STL Cards and More

Spoke with a vendor who has been selling sealed wax for 30+ years today at the Toronto show. He told me that Fanatics no longer distributes hobby boxes to Canada. If you want them you have to buy them directly and it’s (heavily) allocated. You CAN buy limitless junk retail product though from distribution.

Toronto Card Show pickups. Good amount of Sabres stuff on the floor at prices that were way over comps. Sabres stuff is very affordable but dealers (understandably) are not incentivized to sell at the low low comps that are out there now. The Helenius Bootleg is a cool piece.

This (very bad) product is still available on the Topps website for the same price as the “deal” that the by design(?) hobby heel @itsgeoffwilson wants you to think is charity to consumers frequenting his shop. Do not do business with this sort of grift.

ATTENTION @eBay SELLERS: Make sure you change your preferences for payouts back to DAILY and turn off the on demand withdrawal option that you were automatically changed into today! Do not give eBay a free loan of your hard earned funds.

This list is the junkiest of junk wax to ever wax (yes even Cosmic Chrome, which will see a huge lift in the print run of an already overprinted product) and what is even more wild is that these are potentially the lowest prices you will see this stuff be sold for. Who is buying these bad products?

Non-sports cards are very hot right now. Speaking of which, let’s check in on the totally not a scam and an incredible hobby “investment” VeeFriends market. (Reminder that at EQL-for whatever reason- these were 239.99 and were 249.99 on release day on shelf with some stores trying to charge $400+)

The 2025-26 @UpperDeckSports Series 2 Population Count rainbow (1, 10, 25, 50, 100, 500, 1000) of the @BuffaloSabres Noah Ostlund.🌈 Still looking for the Golden Treasures OPCP 1/1 auto.

