1996 Topps Laser: Sharp

1996 Topps Laser #42

In my collection: 2 #42

Griffey looks: calmly strutting

Is this a good Griffey card? Yes.  One of the coolest gimmick sets Topps has ever done.

The set: This is one of my absolute favorite gimmick sets of the 90’s, and it was a great way to kick-start the prolific use of die-cutting by all brands for years to come.  The colors and liberal inclusion of gold foil only contributed to the cool factor.  Great idea, cool logo, solid execution - too bad they didn’t keep this set going.  The packs were a blast to open, and I opened a lot of them.  Sadly, it was just a one-year set.

Laser was the first set to really embrace die-cut technology as part of the design of the set.  1994 SP is the first set where I remember seeing die-cut cards, but it was limited only to card edges.  Laser makes dozens of intricate cuts, most of them within the borders of the card, to form complicated shapes, images, and even the logo.  Topps Laser is produced with perfectly perforated pin-point precision.  


This is also the first set I remember that included extra cards in the pack that were there to protect the regular cards.  These also doubled as checklists.  And do I still have them?  You bet I do:

1996 Topps Laser checklists/protector cards

 

There are four designs in this set, and the packs contained one card of each design.  For the sake of discussion, we’ll name them red runner, gold fielder, black batter and flaming pitcher.  That Griffey is in the Red Runner design, but here are the rest:

Gold Fielder

Black Batter

Flaming Pitcher

Black batter is probably the hardest to find in mint condition because of that card bottom.  The next toughest is flaming pitcher due to all those little jutting points of flame along the side that refuse to go into a penny sleeve without a fight.  Red runner wasn’t a problem as long as you didn’t let the cut-out portion grab the sleeve, and gold fielder was easy as long as you stored it with the complete edge along the bottom.  This last one drove me nuts as I like to keep my horizontal cards oriented to the right, but making the switch for condition’s sake was a no-brainer.

To the Griffey:

Junior appears to be calmly strutting from first to second, probably following one of his 17 dingers from the ’05 season.  There’s no rush here - he’s just taking it easy.  He’s also mimicking the position of the runner in the cutout section almost perfectly.  

When you have two of these and put them together, you can make a hookah (or a fountain depending on your sensibilities) - check it out:

 

Here are the Griffeys I am missing from 1996 Topps Laser:

Power Cuts #14

Stadium Stars #4

These were really fun packs to open, and this is one of those boxes that to this day I'd love to get a hold of and break.  Even 17 years later they are still really cool cards.

A Quick Trip to the LCS 8.22.13

I stopped by the my LCS for a couple of mystery boxes and found that he had restocked his dollar box with reams of sexy, serial numbered cardboard.   For a measly 9 bucks I nabbed these gems:

That Pujols is #/45, the Ichiro Donruss card is #/100, and the Clark is #/2500.

Clemente is #/1500, Ruth is #/1000, Williams is #/1000.  The Mantle is not serial numbered, but it looks like it should be.

I also picked up two mystery long boxes that were loaded with different treats:

I recently started focusing on Vida Blue cards, so this was appropriately-timed.

That Metal Universe card was one of a stack of 200.  I hold on to all Metal Universe cards, so that was exciting.  I'll show those off in an upcoming Metal Universe post.  They're extremely awesome.

That Nolan Ryan quote cracks me up.

One box contained tons of 2005 Finest.  Got my hopes up because that's one of the very few Griffeys I am missing, but there were none to be found.

There was also a nice cross-section of serial-numbered refractors from the 2005 set.

Young Sandberg, Cora turning one over Will Clark, and a delightfully literal Tim Salmon.

Lots of bubbles

A former LSU Tiger in two uniforms

Just plain silliness

I hope my next mystery box is so kind.  Toodles!

170 Points Worth of 2004 Upper Deck Power Up

2004 Upper Deck Power Up #90 Green

In my collection: 4 #90 green, 1 #90 orange, 1 Shining Through

Griffey looks: creepy

Is this a good Griffey card? Yes.  A failed game-based release with a lot of personality.

