just a nice little set. Well, today we’re going in the complete opposite direction as we take a look at a couple of packs from the 2021-22 Upper Deck Allure set. If you like shiny colorful cards, well then, bubba, this is your set.
The base set features a nice silver chrome finish with a large action shot of the player. Instead of a full background there are some geometric designs and lines that make things a little busy, but aren’t too distracting. The player’s name and team name are easy to read in the bottom left corner. I could go for a slightly smaller Upper Deck logo, but hey, it’s their card, they can advertise like they want.
Allure has been around for a couple of years now and is a mid-range type of product. Like a lot of these non-flagship sets, it doesn’t have a huge base card checklist – just 150 cards with 100 veterans and 50 rookies. They make up for it by offering a ton of inserts and parallels in all sorts of bold designs and colors.
The basics for the Tampa Bay Lightning collector. There are four players featured in the base set – Nikita Kucherov, Brayden Point, Steven Stamkos, and Andrei Vasilevskiy. Two rookies make the cut in Alex Barre-Boulet and Ross Colton. Victor Hedman makes a cameo appearance in the Hustle, Hit, and Never Quit insert set (1:12 packs). All of the base cards have the usual parallels and Vasilevskiy and the rookies have several autographs included.
One of the more fun insert sets are 16-bit – a tribute to the video graphic games of old and a continuation of the 8-bit set that was part of the flagship
The Rainbow insert set contains five different versions of each card that when put side by side make a rainbow. Below you can see the Red/Orange version of the Patrik Laine card. So you would line up the Red/Orange next to the Orange/Yellow next to the Yellow/Green next to the Green/Blue next to the Blue/Purple version for your full rainbow. Since Upper Deck can’t do anything easily, the Green/Blue versions are numbered to 299 and the Blue/Purples are numbered to 199. Still, it’s a pretty fun chase.
As for the overall rookie class, you would be looking for the usual suspects from the 2021-22 class: Cole Caufield, Trevor Zegras, Moritz Seider, Spencer Knight, etc.
In the retail versions, rookies fall every other pack on average while you should pull one in every pack in a hobby box. Unlike the SP set we talked about last time, Allure is available in hobby boxes. You get 8 packs of 8 cards each for about $119. There should be at least one autograph in every box and 15 other parallels or inserts. So for the money not a bad break these days. You can also find them in hanger packs in retail locations (which is what I opened up).
The cards themselves are pretty nice in hand. They have a chrome-type finish and a nice heft to them. The colored variations really pop in person, and should display nicely. As usual the backs aren’t cluttered with information, but a nice thing is that Upper Deck listed the parallel’s on the back. For instance I pulled a Luukkonen 1917 Shield parallel and it is listed as such on the back:
With the proliferation of parallel and multitude of different colors it’s always nice to know exactly which one you get to avoid confusion.
If you’re into collecting for the flip game, this probably isn’t your cup of tea. While there is some value in the parallels, the base cards and rookies aren’t that pricey. Caufield rookies have been selling for the $3-$4 range on eBay. Now, if you do pull a nice card, like say a Connor McDavid 16-bit insert, well, that could pay for a couple of steak dinners. Still, the return on investment for most of the boxes out there probably isn’t worth investing in a lot of cases.
So, if you see it at your local card shop and have a few bucks to spare and the urge to rip some packs, it’s not a bad few minutes of fun.
