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2002-03 Upper Deck Vintage

Packs per Box: 24
Cards per Pack: 10
Cards per Box: 240
Base Set Completion: 68.0% (238 of 350)
SPs in box: 56??
RCs in box: 3
Duplicates: 0

The exact contents of the pack scanned in and used to find insert odds:

1. Mike Peca
2. Ziggy Palffy
3. Pavel Datsyuk
4. Alex Zhamnov
5. Hal Gill
6. Brendan Witt
7. Shjon Podein
8. Ladislav Nagy
9. Teemu Selanne Awesome Achievements SP
10. Ales Kotalik Vintage Rookies SP

First Pack Comments: Nothing amazingly fancy here, some nice star power regular cards, and a 1:5 SP and rookie as well. A side note here though, these cards are very, very nice. Sweet base set!
First Pack Rating: 5 / 10

Total: 4
Tall Boys (2 per hobby box) -- 1: Todd Bertuzzi
Tall Boys Gold Parallel (#'d to 99) -- 1: Owen Nolan (87/99)
Framed Sweaters (1:96) -- 0
Framed Sweaters Gold (#'d to 50) -- 0
Fundamentally Sound (1:96) -- 0
Fundamentally Sound Gold (#'d to 50) -- 0
Honing the Skills (1:96) -- 1: Rostislav Klesla
Honing the Skills Gold (#'d to 50) -- 0
Green Back Parallels (#'d to 199, hobby only) -- 1: Martin Havlat (90/199)

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Martin Havlat's parallel displays the beauty of the base set. Klesla's practice used jersey shows the bad: practice used in a middle-end release. Nolan's Gold Tall Boy shows the ugly ... in my scanning abilities :)

Box Rating: 3.0 / 10
Product Rating: 4.0 / 10

This had the potential to be great.

I'll start with the good (this shouldn't take too long), the base set is spectacular. Each base card photo is well done, with a closeup portrait and a "standard skating" shot fused together. The effect works extremely well and makes pulling base cards fun! The subsets are also wonderful, team checklists (arne't those the best?), stats leaders, amazing achievements, all are wonderful additions to the base set.

But there is one more subset, and that's where the trouble begins. Vintage Rookies. Yes Upper Deck, Vintage ROOKIES! I pulled 25 of these vintage rookie cards. I ended up with three real RCs: Mikki Dupont, Adam Hall, and Ray Schultz. All played last year, which is why I guess UD was able to get them into this product. But here's my question: Pacific Atomic is coming out a week after Vintage. Vintage was released early. Atomic is going to have all the new rookies in it. So, with that in mind, somebody care to tell me why I am pulling Stephen Weiss and Marcel Hossa "rookies" in Vintage? Or somebody explain this to me, why does Raffi Torres have a regular base card and not a "Vintage Rookie"? Weiss and Marcel Hossa are tossed into the Vintage Rookies, but Torres is in the base set ... something seems wrong here.

The pain would continue into the inserts, except they aren't there. No real inserts to speak of. There are the jerseys of course, but they get their own separate rant. Aside from the outstanding base set, all you'll find in these packs is 1 parallel and 1 jersey. That's a bit disappointing. I guess the SPs were supposed to take over for the inserts, but the 1:5 SPs seemed to come out almost 2.5:1 for me (58 in the 24-pack box) so that wasn't happening. Granted, lots of inserts would have taken away from the splendor of the base set, but is one or two insert sets too much to ask? I guess so.

And now, as promised, the jerseys rant! Retail on a hobby box is $50. Somebody explain to me then, why after paying $50 for essentially a base set, jersey, and parallel, that I have a 2/3rds chance of pulling a practice used jersey card. Two of the three jersey inserts are practice used.

Now for you frequent readers (uhh, are there any?), you may realize I said MVP's practice used wasn't a big deal. Well, it wasn't. Why? Because the box had value aside from the 1 jersey per box and the box retailed at only about $30. This sucker retails at $50. Sorry, but if I'm dishing out $50 for a box and I only get 1 jersey insert, practice used is not going to cut it.

This box, well it seemed pretty standard. The Martin Havlat parallel is a relief: with a larger base set that could have easily been Craig Rivet, and I'd be screwed even more. I seemed to also make out like a bandit on the SPs (if UD didn't change them back into regular cards at the last second cause they were bored). The Tall Boys pack was cool, the gold parallel is nice, but sadly probably has little value and is of Owen Nolan, not a player I am particularlly interested in. But the real annoyance: Klesla practice-used jersey. After spending $50 on this box, that is a slap in the face. Give me something from an official game at least.

Apparently the consumer is not worth that much to Upper Deck. My advice is simple on this one. If you need a vintage set, wait for Topps Heritage. If you MUST have this set because the base set is appealing (which is what sucked me into this loss) wait until the box price plumments (won't take long) or buy the base set on the secondary market ... it won't be that expensive.

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