Nose-picking in the Upper Deck

As I've already stated here, I opened a few boxes of cards over the past couple of weeks (4 at Christmas and 4 later on). Being a big Upper Deck fan, I usually get their products, because they're always fun to bust and guarantee great photos and designs.

But not always.

Sometimes, the people at Upper Deck would get very, very lazy. They had products to put out, and not always the time and energy to think them through, apparently. Here are a few examples from the boxes I opened lately :


Let's start with 99 MVP. Not my favorite product, but it was cheap enough, and I liked the base cards from what I'd seen on my computer screen. Collation was terrible, and I don't understand how they put the cards in their packs. Supposedly, you get 10 cards per pack, 36 packs per box. I've never been really good at math, but I'm quite sure there should be 360 cards in a box.
I got 383.
Some packs had 7 cards, others up to 15. It simply did not make sense. Maybe they beefed up some packs in honor of Marc McGwire being pictured on the box.

 The names on the side are a pain to read, by the way. Since they were in a hurry to put that one out, they used the silver signature parallel again, Great idea, but they still belong to Collector's Choice. I wasn't collecting at the time, but maybe MVP is supposed to be the new Collector's Choice, with a low SRP.

This year's theme was Foil & Circles.
Lots of foil. (the 90s...)
Lots of circles.
Nice looking cards though.

More foil & circles.

Same design, different name, same foil, same circles.

They got rid of circles there, but kept the foil. And the same picture on the back as on the front. Lazy lazy.


Next up, 2001 UD Decade of the 70s.

I was really looking forward to opening those packs, as I'd gotten a Blue Jay card from that set in a trade and instantly loved it. I don't know what I expected, all I know is that I was very disappointed.

I thought all cards would look like that :

Colorful with a name that doesn't even make sense (why would players wear Bellbottomed pants ?), but stil fun.

Instead, I got the same photo on subsets and base cards. Photos often blurry. I know it was the 70s, but I'm pretty sure there are plenty of great photos to chose from, just look at the Topps base sets from that era !

More of the same photos. And Reggie Jackson must have been the Mike Trout of that set, because :

 And also :

7 cards of Mr October from the same box. And collation was also an issue there, which means there might be more ! I'm way too lazy to check. I can really relate.

That set was also an excuse to produce Bob Clemente cards.

And as many Munson cards as possible (again with the same photo cropped differently).

Finally, I present to you 2007 Upper deck series 2.
A real swing and a miss if you ask me. I couldn't find one single interesting photo to scan and show off. Usually, I get in a frenzy with Upper Deck base, with so many cards to show and ooohs and aaaahs everywhere. Not this time. The design is bland and uneventful and there are hardly any action shots at all. Blah.

I don't even feel like scanning those straight.

It took me a few seconds to realize that those were two different cards.

The silver lining came from that Vladdy relic. Always nice to catch a Vladdy relic.

As much as I enjoy making fun of card manufacturers, the other boxes I opened were pretty cool, so we'll look into that soon !