Authentic Moments auto: Gabriel Landeskog

Some of the nicest-looking autograph cards I've seen browsing around at the "Authentic Moment" auto parallels that Upper Deck has been issuing through its SP Authentic brand over the last few years. And I finally got a chance to pick one up for myself at a decent price:

It's hard to be a card with a fantastic, full-bleed photo and on-card auto signed in gold ink. This was issued as part of the 2013-14 SP Authentic hockey set and, as you can see from the caption, it commemorates Gabriel Landeskog becoming the youngest captain ever in the NHL. Landeskog was just 19 years and 286 days old when the Avalanche gave him the "C" -- 11 days younger than the previous record-holder, Sidney Crosby. One of the complaints I've heard about the Signature Renditions subset in last year's release of The Cup is that it's basically a copy cat of these Authentic Moments cards. It's a fair complaint, as it looks like at least one of the Signature Renditions cards -- Aleksander Barkov of the Florida Panthers -- even uses the exact same photo and moment as an Authentic Moments card. But I have to say....rather than making me like the Signature Renditions cards less, it makes me like the Authentic Moments cards more.