17-18 Series 2 - Am I out of touch or is this historically bad?

[Stryfex]

I haven't been collecting sets (other than tim hortons and canadian tire) in the 17-18 season as I became really sour with the price of wax after the 15/16,16-17 seasons but lately I've had the itch to open some boxes and build a set. I've been seeing regularly good deals on series 2 of upper deck in all formats so I figured I might pick up some and the series 1 as well. I went to cardboardconnection to see the checklist for series 2 and well...is it the worst young guns checklist of all time? I looked at it and man...I feel like series 2 would have to be nearly free for it to be worth it.

That being said...this year was a year where my head just hasn't been into hockey so are there some names on there that are important to the hobby and I'm just blind to that?

[RGM81]

I'm kinda in the same boat as you in terms of where my headspace is hockey and hobby-wise, but I really haven't been wow'd by anything this year with the exception of SP Authentic. And that's likely only because on the break night I attended the case break yielded one of the McDavid YG Autos and a Hischier YG Acetate.

[clonzfan]

That and the quality issues have caused me to decide to stop purchasing any Upper Deck products in the future. The $4000 to $5000 I spent in the past will now go to a nicer vacation.

[10-4 collector]

Same here. I haven’t purchased any UD stuff in a long time! Waste of money! I agree with SP authentic though, it didn’t appear to be too bad.

[Stryfex]

Same here. I haven’t purchased any UD stuff in a long time! Waste of money! I agree with SP authentic though, it didn’t appear to be too bad.

One of the issues with SPA though is that for a set builder it's an extremely expensive endeavor. If you buy wax you're looking at like $125 CDN per box to get 1 FWA of which there are like 50-60 every year so if you want to build the set semi-naturally you have to spend thousands on boxes. Buying the cards is much cheaper of course but often there'll be a couple of FWA that cost many hundreds of dollars.

[RGM81]

One of the issues with SPA though is that for a set builder it's an extremely expensive endeavor. If you buy wax you're looking at like $125 CDN per box to get 1 FWA of which there are like 50-60 every year so if you want to build the set semi-naturally you have to spend thousands on boxes. Buying the cards is much cheaper of course but often there'll be a couple of FWA that cost many hundreds of dollars.

Most boxes I've seen so far have had 2 FWA but it's not guaranteed this year, which is frustrating.

And of course those fun Schmaltz inscriptions have turned a $10 card into a $100 card!