Canadiens Rookies Highlight Upper Deck Series 1

Hockey card collectors are an avid bunch. Year in and year out, card manufacturer Upper Deck sells out its staple products, Series 1 and Series 2. Each year, those products are eagerly awaited because they feature the best prospects' rookie cards. There are years when a team doesn't have many rookies, but this year, the Montreal Canadiens are stealing the show.

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Rookies Lane Hutson, Logan Mailloux, and, to a lesser extent, Joshua Roy's young guns cards are highly sought-after items. So much so that the Canadiens are the priciest team to buy in a group break; for those who are not collectors, there are hobby shops that allow you to buy into a case break (12 boxes, with each box containing 12 packs of 12 cards and selling individually for $144) and receive all the cards from your chosen teams when the boxes are open.

Related: Canadiens: What to Expect From Lane Hutson

On release day, it set you back $330 to get the Montreal Canadiens in a Collect Edition group case break. The advantage of going down that route is that you are almost guaranteed to receive all of your team's rookies. While it may seem pricy to go down that route, buying a Hutson Young Guns card can easily set you back $150 on eBay. Of course, the price is adjusted per team depending on how many players/rookies from said team are included in the product checklist.

While card collecting crashed because of mass production back in the 1990s, Sidney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin's arrivals for the 2005-06 NHL season essentially resuscitated it, before Connor McDavid and Connor Bedard joined the league in 2015-15 and 2023-24, respectively gave it another boost.

Related: 5 Things To Know About Lane Hutson

Make no mistake, though, collecting is not for kids anymore, not at these prices anyway. Although there are lower-end products that could be used to introduce your little ones to either the sport or collecting, I know it worked like a charm on me back in the 1980s. I became hooked on hockey, and well, the rest is history.

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