Retail Review - 2011-12 Pinnacle Hockey

-------------Front------------------------Back-----------
























2011-12 Pinnacle Blaster

Commons:
4 Taylor Hall $1.25
8 Alex Ovechkin $1.25
19 Tyler Seguin $1.25
31 Carey Price $1
53 Jeff Skinner $1
62 Michal Neuvirth $1
87 Sidney Crosby $2
91 Steven Stamkos $1.25
196 John Tavares $1.25
219 Jonathan Toews $1










Rookies:
273 Alexei Emelin $3











Rink Collection:
20 Chris Pronger $4














Breakthrough:
7 Ryane Clowe $1.50
20 Loui Eriksson $2

Fans of the Game:
8 Pressly $4



















Foundation Tandems West:
7 Halak/Pietrangeld $n/a (one sold on Ebay for $5)











Game Night Materials 35 Drew Doughty (Black Swatch) $10

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Design: 3/5

Pros: The photography is pretty great. Blows most of the competition's cards off the ice. (Just look at the couple I scanned for front and back base card scans. Card backs have alot of interesting text to read.
Cons:Boring card back design. No stats whatsoever and it re-uses the front image.

Set Building: 1/5
Pros: Tons of players to collect, 250 total!
Cons: The rookies #251-280 are short printed. Not too bad considering Upper Deck does the same thing, however Pinnacle made the last #281-290 autograph versions. Putting this set together will be near impossible without spending a ton of cash.

Rookies: 1/5
Pros: You get at least one per box... I mean it could be worse right?
Cons: 40 rookies total in the base set, 30 of those are short printed, the last 10 are super short printed autographed cards. You'd have to be extremely lucky to pull one, at least in retail! Rookies have the 'foil' finish and don't blend with the rest of the set.

Inserts: 3/5

Pros: Plenty to collect. I'm not sure how rare the Foundation inserts are but they seem to sell well on Ebay and I don't see many listed. They could be retail exclusive? The foil cards don't scan well, but they do look nice!
Cons: Boring designs. All of the inserts have the same picture on the front and back. Has anyone ever cared about Fans of the Game? Also nothing is serial numbered.

Autos/Relics: 3/5

Pros: One per box, the only reason the box wasn't a complete bust!

Cons: No serial number again!

Value: 11/25
I don't think I'd buy this again. It seems like the perfect product to build a set, with the outstanding photography and decent insert/jersey to pack ratios. They had to screw it up by making the rookies impossible to get though!