Earlier this week, I needed to stop on the way home from work to pick up a couple of things for dinner. Instead of hitting the normal Walmart Neighborhood Market closest to home, I took a slightly scenic route to a Super Center that I don’t often frequent. My thought was “maybe there’s a discount blaster or two.” There was.
That is the set and series that contains the Andrew Shaw Canvas Young Guns. I knew the odds were long. The odds for a Canvas Young Guns is 1:96 and there are 30 Young Guns, making it 1:2,880 odds.
I bought one, yes, ONE, hobby box of these at a show and hit the Andrew Shaw Canvas Young Guns that I wanted, so stranger things have happened.
If you’re a follower of our blog, you know that I don’t pass on marked down Upper Deck blasters, so it doesn’t matter what the odds were or who was in it, that was coming home with me. I’m just trying to justify it more in my head!
I did get a Blackhawk in my two Young Guns, but it’s one that’s no longer playing in the Windy City.
I ended up with three of the Victory update cards and two of them were rookies. Those were right at the stated odds.
The Hockey Heroes cards were just 1:24, as were the OPC Updates. No big names or anything, but I’d say that this particular blaster beat the odds on those. Canvas were 1:12, so the blaster was dead-on there.
Finally, the last one to show you is a good hit for these. I believe 99.9% of collectors would prefer to hit someone other than Nathan Gerbe, but in blasters, the game jerseys are 1:480.
I’m a big proponent of us needing to find a way to get kids more interested in the hobby. I’ll write a piece on it in the future, but I do want to use this moment to make a suggestion. I don’t know that at any time, a Nathan Gerbe jersey card was in high demand. Why not leave jersey cards like this to blasters and make some better odds. I know adults buy blasters. I do and I see others do it all the time. However, an eight year old Sabres fan would have much more appreciation for this than I would. It’s just a thought.
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