2026-27 Upper Deck Series 1 Hockey Review After finally having completed sorting and going through 12 cases (144 boxes, 1,728 packs, 20,736 cards, 10 damaged cuticles) and taking a little time to think about this release at a little bit of a distance, I believe I can speak definitively as to what this release is, what it isn’t, and what Upper Deck got completely wrong with this release. Settle in everyone, this is a long one. Overview Upper Deck does not release complete odds so you cannot determine how much they make of any one product. As a result, the market needs to get a feel for the product as things start to trickle out to see just how much the release is “juiced”, watered down, or otherwise. After having opened 12 cases, I think I can come reasonably close to how much has been printed of this product in a more general sense, and the overall total is a harbinger of very dark and very bad things to come to the flagship brand, especially with Series 2 and the Gavin McKenna chase on the horizon. The bottom line for this release is this – this is the most overprinted and horrendously put together and thought about set that Upper Deck has made since the 2023-24 Series 2 debacle with the Bedard chase. The Numbers I do not want to make this a bitch session about what I pulled and what I didn’t pull. My intent is not to make this into that. My intent here is to provide context as to how difficult it is to pull a big hit and use that as a mechanism to show just how much has been printed given my relatively large sample size and experience. Please keep this in mind as we walk through the data. Upper Deck tried to make the product less stinky by adding ‘SP’ case hit type variation cards – in addition to the Swagnificent (1:180 packs) that were tough to pull previously we also got ‘Country Logo’ (1:120 packs), ‘Team Color’ (1:120 packs), ‘Off-Ice’ (1:180 packs), and whatever ‘SSP Variations’ are, which I assume is the McKenna SP-1 which fell one in 3 cases (1:432 packs) – might be wrong there but I saw no other ‘SSP’ Base Variations and I sorted through all the base cards from 12 cases so if they are out there, I didn’t pull any. Each case of this product went like this: - 1 Young Guns numbered card (I pulled 1 UD Exclusives, 1 Outburst Red, and 10 Deluxe YGs) - 1 ‘very rare’ card in terms of numbering (/25 or less) - 2 Outburst YGs (some cases had 3) - 6 boxes with a Stencils numbered card, most of which were /999 - 1 Dazzlers Pink ‘case hit’ parallel which took the place of a numbered card - About 1 ‘very rare’ case hit which took the place of a numbered card in a box (these ranged from Youthful Spirits – 1:2,880 packs – of which I pulled 2, Holotypes – 1:1,008 packs – I pulled 1, Bootleg – 1:2,880 packs – I pulled 1, a Gold Dazzlers– 1:2,880 packs – I pulled 2, including my biggest hit, a Gold Celebrini - and Fanimation– 1:4,850 packs – I pulled 1 and it was damaged) – I also pulled one 1/1 printing plate, and 1 Red Outburst Retro Young Guns /25 (Roman Josi) - 2 Deluxe Base cards or 1 Deluxe Base card and 1 UD Exclusives Base card - 1 Off-Ice SP Base parallel - 1 Team Color SP Base Parallel - 1 Country Logo SP Base Parallel - 2 Black and White Young Guns Canvas - 1 Clear Cut Young Guns - 24 Speckle Inserts (2 per box) Out of the 12 cases I pulled, I failed to pull a High Gloss /10. I didn’t pull any Outburst Gold (only pulled one in my life so this was no surprise), and as stated above, I pulled 1 UD Exclusives YGs, and 1 Red Outburst YGs. Again, that is two cards – a /25 and /100 Young Guns…in 12 cases. I pulled 1 Pop Count 25, 1 Pop Count 50, 2 Pop Count 100, and the rest were Pop Count 500, Pop Count 1000, and dozens and dozens of red stencils /999 filler cards. Product Musings This product is stretched thin. Everyone knows this. How thin the product is stretched is only shown through context in the absence of odds provided by Upper Deck. I tried to provide some context above, but let’s travel a bit into the past to understand just how bad this product is. Back in the Before Times, each box of flagship had either a clear cut, an UD Exclusives, or a High Gloss parallel. That’s not each case, that’s each box. My findings have shown that we have gone from that, just 7 years ago, to 1 UD Exclusives YGs (I pulled just 10 UD Exclusives overall) and 0 High Gloss in 12 cases. Now, we have the following ‘rare’ filler included in each hobby box, as print runs continue to balloon: - Clear cut - Outburst - Speckle - Numbered inserts up to /999 - 4 (potentially 5?) different kinds of base variations - Deluxe /250 that the market has summarily rejected as a parallel of little consequence - Case hits that the market as a whole have rejected as parallels that do not align in value with the difficulty in pulling each (including Outburst Retro Young Guns, which are near impossible to pull, that do not sell for what they should) - Faux-numbered but kind of numbered Population count cards up to /1000 - More and more filler inserts that have no connection with one another and just seem to be thrown in to bloat the product run as far as possible My results are not uncommon. I have spoke to a dozen other shops and folks breaking this product in large numbers and without fail no one pulled much of consequence. McKenna SP-1 cards which were 1 in 3 cases immediately crashed to around $200 one day after release. Top young guns are not pulling anywhere close to the box price with the current market for the top guys sitting around $70-$75. The race to the bottom started the day of release and has only started to level off several days later as the market rebalances and product is no longer being opened in such prolific quantities. One thing I will say that I thought was better – the QA for the non-top hits was quite good. I only found 2 inserts with QA issues, but the McKenna and SSP cards I pulled were all damaged. So Upper Deck has a major issue that they are just ignoring when it comes to the bins for the SSPs and that doesn’t seem to be wanting to be fixed anytime soon. On the other hand, the card stock is of a lesser quality and thinner than in the past – everything seems to be going up in price and you are getting less quality goods, and Upper Deck is no exception to trying to squeeze profits as much as possible from this one. Overall Assessment and Looking Ahead I’m trying to keep this relatively short. The prevailing notion on the internets and in all hobby forums is to stop ripping wax and ‘buy singles’. Yes, we all know this. I, personally, spent the last 5 days straight (including taking time off work) to open and sort through 12 cases to list in my store. I do this because I enjoy ripping hockey, I get the product at a decent price (nowhere near the prices D&A and other colluders are asking for today), and I enjoy the process – to an extent. All that said - I will admit - this product may have broken me. This product is truly horrendous to rip. The true ‘hit’ rate is so abysmal and the product is so predictable that you knew right out the gate if you hit a card /25 that you were done with that case aside from hoping to hit a good Clear Cut YGs (I hit just 1 ‘good’ one) or an Outburst YGs or a good Black and White YGs from that point on. The race to the bottom with the latest and greatest releases these days is so fast that if you don’t list early and often you risk missing out on a ton of sales so there is this prevailing stress over the entire process now that didn’t used to be there just a few years ago. This product is setting up S2. S2 has a big chase element in McKenna. Upper Deck knows this, the colluders know this, every LCS knows this. You will pull 1 or 2 McKennas in every case. You will NOT pull any numbered McKenna cards. You will pull your $15-$20 ‘SP’ cards and you are supposed to be happy with it as you lose 90% on each box you buy of this release if you don’t hit McKenna. It doesn’t have to be this way. Upper Deck could just print less and stop with all the filler. They could do that, but they won’t. And that is where we are – more expensive product for less stuff while the secondary market continues to shrug and move on to the next shiny thing.

