2014-15 SP Authentic Box Break

So, after not making any hockey purchases for what seems like forever, I stopped at my LCS, and picked up the most promising-looking product that I hadn't tried out yet. In this instance, I got myself a box of 2014-15 SP Authentic. It's a mid-range product, but the big draw with these is the Future Watch rookie cards, both in hard-signed for, and hard-signed with a patch. The Future Watch Auto Patches can net big bucks if you get the right one, so let's see how my luck turned out:

Base: They aren't really that different than previous year in it's theme, which is a matte white background, a team-color-related pattern on top of that, and a semi-glossy player photo. I got five Penguins: Mario Lemieux, Evgeni Malkin, Tom Barrasso, and Chris Kunitz. These are cards 1-150 in the set.

Cards 151-20 are Modern Moments and All-Time Moments. The Modern Moments cards chronicle important moments from the past year, and All-Time Moments...well, you get the idea. All are SPs, with the All-Time Moments cards being slightly more rare.

Next in the set at cards 201-260, which are the unsigned Future Watch cards. Usually, these are they guys who either had less of an impact, or don't have a whole lot expected of them. They are numbered /999, and my three were Petteri Lindholm, Nikita Nesterov, and Landon Ferraro. Cards 261-320 are the autographed Future Watch cards, but I'll go over those when I get to my hits.

There's also a few inserts, including the SP Retro cards. These pay tribute to the 1994-95 SP set, and feature current and former players.

While not quite an insert, Upper deck did include updated cards to their flagship set. Most of these revolve around players who switched teams late into the season, and rookies who had yet to make their appearance in either series 1 or 2. I got two base cards and two Young Guns.

Each box promises three autographed cards, but I was lucky enough to pull four. The first one is a Ryan Murphy autographed card numbered 16/99 from the 1993-94 SP Premier Prospects set that was inserted into packs of 2013-14 SP Authentic. I guess they had quite a surplus from last year, and threw some extras into this year's product.

Now, each box guarantees that one of the autographs will be a Future Watch rookie card, but all three of mine turned out to be. The first is of Kerby Rychel, numbered 697/999, who is the player Columbus selected in the 2013 draft with the first-round pick that the New York Rangers sent them in the Rick Nash trade.

Next, I got Trevor Van Riemsdyk, numbered 45/999. Trevor may be the younger Van Riemsdyk brother, but as of last season, he is the one with his name on the Stanley Cup.

Lastly, I was lucky enough to pull one of the Future watch patch cars, and with it being 2014 No. 8 overall pick Bo Horvat, a pretty good one at that. Unfortunately, it's a redemption, so the waiting game will have to be played.

Well, it would, but within minutes of pulling this card and posting it on Facebook, I began working out a deal with a Horvat collector, and it was on its way before I could even scratch it. I'll post the results of that trade soon, and it's something that made trading this card a VERY easy thing to do.

That's it for SP Authentic. I'm sure there are better boxes of this out there, but I know there are MUCH worse. With an extra autograph, and three Future Watch autographs of some pretty decent rookies, I was very happy with what I pulled.