1995 Upper Deck Part 2: The Boxes

This is part 2 of a 3-part series about how great 1995 Upper Deck is.

Check out Part 1: The Set and Part 3: The Griffeys.

Note: team collectors out there who are in need of cards from this set should contact me for a trade sooner rather than later while I still have my dupes separated from the rest of my trade cards.

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Series One Griffey head > Series Two Griffey Head

I busted all these packs in hopes of building one of my favorite sets of all time: 1995 Upper Deck.  I spent a lot of time dividing, and sorting; and by the time I was finished these boxes looked like this:

Wrangled!

I grouped them into runs of 50 by card number plus another pile for inserts and parallels.  First we'll look at the Electric Diamond Silver (1:1 retail) and Gold (1:36 retail) parallels.  If you're like me, you're wondering what goldies I pulled.  Wonder no more:

Gotta say, pretty solid.  I lucked out with a pair of 90's stars.  I received 72 silvers, so I'm only going to show you a few favorites:

See?  Nolan's Final Tribute banner goes bye-bye on his Electric Diamond card.  As much as I'm not much of a collector of Bonds and the Straw, they have some of the best-looking cards here.

Hey, that A-rod is actually worth a couple of bucks.  Used to be, anyway.  Lots of great slides here, especially dusty Cal.

The Series two box did one thing right: it gave two predictor cards instead of one.  These are all the "League Leaders" Predictors.  "Award Winners" Predictors came from Hobby boxes only.  I got no winners, but if I had I'd have been able to send it in for a special redemption set of Predictor cards 18 years ago.  The foil on these is gold in series two.

These checklists are a tough pull at 1:17.  I beat the odds and got five.  They have cool nameplates and photos from the actual moments described on the bottom, but I'm not terribly excited by them.

I wasn't all that excited about this one, either; but at 1 in 34 packs I think I was supposed to be.  This came only in series two boxes, and it is unscannable.

Here is the 1:34 insert from series one, and I really like it despite the massive miscut.  Scans nicely.

I would have gotten so excited about these as a kid.  Primary colors!  These are all from series two.  I can't redeem them anymore, obvy, so I'm a little concerned that the last 45 cards of the base set will be tough to get a hold of.

Not only did I pull one of these back in the day, I redeemed it.  So while I have the complete redemption set, I won't consider it part of '95 Upper Deck.  It deserves its own post someday, anyway.

Now I'm sure you've been wondering, "Junkie, didn't you pull any Griffeys??  Cuz if you didn't I'm just gonna lose it right here."  Feast your eyes:

One each of the two most easily-pulled Griffeys in 1995 Upper Deck.  I got the wrong box.

I'm happy to report that the series one box (the one with the superior Griffey head) produced the full series.  The series two box so did not.  Here are the cards I didn't pull from that naughty box:

244, 245, 246, 247, 248, 259, 271, 291, 307, 337, 353, 361, 368, 369, 373, 378, 389

This is not my current want list - just what I didn't get from the box.  I will update this post with a link to my current set needs soon.

Each box contained 432 cards, 36 of which were Electric Diamonds.  That leaves 396 regular base cards (not including a handful of inserts) to build each 225-card series.  For series two I ended up with 208 of the 225 cards, an output of just over 92%.  Not horrible, but the series one box output of 100% make me wonder what changed at the factory between the production of these boxes.

The bottom of the series one box included an offer where you get a a signed Roger Clemens card limited to 8,000 copies for five bucks and 35 pack wrappers.  The series two box bottom gave a rundown of how the Predictor cards and trade cards worked, but apparently there was a similar offer for a signed A-rod.  Hmm.

Well that was fun.  I don't think I'll buy another box of series two to build the set.  My hope it to trade for it and maybe supplement that with pickups from Just Commons.

The final post in this series is the icing on the 1995 UD cake: The Griffeys.  After that I'll never again mention 1995 Upper Deck's superiority to most other sets at least until such time as I totally mention it again all the time.

Happy Father's Day

Call yo Dad.

1995 Upper Deck Part 1: The Set

[Warning: this post is quite scan-heavy.  Just letting you know before you dip into your data plan.]

As you may or may not know when I make a post about a specific set I usually write a little something about the set itself then move on to the Griffeys, but in this case it would have made for one seriously massive post.  For this particular set about which I have a lot to say and show, I’ve decided to divide up the material for optimal digestion.

Check out Part 2: The Box and Part 3: The Griffeys.

Enjoy!

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Upper Deck has put out some iconic sets in our time – the Baseball Heroes inserts, ’95 Collector’s Choice, the universally-appreciated ’93 base set, and the inaugural ’89 set, of course.  Then we have our personal favorites, the sets and designs that really speak to us but that don’t get the attention we think they deserve.  For me there are three: the 1994 and 2008 sets are brilliant, but my absolute favorite UD set will always be the 1995 base set.

So I’m building the damn thing, and what better way to start than with a box each of series 1 and 2?  We'll get into the details of what came out of these later.  Let's talk about the set itself.

It can be difficult if not impossible to put the reasoning behind one's love into words, but I’m going to try and do just that right now:

This is the card that made me fall in love with ’95 UD, so I’m using it as an example. As you can see the low-interference nameplate allows for focus on the photography which happens to be brilliant.  It’s not just well-executed – it’s unique.  Check out Junior taking cuts without a helmet.  It’s clearly an All-Star event, most likely the Home Run Derby, but Junior is known for flipping his cap backwards.  Seeing it forward like this is refreshing.