12 cases of 2026-27 @UpperDeckSports Series 1 Hockey base inserts. No speckles, non numbered. 3,442 total cards. 17% of the total cards in this product will be base inserts, 75% will be base cards, 4% Young Guns, and the remaining 4% will be a vast majority of Speckle inserts.

Preview for my review of 2026-27 @UpperDeckSports S1 hockey. Here are all the numbered base cards, most of which are over /250, from 12 cases. The numbers don’t lie about how ridiculously overprinted and watered down this set is: Blue Stencils /99: 4 Exclusives /100: 6 Green Stencils /199: 5 Base Deluxe /250: 19 Yellow Stencils /299: 13 Pop Count 500: 5 Red Stencils /999: 36 Pop Count 1000: 14 So let’s add that up. Out of 144 boxes, your numbered card is something you don’t want 102 times. That’s 71% of boxes. This is so extremely ridiculous that I hope it makes everyone reading this turn away from buying this or any other flagship product until this is fixed. This is absolutely insane.

Final case, case #12 of 2026-27 @UpperDeckSports S1 hockey. By far the weakest case of the 12. Shesterkin pop count 25 and a bunch of not great stuff. I will be sorting all the inserts and young guns and then I will have a very detailed breakdown of these 12 cases. I have a lot of thoughts and most of them are not particularly positive about this release.

Case #11 of 2026-27 @UpperDeckSports S1 Hockey. Another very solid case. McKenna SSP, Outburst Retro Red Josi YG /25, Pasta SSP, a solid Clear Cut YG and 3 Outburst YGs.

Case #11 of 2026-27 @UpperDeckSports S1 Hockey- first appearance of a Retro Outburst Young Guns. Roman Josi Red Outburst /25. 🔥🔥

Case #10 of 2026-27 @UpperDeckSports S1 Hockey. A third McKenna SSP, a Martone Black & White Canvas YG, 3 outburst YGs. Very very good case.

Case #9 of 2026-27 @UpperDeckSports S1 Hockey. This is essentially as good a case as you can expect outside of hitting an Outburst gold or a top low numbered YG. McKenna SSP, Stutzle Bootleg, Hagens Outburst YG, McDavid Off Ice SP, 3 Outburst YGs vs the standard 2.

Interesting new observation in Case #9 (I misspoke earlier with the case number- the Bootleg came out of case #9) The “super rare hit” bin on the production line did not include Bootlegs and the McKenna SSP together- I just pulled this McKenna (my second) out of the same case. That means that there are cases with multiple big hits out there.

Case #9 first sighting of the Bootleg (1 in 20 cases) SSP. Very clean Tim Stutzle. 🔥🔥

Case #8 of 2026-27 @UpperDeckSports S1 hockey. First Holotypes SSP (Zegras) and a Martone Outburst YG with some nice PC pieces- Tage Country flag variation and a Dahlin Stencils Purple /25.

It took 8 cases of 26-27 @UpperDeckSports S1 hockey to hit a Martone YG variation. This product is very very tough.