...it's the first card of 89, it doesn't matter that I'm using a 20-year old sharpie.

Series 1 Baseball now comes in at a mind-numbing, how am I going to afford this on my budget, 500-card base set. If anyone at Upper Deck is reading this, fire a box this way and you’ll get a couple hundred more words on your product.

Did I forget to mention it’s Upper Decks’ 20th Anniversary? Well, it is and if you buy a couple packs you’re bound to be reminded of this trivial one-fifth of a century accomplishment.  If you’re lucky, maybe Ken Griffey Jr. will pop up and tell you that it’s really been 20 years.

It seems like just yesterday Upper Deck was raising the prices for their Premium cards and driving every other card company out of business. I wonder if there’s a 20th anniversary card for “Junk Wax”.

Personally, I’d love to see a 20th anniversary card for August ’07, a summer that will live in infamy with card collectors. The Harvard Law Journal, and Forbes Magazine cover it here and here. Basically, a group lead by Mikey Eisner of Disney Fame tried to buy Topps for $9.75/share, and Upper Deck offered $10.75/share — Shit hit the fan, failed hostile takeover bids ensued, monopoly and anti-trust were words thrown around like monkey feces at the San Diego Zoo.  If you’re into that kind of stuff, it’s definitely worth a google.

The Break-Down:

Base Set
500 Cards

Inserts and Parallel Cards
Base Set Gold Parallel (# to 99)
1975 O-Pee-Chee Insert
1975 O-Pee-Chee Mini Insert
Yankee Stadium Legacy Update
UD Documentary Update

Autograph Cards (1 per box, on average)
Inkredible
UD Game Jersey Autographs #’ed up to 99

Memorabilia Cards (2 per box, on average)
UD Game Jersey
UD Game Jersey Double swatch #’ed up to 149
UD Game Jersey Triple swatch #’ed up to 99
UD Game Jersey Quad swatch #’ed up to 15
UD Game Jersey Autographs #’ed up to 99
Piece of History 500 Home Run Club Bat
USAB 18U National Team Jerseys
USAB 18U National Team Jersey Patch #’ed up to 25
USAB 18U National Team Jersey Autographs #’ed up to 25

You can view the entire Checklist, right here.  Taken from the UpperDeck.com website, here’s there odds on a box-break:

Two (2) MLB Memorabilia Cards, one in which is either a dual, triple, or quad serial numbered to 199 or less.

500 card base set which is 100 cards bigger than the 2008 set.

One (1) Inkredible autograph

Two (2) inserts in every hobby pack!

20th Anniversary cards one (1) in every two (2) packs!

Yankee Stadium Legacy Update cards one (1) in every four (4) packs!

Documentary Update cards one (1) in every four (4) packs!

1975 O-Pee-Chee Insert cards one (1) in every six (6) packs

So, that’s what we should expect if we drop the 89.00 bucks Canadian on this sucker.  We’re getting 16 packs of 20 cards per, so it’s a fairly solid price point.

The Base Card:

You can go about rooting through the Gallery, and obviously click to make stuff big:

123►

It’s true, Upper Deck has far and away the best looking baseball cards out there at this price-point.  I’m not a fan of the shiney-foil-chrome-golden-shower type cards, and while I’m a huge fan of the white-border, my second favourite border is no border at all.

Here stands Orlando Cabrera, in what rates as a strong 7 out of 10 for last years 2008 Series 1 Baseball.  2009 steps it up, and provides a much better design.  While the bottom of the 2009 card is monopolized by type and logo, I can’t say that I mind too much.

Lucky for Upper Deck, they’ve decided to use the transparent function on their favourite photo editing suite.  It makes for a very sharp card, and sometimes if the contrast is just right — I’m damn happy it’s there.  Other times, it sticks out like a sore thumb.

I can’t even begin to say how much of an improvement 2009 series 1 is over 2007, so I wont.  2007 is a year I’d just like to forget about, when it comes to card aesthetics.

The Photography:

Upper Deck destroys Topps in this category.  It may lag in other places that I’ll point out later, but the photography is gorgeous.  If you actually take time to look at your baseball cards, rather than just throwing base cards into a stack while you root for “1 OF 1, OMFG, GU-CHROME-JERSEY-AUTO, OMFG-DIE-CUT”, then you’ll love this set.

As I mentioned with the Topps Series 1 Review, whomever is taking the photos for Upper Deck, and I believe it might just be a trip to Getty Images, knows how to frame a subject and has some seriously expensive camera equipment. The Bokeh on these photos is gorgeous and the ballplayer pops right off the card.

The range of photos is also superior to Topps’ with base cards including great shots from the Home Run Derby, and various other events.  One thing I did notice, and took quite a liking to, were the shots of players signing autographs.

I have no clue why I like these photos so much, because I’d generally hate any card-photo that doesn’t show a player a) wearing his regular season uniform or b) playing baseball.

I enjoy these photos though, so long as they’re not too prevalent in the set.

The Cuddyer photo to the right appears as if strong-armed Mikey has just finished signing a Topps Chrome from last year.  I wonder which UD employee figured that’d be a great idea.

Furthermore, I wonder how Cuddyer’s auto looks in that lovely black sharpie on a card that already has his printed black auto on it.