This was another one-year-only, gaming-based set with a points system based on card rarity.  This is not the first time Upper Deck would try their hand at putting an interactive gaming spin on card collecting.  And who could blame them with the popularity of Pokemon and Yu-gi-oh and all that other nonsense that kids were blowing all their allowance money on (Please note that baseball card collectors have every right to make fun of gaming card collectors because our hobby is based on real people, not cartoon animals).

I am curious about what the rules were as it looks to me like a simple add-up-the-points system that is far too boring to be fun.  Perhaps it was done in the style of Battle (aka War) in which each person lays down the next card in their deck sight-unseen and the higher point card wins that round.  If that was the case, I would never play with Griffeys for fear of losing them.  Can you imagine having a Griffey Red valued at 500 points and someone pulling a Hank Blalock Blue?  In such a situation, I would probably be a bad sport by snatching back my Griffey and running in the opposite direction. 

Oh, wait.  Here ya go:

I hate pulling images from COMC (it feels tacky); but I found the rules to the game there on the back of a sticker card, and I have no stickers to scan.  This is not a game you play head-to-head against other collectors - it’s a game you play against everyone in the world with Internet access and some Upper Deck Power Up cards.  I assume you could only play a certain card once since each card has its own unique code, so I suppose the best strategy was to hoard high-value cards until you had enough to dominate everyone else.  It probably got harder to win as the weeks went by and the people who adopted the hoard-and-wait strategy started pulling the trigger.

I have no idea how popular the game actually was, and as you can see here the website is officially out of service.  Did anyone out there actually play this?  On second thought don’t admit to that.

Here are the Griffeys:

2004 Upper Deck Power Up #90 Green and Orange

I have the green and orange versions, the two least rare cards from this set. 

This is one of those “big head” cards (there are a lot out there).  You usually find these sporting caricatures á la early-90’s Score All-Stars, but this one has a Helena Bonham-Carter Queen of Hearts quality that is as creepy as creepy gets.  Also, Junior’s facial expression is hilarious.  That’s the same face I make when I’m trying to make a toddler laugh (it works).  The “wacky” font on the back makes the card difficult to read, but I like how it mentions the movies Junior has been in.  And I’m crazy about the flipped-up shades, especially in portrait mode.  It’s so nerd-chic it makes me want to sip champagne at an MC Chris concert.

Out of curiosity and because I may have to buy them someday, I did a quick search in the usual places for any example of the remaining colors of Griffey but found nothing.  In fact I ran a search for all the rarest colors of any player and found only one example: a blue Pujols on eBay for a whopping $200. 

I can only assume that the reds and blues were like the proverbial golden snitches, sporting point values so high that they practically guarantee the cardholder a win.  But now that the game is over, their only value is their rarity.  The blues were inserted at 1:240 packs, and they’re not serial-numbered.  So how many are there? 

One interesting thing about the cards is that the rarer the color, the cooler the card.  They didn’t just assign values to colors arbitrarily; the cards are actually better.  The common green version has pretty much no dazzle to it.  Orange is nearly identical to the green, but with the step up to purple you gain a shiny refractor aspect.  I’ve never seen a red, but the blue, it seems, is comparable to a super-refractor with lots of cool textured holofoil and translucence. 

If anyone has a purple, red, or blue, send me a nice scan or trade me the card itself.  I’d love to post them here.

2004 Upper Deck Power Up Shining Through #ST-60

This insert, worth 50 points, is also useable in the game.  While colorful and not unattractive, it’s that mildly relective dull chrome UD used on a lot of their cards in the 2000’s.  It’s shiny but doesn’t scan very well.  It’s also got more stats on it than the base card.

Here’s a list of Griffeys from 2004 Upper Deck Power Up that I still need:

#90 Purple (Ultra Rare) (250 points)

#90 Red (Super Rare) (500 points)

#90 Blue (Mega Rare) (1000 points)

Sticker #PU-60

One more bit of the required blogger nit-pickiness: F. Scott Fitzgerald once said that using exclamation points is like laughing at your own joke.  While I think this perspective is a little extreme, I'm not crazy about their use right in the title of the product.  I get that they're trying to zhush up the brand and make it more exciting, but I find that oftentimes exclamation marks have the opposite effect.  This is one of those times.

