Pages

Thursday, December 20, 2012

2008 Upper Deck


Set Size: 799 cards

Design Notes: There isn't much design to the front. The player's name and team are printed in silver foil, and his poition is in a silver foil home plate with two fading lines spreading horizontally from the center. The focus here is on full-bleed high quality photography, as Upper Deck usually provides. The backs feature another photo, career statistics, and a short writeup.

Parallels and Similars: Only one actual parallel exists: a gold version serial-numbered to 99. Upper Deck First Edition also uses the same design without the foil printing, so be careful when set-building or card hunting as they are easy to confuse.

Distribution: Cards were sold in hobby packs of 20 cards (16 packs per box), in addition to retail packs, blasters, and rack "Fat" packs.

Thoughts: While I enjoy a good card design, Upper Deck's flagship brand was a consistent photo-first product that I could count on to provide great images without much clutter on the front (at least, in the past decade or so). This might be my favorite Upper Deck design as far as their minimal-clutter sets go. Once Upper Deck could no longer produce MLB cards, I've been left with a void that Topps hasn't capitalized on. Where is Stadium Club? Topps' photography has gotten better but there are no more full-bleed high-quality card sets being produced in this style.

No comments:

Post a Comment