Reverse Retail Therapy

Admit it. We've all been there before. Sent out to a major retail outlet by our significant others to purchase recycling bags and in turn suddenly finding ourselves wandering the card aisle.

I suckered myself into taking home a blaster box of 2015-16 Upper Deck Series 1 by building things up in my head to believe that inside laid a Connor McDavid, Dylan Larkin or Max Domi 'Young Guns' card, you know, possibly. With a blaster yielding two Young Gun cards, I gave it a shot.

Out of all the new base additions, the above Jonathan Quick card was probably my favorite photography wise. Just an overall nice, clean shot of the L.A. Kings netminder.

I know it's almost sacrilegious to talk bad about the photography from Upper Deck's flagship set because they've done such a fantastic job time after time. I mean besides the crop of rookie cards, the photography is what this set is known for. But I was actually kind of disappointed this year to be honest. They're usually on point with the image selection but I didn't feel it from 2015-16 UD. For every nice card there seems to be 3 stinkers. Anyone else feel the same way?

I thought this Ryan Strome card was pretty neat as well. Worth a scan at least. It's actually a pretty simple shot but there's just something about it that I like, maybe it's that intense, piercing look. Also, It was another card that I didn't already own so there was a novelty factor.

Here's Jiri Hudler on a fairly weak insert set dubbed 'UD Portraits'.There are so many of these to collect that it's basically a set within a set including off course 'Legends' and 'Rookies' short-prints.

Boyle reminds me of the Burger King mascot on this card. He has been such a big thorn in the side of the Penguins during their Eastern Conference Finals series.

Another large insert set, 'Shining Stars'. Collecting all of these would be a fun chase if you're into that sort of thing. I already had a blue parallel version of the above Ekman-Larsson from a previous blaster or tin purchase.

"Giddy up".

Hornqvist has become one of my favorite Penguins over the past two seasons. He has been such a hard working player who isn't one to shy away from going into the opposing paint.

Love the photo on the reverse of the card and personally think that it would have been better used in the Canvas set as the main image. Looking through the backs of the UD Canvas cards that I already own from this set, I feel like a lot of the images from the reverse would have made a great front photo.

The two 'Young Guns' from the blaster were Josh Anderson and Matt Puempel.

Anderson spent the majority of his season in the AHL suiting up for the Lake Erie Monsters; came up to the NHL for 12 games with Columbus and scored his 1st NHL goal and registered 4 points.

Puempel split the season between Binghamton and Ottawa. A 1st round draft pick in 2011, Puempel has shown some promise, lighting it up in the minors.

I'm going to toe tag this blaster as a mild letdown. Although I am well aware that retail blasters are very limited in their content, I didn't hit any of the 'Young Guns' that I conjured up inside my head.

On the bright side, as a set collector, I'm now just 14 cards away from completing the 200 card base chunk. I'm attempting to make good out of a bad situation.