Despite all that, this is my most positive review of a game-based card set so far.  Now here's some close-ups of the orange one.

2004 Upper Deck Power Up #90 Orange

What I Learned and Didn't Learn About Upper Deck

I was not actively collecting when the drama surrounding Upper Deck unfolded in 2009, so all I know about what happened has been gleaned from passing comments of fellow bloggers and some old archived news articles I’ve found online. 

I recently started putting together a post for the Griffeys of 2010 Upper Deck, a set you can’t talk about without getting into the whirlwind of shit that surrounded it.  Not long after I began typing did I realize that I had enough material for a whole other post regarding Upper Deck’s fall from grace, and a potential outlet for figuring out what exactly happened.  Here it is, cut and pasted directly from the Griffey card post:

Upper Deck was dealing with a lot in 2010.  Simply put, they had lost their license to put MLB logos on cards as a result of Topps getting an exclusive deal, and now they were being sued by MLB for continuing to use the same trademarked logos and images they had been using for 20 years.  Following this, everyone from distributors to players to video game and anime companies to sporting bodies was getting litigious; and from what I’ve read such treatment was not undeserved.

After reading all the articles I could find online (which wasn’t as many as I would like), I found I had more questions than answers.

These guys were told they couldn’t use the logos, but in 2010 they went ahead and did it anyway.  Were they rebelling?  Were they taking a stand against an unfair exclusivity deal that cut everybody but their biggest competitor out of the market?  

To me it looks like MLB just went for the throat in an effort to kill the brand outright.  Did Topps put up enough money to win an exclusivity deal fair and square or were UD’s questionable business practices what caused MLB to pull the license?  Someone with the inside scoop, please fill me in because all the news articles I come across are dry and objective.  I want a collector’s perspective.  

It looks like UD is still very active with memorabilia products, popular football and hockey card sets, and a bunch of other non-sport products.  They continue to release new stuff, and it also looks like they had a substantial presence at the National this year.  Did anybody go check out their setup? 

Part of collecting baseball cards is that at some point you will be insanely jealous of a small child.

The company had two additional lawsuits in March of 2012.  Are those lawsuits settled and paid?  What about the lawsuits and the settlements from 2010?

Following the settlement with MLB in 2010, Upper deck Sports Brand Director Jason Masherah made this statement: “As a company, we are changing the direction of Upper Deck’s baseball products going forward. We are looking forward to creating fresh and innovative set content that will continue to get collectors excited.”

“Changing,” “going forward,” “continue.”  What happened to this?  Even the late cardboard legend Richard McWilliam alluded to imminent innovation that has never come to pass.  Where are the new baseball cards?  

Do you think UD and MLB will ever kiss and make up?  If UD released an unlicensed baseball set for 2014 a la Panini, would you buy it?  What if they got a license?  Would you support the competition?  I would….

Before you go: in my online research, I also found where Upper Deck’s physical offices are located.  I can’t help find stuff like this interesting as I believe we tend to think of these companies as faceless abstracts, and yet here they are.

Upper Deck has had two offices in Carlsbad, CA.  One is a gigantic manufacturing facility with loading docks and a well-appointed lobby.  It appears that they no longer operate at this location as it is currently for lease.

 

If there were to be a factory tour or a Willy Wonka-esque golden ticket situation, this is the kind of facility where I imagine it being held. 

Their current location is a much simpler office building that Upper Deck shares with two other companies, one that makes automated genetic testing devices and another that specializes in bacteria detection.  The modest concrete structure sits in a giant maze of commercial buildings between the Mercedes-Benz Research and Development office and the main runway of McClellan-Palomar Airport.

 

This location is listed as their primary business address in both their LLC and Corporation filings with the California Secretary of State.