Regardless, these shots really made my day, and showcase part of the life of a baseball player that I’m sure most of ‘em wish they could avoid. Upper Deck really has put together strong photography, especially in their horizontally scaled cards.

After The Base Set Comes The Inserts

The O-Pee-Chee Inserts are nice, real nice.  They pretty much save the insert set.

If I were a Yankee fan, maybe I’d want a bunch of cards telling me about the history of Yankee stadium — but I’m not, and I don’t.  I enjoy baseball’s historic past, but the YSL is a bit of overkill.

But not as much of an overkill as the Upper Deck Documentary Inserts.  I can’t even begin to fathom why someone would ever want to collect this set.  I was thinking about the possibility of grabbing a few of these cards for displays.  Maybe if you go to a great game, and your favourite player hits a home-run — you grab one card.  Otherwise, what’s the point?

The OPC’s come in full size and a paralleled mini, which is pretty solid.  I’m not a huge fan of the mini cards as they’re a pain in the ass to care for, but they’re neat none the less.

Sweet Baby Jesus, We’ve got the US Under 18 Baseball Squad. I’m not sure how I feel about these guys.  They’re nice cards, and obviously come in their own parallels and GU, all serial numbered and such, but — I’m not American.

Now, I realize 99.99 percent of card buyers are American so maybe this card makes sense. If you’re American and want to comment on how these lovelies make you feel like drinking Budweiser and talking about how you used to be able to hit 97mph on the radar gun –be my guest.

The Historic Predictors also aren’t my cup of tea, and I’m really beginning to think that Upper Deck LLC randomly pulls ideas out of that Feces-Tossing-San-Diego-Zoo-Monkey’s Ass, that I mentioned earlier. The presidential predictors sell cards though, so they can’t be completely faulted. As Per Upper Deck’s giant sticker; This may be the only collectible of President Obama that was a) made in America and b) does not contain lead.

I did manage to grab 95/99 of my favourite new Tampa Bay Ray, Pat Burrell.  I didn’t even realize I’d pulled one of these until I went back to organize the lot.  I think I feel slightly better about pulling a /99 card than pulling so many /2009 cards from the Topps packs I’ve bought.

Interesting, eh? Reviews of Inserts and Parallels.  You’re the one who clicked on a title that said “sizable review”, I just spent an afternoon watching Eastbound and Down, and typing up said review.

and now onto…

The Hits, GU, AUTO — All That Jazz

This actually blows my mind, and I guess I’ll start with the good and work my way down.  First off, the best of the bunch seems to be the numbered to 89, autographed Griffey Jr. rookie card.  The Griffey Card on eBay is sitting at about $450.00 with a day or so left on it.  I’m sure it’ll finish around 700-ish, but that won’t compare to Topps’ high-end cut signatures.

After the Griffey, we’re left with a whole lot of nothing from the Inkredible Series:

Chris Resop, Tony Gwynn Jr, Micah Owings, Dustin Moseley, Xavier Nady, Jeff Keppinger, Ian Kinsler, Elijah Dukes, Glen Perkins, Brian Bruney, Edison Volquez, David Murphy, Aaron Laffey, Luke Scott, Marlon Byrd, Joey Gathright, Taylor Bucholz, Brandon Harris, David Eckstein, Andy Sonnanstine, Erick Aybar, Craig Breslow, Yunel Escobar, Jeff Baker, Chris Duffy, and Jack Cust.

Any and all of these cards, save possibly the Kinsler and Volquez, are available on eBay for the minimum bid. The other day, I purchased a Gathright, Escobar, Dukes and Jeff Baker for about 5 dollars plus shipping.

Upper Deck does offer the USA under 18 squad autographs though, which look nice enough.  I believe the Tate to the left is pack-pulled from the UD Series 1.  I always enjoy when pack-searchers screw themselves with massive disasters on the beveling surrounding the game-used portion.

Other than that, you’re going to get your standard game-used cards.   You’ll either get a 1 piece, 2 piece, 3 piece or 4 piece.

I managed to pull a Josh Hamilton, 3 piece, out of one of the packs and was quite pleased.

The cards are not bad, but the fake-jersey looking photoshop edit to fill the first couple of letters on the card if it’s only a 1-piece jersey card is awful.

Other than that, the cards are nice, and I like the fading.  Unfortunately, like some of the Topps inserts, the UD inserts are really coming out of packs chipped, scratched, bent, whatever.  If you’re going to put an insert in the pack that sells on eBay for barely 4.00 bucks in mint condition; You gotta make sure that it at least comes off the assembly line in decent shape.

Upper Deck makes up for their awful inkredible list of players, with a very solid player selection in the GU department. Do people still even value game-used memorabilia?

Conclusion

I have hard time justifying the higher price-point based solely on photography.  You’ll be able to purchase the 500 card set on the cheap in a month or so.  At this point you’re paying for the inserts, and quite frankly, I can’t bring myself to do it.  Even paying 10 bucks for a “Hot Pack” on eBay seems like a little bit of overkill for a .99 cent insert.

This isn’t a bad set to collect, and it’s an improvement on previous years but it’s still lacking in the awesome department.  My view however, may be jaded, because I’m not an American residing in New York City.  If that was the case, the U-18 and YSL inserts would probably best the Ring of Honor and Legends of the Game inserts that Topps offers.

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