2009 Upper Deck Faux Blaster

On Saturday we showed the results of a fake blaster of 09 Topps by posting $20 worth of packs purchased at a recent card show. At the same show I picked up $20 worth of UD Packs. Here are the results.

2009 Fake UD Hobby Blaster
Configuration 4 Hobby Packs + a Bonus for $20.00

72/500 Base 14.4% - each pack contained 18 base cards regardless of the number or type of inserts. No Dupes. 2 Phillies #291 Chase Utley and #298 Brad Lidge above


1 Game Jersey Dual Swatch GJ-JV Jason Varitek #d 033/149
1 Rivals R9 Angels v Dodgers Vlad v Manny.


2 USA Baseball 18U-JM Jeff Malm, 18U-MS Max Stassi.
1 Stars of the Game GG BW Brandon Webb

I am with Chris from Stale Gum here, having minors on cards is a little weird, although Stassi the younger of the two players will be 18 in a couple of weeks.

2 Documentary 4925, 4926 - BOS ALCS5 and BOS ALCS6 Both Ws for the BoSox as they tried to mount a series comeback versus the Rays.
1 UD 20th Anniversary Retrospective #130 Randy Johson 130Ks in 160.2. Seems like an unremarkable stat, but if your looking to fill cards there it is.
1 YSL 6741 - Derek Jeter 9/20/2008 Yanks 1 O's 0. This was the next to last game at Yankee stadium. Jeter is picture on a card for a game where he was removed for a pinch runner. weak.

This Hobby Blaster came out to be about even with a retail blaster. Retail blasters have 10 packs of 8 roughly I think. These Hobby cards are 4x20. Retail guarantees one relic, which I also got in the Hobby packs. In comparison with the Retail Blaster opened over at Stale Gum the other inserts are about equal - I like the Documentary add on better than the regular Documentary simply because they are all playoff games. My biggest insert disappointment was not gettting a 75 OPC.

To me the 09 UD v Topps competition is a tie. Topps has narrowed the gap in photography and both companies have put out functional if not distinct designs. My knock on the Topps cards is the miniscule unreadable card numbers. My complaint on UD is all the wasted space used to name the players position. This is really poor on the landscape style cards.

2009 UD #312 Jake Peavy

Neither Topps nor UD came up with an insert set that I am interested in collecting, although I may work on the 75 OPCs.

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

ok now for the bonus.

I got the dealer to toss in grab bag (box really) with the 4 packs. The front card was a 2008 Donruss Threads Bob Gibson, which is a set I am thinking about building, as I have picked up quite a few packs of it already. I wasn't expecting much from the grab bag as he sells them for 1.75 normally and he was happy to throw it in.

The 75 card box actually turned out to be pretty good.

3 Phillies (Dykstra, Dale Murphy, Gene Shall)
8 Moments and Milestones - How bout that These baby's are so worthless they are getting thrown in grab bags
6 08 Allen Ginter Plus 2 flags
20 cards of Hall of Famers mostly from the overprinted glory years
30 stars and notables also from those operprinted glory years
and about dozen cars that are absolutely worthless.

1987 Topps #312 Turn back the Clock Reggie Jackson
2008 Topps #122 Jeff Kent 42 RBI (of 125) #d 006/150

So in the end, the Faux Hobby Blaster was a bit better than a Retail Blaster would have been on the grab bag. There was enough decent stuff in those 75 extra cards for me to consider them worthwhile.