2000 Upper Deck Black Diamond: Inserts for a New Millenium

2000 Upper Deck Black Diamond #76

In my collection: 5 regular, 2 Diamonation, 2 Diamond Might

Griffey looks: spiritually connected to his bat

Is this a good Griffey card?  Yes.  The best base card from an OK set with some bangin’ inserts.

The set: This card features foil and chromium in more structured, geometric textures than that in the previous year’s set.  The horizontal lines, bathroom-floor checkerboard tile, and a sad little nameplate don’t exactly leap off the card, and the whole package end up coming across dark and sterile.  The coloring in the Tetris-tile background helps a little though it doesn’t come out in the scan, and the die-cut parallels are OK; but overall the base design is not a home run.

Tetris, anyone?

Junior appears to be on-deck here, or possible taking a moment in the batter's box.  He is using this time to connect spiritually with his signature black bat like Pedro Cerrano from the Major League movies.  No chickens were harmed in the making of this card.

This set does have one remarkable redeeming quality: the inserts.  They’re beautiful.  Plenty of gleaming holofoil, shiny refracted light, and effects in every color of the rainbow await you in a land of prancing leprechauns and unicorn magic delights.

2000 Upper Deck Black Diamond Diamonation #D1

Look at that.  This is what God had in mind when He created the insert: absurdly cool, shiny, colorful, light-refracting, somehow-still-cardboard works of art.  This thing reflects light in lovely and complex angles on the front like that laser web Catherine Zeta-Jones had to karate through in Entrapment.  You can find this insert at several websites for cheap; go grab one of your favorite player.
 

In case you were wondering, Diamonation means he will dominate you with diamonds.  He will throw diamonds at you until you submit, and diamonds are sharp.  He is a diamonator.  We are dia-submissive-mond.  

2000 Upper Deck Black Diamond Diamond Might #M1

Check out this rainbow sandwich.  Holofoil, cool lettering, gold foil all over the place - this is a seriously fun insert.  And check out Junior calling his shot.  He’s pointing with his bat as if to say “I’m going to bunt, and the ball is going to land right there and hopefully not bounce too far.” Let's hope the infield didn't notice.

Here are the cards from 2000 Black Diamond I am missing:

#76 Final Cut

#76 Reciprocal Cut

Barrage #B2

Constant Threat #T1

A Piece of History #JR

A Piece of History Double #JR

A Piece of History Triple #JR

Only one more set would be made under with the Black Diamond brand.  It would also come in 2000, but late enough that 1) they got a shot of Junior on the Reds and 2) maybe collectors forgot that this set already came out once this year?  It’s all very convoluted.

Join us next time for 2000 Upper Deck Black Diamond: Part Deux.

1993 Upper Deck SP: More Than a Jeter Rookie

1993 SP #4 All-Star

In my collection: 6 regular

Griffey looks: high (not like that)

Is this a good Griffey card?  Yes.  The first Griffey ever from the long-running and popular SP brand.

The set: SP was pretty awesome from the start.  The packs were pricey, but the cards were just so exciting.   The photography was amazing and the card design never got stale.  As a brand it would remain consistently upscale and modern.  

SP introduced us all to the die-cut baseball card and would remain the industry’s biggest proponent of die-cutting for years to come.  There were examples of it around before this brand, but only circular “disc” cards, never regular square cards with cut-out designs.  The wide arch shape in the lone insert for '93 is the first die-cutting I ever saw, and they would get a lot of use out of that shape which is only hinted at on the base cards.

Now let’s not beat around the bush - we all know what 1993 SP means: the Jeter Rookie.  Sure, the green Topps Draft Pick rookie is pretty well-known, too; but the SP is far shinier with two kinds of foil, color portraits on the back, and, of course, that premium Upper Deck pedigree.  The SP trumps them all.  I mean, I don’t know for sure - I’ve never seen one in person.  Still, judging from the prices I’ve seen them go for, it must be pretty nice.

Here's that Griffey:

Junior is leaping straight up, high in the air to make a catch.  This is not Junior’s only Superman card, but it is one of the better ones.  The lighting and cropping here are perfect, and how cool is that SP logo?  I think this is the best it ever looked.

And that's not all.  Check out the shot on the back.  There are not enough cards depicting Junior sliding, but of the ones that are out there this may be my favorite.  SP took card backs to a whole new level.

Griffey’s is an All-Star card which means it says “1992 A.L. All-Star” where on a normal card it would just say the team name.  Topps Finest of the same year would do something similar.

There is only one additional Griffey from this set, and I don’t have it:

Platinum Power #PP9

That's right, the die-cut one.  I continue to resist using COMC pics to show cards, so I'll be posting it as soon as I can find one.

As a huge fan of this set, I would also like to get my hands on these:

#7 Kirby Puckett

#8 Cal Ripken

#40 Rickey Henderson

#111 Will Clark

#128 Jay Buhner

#262 Jim Abbott

#279 Derek Jeter RC FOIL

#280 Chipper Jones FOIL

#281 Javy Lopez FOIL

Platinum Power #PP11 Will Clark

Maybe I'll invest in a box.  <searches Interwebz for 15 seconds>  It's $525.00, so scratch that.

1999 Upper Deck Black Diamond: Advanced Skiers Only

 

 

 

1999 Upper Deck Black Diamond #76

In my collection: 6 regular

Griffey looks: deep into his follow-through

Is this a good Griffey card?  Yes.  The first of what seems to have been an attempt at another mainstay set.

The set: Let us celebrate the advent of another shiny set with a shiny name and limited comparative advantage over other sets.  The gimmick here seems to have been the serial-numbered base card and insert parallels.  I know that’s not a very unique characteristic these days, but it was much more exciting in ’99.  Plus there is not much else that stands out here.  Still, shiny!

They clearly put some effort into this set as though they meant it to hang around longer than it did, possibly as a showcase set for cool new printing methods.  As you can see the cards have that crushed foil look blended in with the backdrop that we started seeing in several Upper Deck inserts in the late 90’s, and I must admit it’s cool.  They put together a great logo, too, though I think someone at Upper Deck must have gotten the name on a ski trip.

Let’s look at the Griffey:

1999 Upper Deck Black Diamond #76

Junior is deep into his follow-through here.  This is a homerun machine in the aftermath of a massive impact - I mean you can really tell he just knocked the living daylights out of something, ideally a baseball.  You gotta love shots like this.

This set features three levels of colored parallels for the base cards and an Emerald parallel for each insert.  There’s even one insert parallel that is numbered out of only 2.  Yaaaay.

Here are the Griffeys I am missing from 1999 Upper Deck Black Diamond:

#76 Double Red #/1998

#76 Triple Yellow #/1500

#76 Quadruple Green #/150

Diamond Dominance #D24 #/1500

Diamond Dominance #D24 Emerald

Mystery Numbers #M02 /200

Mystery Numbers #M02 Emerald /2

The set would make two (that’s right - two) more appearances in 2000 with a few more inserts and eventually a better base card design.