Three Downs, but Just 2 Boxes of Upper Deck CFL

My favourite release of the year! 2025 Upper Deck CFL dropped last week. Nice colour coordination with a Blue Bomber on the packaging of a blue box. This year, they retained the make-up from last year. 100 base cards, and the same # of packs with 9 base cards, and 3 inserts parallels.

They've also kept the base design pretty much the same as previous years. Take the hockey, then take away the foil.

I'm not going to complain about the appearance of any Tiger-Cats card in the product, but Taulia was already out of the league in training camp. Surely 4+ months can give you time to replace him?

I'd rather have another kicker show up. These were 3 of the 4 in the set, as I didn't land the Sergio Castillo. No long snappers in the set this year.

Here are some of my favourite photos out of the 89/100 base cards I landed. As nice as seeing Pimpleton in the process of making a reception is pretty nice, I've got to give the nod to TJ Lee, and the defensive player with the ball in this grouping.

The final 20 cards in the base set are "Season Standouts", which highlights individual performances. Some of these players repeat in this subset, some don't. But it did lead to me getting two Bo Levi Mitchell base cards in the same pack.

And here is proof that you can wipe the background from a card image, and still have a great photo. This is why I specified that my favourite photo earlier was my choice in that group of three. This one blows those other three away. Defensive player diving with the ball!

Strangely, Rolan didn't get a true base card in the set, despite being the reigning Most Outstanding Defensive Player in the CFL.

Of course there are parallels, at 1 or 2 per pack, golds are the most common. They have very little to distinguish them from the regular base, just that little gold strip next to the name.

Although the background being changed does make the Season Standouts far more obvious.

Next up are Deluxe parallels. They're more obvious with the numbering on the front, and the UD hologram on the back. Each box provided 6 of these, with one being a dupe.

Finally, the hits. All the hits were autos this year. The first name only auto is pretty different, and the ink that is on that sticker has some fairly legible cursive. This does make for my second straight year pulling a Stavros-graph. Santos-Knox is a former Ti-Cat, so there's that as well.

And the Eastern Division love continued in the second box. Since I didn't get any of the High Gloss entries this year, that Peters auto/relic is the lowest numbered cards of the boxes. The Standouts parallels are the portion of the set that got the auto/relic parallels. Only the base design cards got the autographs. Isaac Adeyemi-Berglund gets the "long name" pass for having a shorter autograph. Finally, another Hamilton autograph to complete the Eastern sweep in terms of hits.

Considering I landed 3 Ti-Cats autographs, and got closer to completing the base set than the year prior, it is a thumbs up for these boxes.

There you have it!