Moreover, the photo is lit perfectly – Junior is practically glowing against the backdrop of All-Stars sitting around a dugout.  And speaking of the background, do I spot Frank Thomas?  This photo is so perfect I have to wonder if it’s even real.

These really show the shading by the nameplate.

Design-wise the bottom-mounted nameplate works perfectly in any orientation, horizontal or vertical; and slight shading at the bottom of every card gives weight to the player name and sets off the color of the foil nicely while also moving focus to the photo.  Similar to the 2008 set, this aesthetic can be summed up as “elegantly low-impact with stellar photography.”  That’s everything I could want from a card design.

Don't take it from me.  Decide for yourself.

Here are two typical '95 UD photos.  We have a perfectly-shot outdoor portrait of Larry Jones there and a unique action shot of Big Mac donning throwbacks.

Still not convinced?  Here are dozens more:

 

Even the backs got plenty of photo love:

All those would make excellent card fronts.

There are a lot of repeated thremes in the set photography.  Here are a bunch of autograph shots:

OK, so A-Rod might just be writing something.  Something cheater-y.  I still love that card.

Some nice interview cards, too, including one of the greatest ever made.  Can you spot it?

 

This set's got pitchers on offense out the wazoo, including my favorite Fernando Valenzuela ever (that's saying a lot - he's got a ton of great cards out there):

Lotta bunts there.

Hey, look what a nice day it was in Cleveland:

One of the best in the set IMHO.

Here's a different kind of throwback for Frisco:

This fellow's helmet made the front and back of his card:



Then to top it all off, Upper Deck made a five-pack of amazing Final Tribute for the last five cards of the set.

They absolutely nailed the card backs here, managing to squeeze in lifetime stats, a sizeable blurb, and even an additional color photo - and all this with a thick, tasteful border.  Perfect.

As much as I love these, though, my heart hangs heavy because GRIFFEY SHOULD HAVE GOTTEN ONE.  I like to think that had Upper Deck stuck around it would have happened.  Maybe I'll make one in MS Paint.

FYI, for the Electric Diamond parallels of these Final Tribute cards, they dropped the Final Tribute banner from the card front.  It's something I always wondered about, and now I know.  I'll show you one soon enough.

While they don't touch the excellence of the base set, the subsets are not too shabby, either.  Here's a few choice cards from each:

Some well-photographed rookies with psychedelic backgrounds plus Nolan Ryan's son appearing in the same set as his Dad

Another design for rookies, this subset ends series one and carries on into the beginning of series two.  It's an iconic design because of the solid checklist.

Yes, this makes three rookie subsets.  Sure, one is prospects, one is stars, and these focus on young players' major league debuts, but to a pack-busting adolescent they're all a bunch of rookie cards.

Of course the big stars of the 90's got their own subset which focuses on each guy's performance in the first half of the 90's.  The reverse-negative black & white backgrounds really make the photos pop.  Some nice one's in this set, but that Crime Dog may be my fave.

Nice subsets all, but the base set is the real star of this post.  Coming up next in Part 2, the contents of those two retail boxes.

2014 Topps Series 2: a Blaster, A Hanger, and Eight Packs...er

I went to Target to buy shoelaces (Target does not carry shoelaces, btw), and I came across a slough of Series 2 flagship.  I grabbed a little bit of everything they had.

Let's start with a Hit-ish:

This is the manupatch card that came out of the blaster.  You can't argue with a great photo, over-used as it may be.  There is a Griffey like this floating around out there somewhere, but I'm pretty happy with the other Kid.

Now for what really matters: base cards:

The vast majority of what came out of those packs was close-cropped action shots with a handful of unique poses mixed in.  The printing and photography are both high-quality as usual, but I'd like to see more cards like that one of Parra chunkin' the deuce.  How many rookie cards is Evan Gattis going to get?

That Pujols is gorgeous, no doubt about it; but the real star here is Pence's freaky focus face.

Remember the end of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? when Christopher Lloyd shed his eyeballs and freaked everybody out with his devilish cartoon-eyes?  And how crazy and pulsing they were as Eddie Valiant (rest in peace) ran over his ass with the steamroller thus securing the fate of Toontown?  He looks like that.  Spoiler alert, by the way.

Cano in his classic Seattle grays, a super fun Justin Maxwell card, and Lorenzo at the wall.  The baserunning action shots average out pretty solid.

The Span and the Harper are real gems.  Check out the blue guy on the Nava card.  Sad catcher is sad. :-(

I rarely pull wacky parallels, but here are some of the gold that popped up.

Super into that orange Wandy.

And the sparkle pinks, of course.  I could take or leave these.  I miss the sparkle blue from 2013 Opening Day.  That was how you do a sparkly insert.  This puce color is just confusing.

Okay, inserts:

These were by far the most prolific.  I ended up with seven (dupes of the Wacha).  They look exactly as you would expect.

These are new and freaking love the fun new design.  That Randy Johnson is one of my favorite pulls of the night.  The backs describe each player's breakout moment in rookie-dom.  Thumbs up.

You've probably heard about these.  The backs are simple, just giving a short description of where each guy was in the standings of that stat.  The design is a bit dry, but so are statistics.  I'd like to see more of them. 

I covered up my code with the back of another code card.  A buddy of mine plays these games, so I'm going to give them to him to spend on in-game Griffey stuff.  Is that even how it works?  Am I close?

Speaking of Griffey.....

Score!  Same old pictures over and over, yeah, but I love the '89 design enough to not care.

So that's it.  I still plan on picking up a hobby box at some point and building the second half of the flagship set, but these have held me over well.

Now, go read the six dozen more of these posts that are probably popping up at this very moment.