Winner Winner Chicken Dinner

I am finally getting around to posting it but I recently had a bit of a hot streak going. Within a 14 day period last month I won contests held by Panini, Upper Deck and Beckett. I am not normally a lucky sports card person, besides coming in a second place  tie last year at Thozul Will Rule's Nightmare On Cardboard III I have not won any contest's lately so this was a nice change.

 It all began with box break of Panini’s Luxury Suite Hockey on Panini’s The Knight’s Lance blog. They asked that collectors leave a message about the box break for a chance to win some of the cards pulled from the break and when I was contacted by Tracey Hackler I was floored. What was even more surprising is that when I received the package I found out that I had won 4 cards and not the original 1 card that I thought I had won.

2011 Luxury Suite Hockey:
Marco Scandella rookie card

Zac Dalphe autograph rookie

Marian Hossa dual relic

Pakke Rinne & Shea Weber dual relic

Next up was Beckett with a box break of 2011 Donruss Football and again, leave a comment about the product for the chance to win one of two cards. I won second place (First place got a Cam Newton Autograph/Relic card) and scored a nice Colin Kaepernick Autograph Rookie card.

The final contest was Upper Deck’s contest for a special unnumbered Abby Wambach 2011 Upper Deck card that was not released in packs. This contest was in support of the Women’s World Cup and the U.S. run in to the finals, 20 winners were selected from those who posted on the USA Women’s Soccer Facebook page. Upper Deck also sent a 2011 Upper Deck MLS Landon Donovan base card with the Abby Wambach card, to bad I am a Seattle Sounders FC supporter.

2011 Upper Deck MLS Review

Tonight was MLS’ First Kick starting off the 2011 MLS season in a typical Seattle, read this as rainy, night on a cold and wet pitch with the LA Galaxy continuing their stranglehold on the Seattle Sounders winning 1-0 in a tough fought game that really could have went either way.


Last week Upper Deck started posting information about the upcoming 2011 MLS release, which should be out in just over a month. Upper Deck has been known to hold information about the MLS release quiet and often not releasing any information until release day. I am unable to find any pricing or even a pre-sell for the product.

Schedule Release Date: April 19, 2011
Box Configuration: 20 packs per box, 12 cards per pack
SRP: Unknown


Box Break:
4 Memorabilia cards
1 Autograph cards

My Thoughts:
Really hard to say what we should expect from this release based on the three cards that I have seen posted. So far only a Henry base card, a Wambach/Marta WPS dual auto and a Donovan relic have been shown. This looks like it was phoned in, the base cards look more Panini in style instead of the expected Upper Deck clean design and the ML Materials relic reminds me of the generic Gameday Gear that show up in blaster boxes. I seriously hope that I am wrong about the set.

They are advertising that this set contains the first card of Thierry Henry but UD released a special edition Henry card last year with him in his Red Bulls kit after his first game, which you could pick up the card if you bought 2 blasters through Upper Deck directly plus he was also in the recent Upper Deck World of Sports release. I guess they mean this is his first card available in MLS packs.

2010 Upper Deck World of Sports

2010 Upper Deck MLS Special Edition