Upper Dreck Fleer Fail - 2013 Jambalaya Bryce Harper - Detroit Tigers?

Last week Cardboard Connection published info on Upper Deck's return to producing baseball cards in the form of 2013 Fleer Retro Baseball.

2013 Fleer Retro Teaser Jambalaya Bryce Harper (from cardboard connection)

It was good to see UD went all out when sending out their promotional materials.  They get a big star and they got lucky as Harper bumped his Q-Rating with a noteworthy Opening Day performance.

You would think a multi-million dolar company like Upper Deck might put as much effort into returning to baseball as Bryce Harper puts into his game.  Unfortunately they do not appear to have done so.

Yes I realize this may only be a mock up for a some quick pub - but how the hell can you get the Team Wrong? Detroit!! - I was trying to figure out of Bryce Harper had some sort of Detroit on his resume.  Near as I can tell no College or High School there.

The design is based off a Basketball insert set that was issued in 1997/98 so that may have thrown off UD. But those card featured nicknames not city names, so that text had to be changed regardless.

I honestly don't get it.  Maybe I am missing something here, but it is like they put in no effort at all. Or they are leaking a gimmick to get some press.

Kmart Bargain Bin - Thanks to Marie for the Heads Up.

I was in my old neighborhood which has a different big K then my new locale and decided to check it out and see if they had any of the bargains that Marie over at A Cardboard Problem had found.

Turns out they did - lots o different blaters. They also had single backs at about 1/2 off and I decided to create my own buffet from the selection.

The packs are going for the following:
2008 UD X 99 cents
08 Baseball Heroes 97 cents
09 Artifacts $1.69 for 2 packs
UD Timeline $1.49/pack

For real cost of each pack add 6% for PA Sales Tax.

overall I pikced up 11 packs for $12.72 (including PA Tax).

If the Phillies ever score another run I will open a pack - or maybe I should open a pack to get them to score some runs. Any ideas on what pack would be the best luck for the Phils??

Phungo's Two Cents - 2010 Upper Deck

I am going to dedicate way to much time to this post - I found little to like about my first sample of 2010 Upper Deck Cards.

Full disclosure - if your here and have read much of my card specific commentary, it is likely evident that I am at Topps guy. Topps cards simply have history on their side - these are the cards of my youth and I enjoy that sense of history. So anything I follow up with here is likely tainted somewhat my a personal bias.

Ok now that I got that out of the way....

I had a fear that ones Topps got the exclusive MLB license that they would mail in the 2010 set. I think it is far more accurate to say that Upper Deck was the brand that mailed it in. I found 2010 UD boring and uninspired. I don't going with the Green Motif - which I have dubbed Green Eggs and Spam. if you know your not going to be able to use logos, why not use the team colors or at least the crayola crayons 8 base colors. Perhaps this would have been a violation of the Topps Exclusivity agreement - I don't know.

It's a Hit - Camden Yards Card


I don't really like the stadium cards, and I will get to that later, but this one here is a dandy.

Foul - First Card


Thumbs down on my first UD card of 2010 just because he is a member of the team that beat Phils in the World Series. The card is ok, the opinion is purely personal.

Mixed - Phillies

I picked up 3 Phils cards which is better then the 1 card I got out of 5 topps packs. A couple of set up guys and Jayson Werth. All three were members of the 2008 World Championship Phillies squad. I really like the Romero photo and consider it one of the better ones in the pack.

Foul - Tape Measures


These cards from this post are all from a pair of rack packs ($10.58 including PA Sales Tax). The UD Racks seemed to always have a lame insert. These cards are ok, but why not have the city name of the players? I mean they went to the trouble of naming the pitcher and the hand he throws with. Magglio Hit hist dinger on the Road, pictured in a Home Jersey. Votto hit his at home, here he is featured in a roadie. That to me is laziness on UDs part - Insert cards are supposed to be special treat them as if they are. The other two are probably 3rd jersey's so I am not sure on those two.

Mixed - Biography
I actually don't mind these - The two I got were probably the 2 furthest apart magnitude wise. Buerhle's card commemorates a great event while the other card is a footnote for a team that had little to cheer about last year. My biggest issue is that I have seen a lot of folks that have praised this set, yet 2008 Topps Year In Review was universally panned - it's the same stinkin set.

Home Run - Catcher Cards

UD knew that catchers in gear would not have many logos in view and they took good advantage of the situation. There were several good action shots of catchers in the 2 rack packs I opened.

Foul - b-sides


As usual UD left a good bit of exciting white space on the back of their cards.

Foul - Hidden Ball Trick?

I just got done praising the Catcher cards above then UD does this to me. The profile photo is in the way of the action in both catcher cards above and obscures the ball in the Inge shot. This is similar to something that handicapped 08 Topps when all the players had to "duck" out from under the Topps Logo.

miscellaneous nits

I don't like the cropping on the Samardzija. That may be nit-picking though. The stadium cards are generally boring. The under construction Target Field may be top of the list. And finally in general I do not like the Two player Team Checklist cards. I have almost always liked them before with only one player. maybe these will grow on me, but right now they are a thumbs down.

Upper Dreck

I have posted a few Sloppy Topps in the past, today - in the interest of equal time I am posting an Upper Dreck entry.

And, yes, I know poking fun at Yankee Stadium Legacy is like picking on the Mets injury depleted 2009 lineup - but it is still fun.

The two budget packs I picked up at Rite-Aid yesterday were basically uneventful (8 base cards - no Phils) but the YSL was an interesting Yogi Berra card.

2008 UD YSL #1869 Yogi Berra

This is perfectly fine card featuring a Hall of Famer and a game the day of September 2nd 1946.

Since the featured game is from 1946, I can't even check Baseball-Reference to see if Yogi played that day. Of course I could read the Bronx Tales - click the picture to enlarge and read, sorry it may be a bit blurry. Notice anything odd. The card represents a game on September 2nd 1946 however, YOGI BERRA DIDN'T EVEN DEBUT UNTIL SEPTEMBER 22nd!!!

Ugh. Aren't insert sets supposed to be special or something?!?! - Like I said there is not much joy in poking fun at this set. I realize it is a large set and a lot of work to create - still it would of been nice for UD to at least show something on the effort end.

All this being said, I am still chasing the two specific UD YSL cards that represent the two games I saw at Yankee Stadium. The first card I chronicled in this post regarding a botched ebay bid. The other card is for the game played May 3rd 2008, which would be among the 2009 UD inserts.

More Yogi at Phungo HoF Index
1959 Topps #180

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.

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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.