The 2007 Upper Deck Spectrum Guessing Game

Before we even get started I feel I should come out and admit that I should not make this post because I do not have enough information about 2007 Upper Deck Spectrum to do so, but I’m doin’ it anyway because I am incorrigible. Being that there is no Baseballcardpedia article or set details in general on any of my favorite online card databases, every bit of set knowledge you will see here was gleaned by me personally from the handful of cards I have, multiple incomplete online sources, and one overpriced sealed pack I bought online which I will be busting later in this post.

What I’m saying is that the information in this post may or may not be 100% correct, but it’s as close as I can reasonably get. Don’t let that worry you, though. I am incredibly anal about stuff like this, and I think I got most of it right.

The Base Set

2007 Upper Deck Spectrum has a 170 card base set with a heavy focus on rookies. In fact base cards #101-150 are an autographed subset called Rookie Signatures. That suggests to me a challenging base set build with 120 base cards and 50 autographs. The base set also comes in multiple Die-Cut parallels including Red, Gold #/99, Jersey Number #/varied, and Blue Autograph #/5. There may or may not be a 1/1 parallel, but I haven’t seen one.

2007 Upper Deck Spectrum #59

The design is actually pretty damn cool for a foilboard which is not always the case. They all use angles, shading, and shadow effects that produce a reasonably believable 3D effect that makes it look like the player is standing in the corner of a holofoil hall of mirrors. They look really cool.

The back is simple to the extreme, and features as many years of stats as they could reasonably fit onto the card. Can’t really fault them for that. The focus of this set was always the 2 autos per box and the myriad relics and numbered cards, so no complaints, really.

Junior’s base card may or may not have also come in one of multiple parallels, including but not limited to:

Die-Cut Red #/99
Die-Cut Gold #/99
Die-Cut Jersey Number #/24
Die-Cut Blue Autograph #/5

And they look like this:

I have seen none of the Griffeys for these these, but I have no reason to believe they don’t exist. If anyone has any to show I’d love some scans.

The Inserts

Here are ALL the inserts of 2007 Upper Deck Spectrum (even Griffeyless):

Aligning the Stars Triple Jersey Relics #/99
Aligning the Stars Triple Jersey Relics Gold
Cal Ripken Jr Road to the Hall
Cal Ripken Jr Road to the Hall Gold #/99,
Cal Ripken Jr Road to the Hall Autographs #/5
Grand Slamarama
Rookie Retrospectrum
Rookie Retrospectrum Red #/99
Rookie Retrospectrum Signatures Autographs #/199
Season Retrospectrum
Season Retrospectrum Red #/99
Season Retrospectrum Signatures Autographs Blue #/25
Shining Star Signatures #/99 (image on ebay)
Spectrum of Stars Signatures Autographs
Swatches Jersey Relics #/199
Swatches Jersey Relics Gold #/75
Swatches Jersey Relics Patch #/50
Swatches Jersey Relics Signature Autographs Patch #/25
Super Swatches Quad Jersey Relic #/50

Junior almost certainly does not have cards in Rookie Retrospectrum, Spectrum of Stars Autographs, or Cal Ripken Jr Road to the Hall based on title/theme alone. There is, however, a very good chance he is in pretty much every other insert. And he is most definitely in these next three:

2007 Upper Deck Spectrum Season Retrospectrum
#SR-KG

All the cool 3-D perspective tricks I love about the base design are amplified here. It looks like Junior is standing in a small room with TV’s along all the walls like Neo in the source when that one dude is all:

The white/holofoil combo works, and the refraction is so strong that every scan appears to come out different.

ALSO 2007 Upper Deck Spectrum Season
Retrospectrum #SR-KG

This is the very same card you saw a few photos up but from a different scan. I was reviewing scans for this very post when I came upon this extra one and thought it must be a parallel, but after a bunch of time wasted researching a blue parallel of this card, none apparently exist. There is an autographed parallel of this insert that has a blue background, but that one is much darker and, you know, autographed.

Grand Slamarama #GS-KG

This card is pretty much the impetus for this whole post. I’d seen it on social media and in eBay auctions a few times, but it was always just a hair out of my grasp until recently when it cracked the Top 10 of my annual Top 30 Griffey Acquisitions of the year list. The checklist is easy enough to find online, but the insertion ratio continues to elude me.

The cards themselves are heavily die-cut plastic substrate with a blurry 3D effect in the green/blue backdrop. The top and bottom was left flat which helps storage and condition a lot. I suspect that is why all three specimens graded by PSA received a grade of 10. The thickness of the card probably helps keep the condition in check as well.

2007 Upper Deck Spectrum Swatches Jersey Relic #SSW-KG #/199

The relic cards keep the 3-D angle designs and even incorporate them into the shape of the relic, but apart from that they’re pretty standard relic cards. The fact that he has a Swatches insert card at all suggests to me that he also has cards in all the Swatches parallels, including a patch and a patch auto.

Here’s all the inserts of 2007 Spectrum that could potentially have Griffeys including the ones that we KNOW he does:

Grand Slamarama #GS-KG
Season Retrospectrum
Season Retrospectrum Red #/99
Season Retrospectrum Signatures Autographs Blue #/25
Shining Star Signatures #/99
Swatches Jersey Relics #SSW-KG #/199
Swatches Jersey Relics Gold #/75
Swatches Jersey Relics Patch #/50
Swatches Jersey Relics Signature Autographs Patch #/25

I’ve seen a Shining Star Signature of the Kid, so go ahead and count that as a definite as well. The rest are anybody’s guess, but odds are good he’s got card in all these inserts.

2007 Upper Deck Spectrum Shining Star Signatures Autograph #SS-KG #/99 (not mine)

Which gives us a prospective list of those Griffeys I would need to complete the set if he does indeed have cards in all of them:

Die-Cut Red #/99
Die-Cut Gold #/99
Die-Cut Jersey Number #/24
Die-Cut Blue Autograph #/5
Aligning the Stars Triple Jersey Relics #/99
Aligning the Stars Triple Jersey Relics Gold
Season Retrospectrum #SR-KG Red #/99
Season Retrospectrum #SR-KG Signatures Autograph Blue #/25
Shining Star Signatures #/99
Swatches Jersey Relics Gold #/75
Swatches Jersey Relics Patch #/50
Swatches Jersey Relics Signature Autographs Patch #/25
Super Swatches Quad Jersey Relic #/50

It’s possible Junior does not have a card in the Aligning the Stars insert or a Quad relic, but He probably does. I’d also bet heavy he’s included in all the die-cut base parallels, all the Swatches parallels, and the two Season Retrospectrum parallels (including the auto).

Hey, lookie what I have here:

I bought this specifically to get the insertion ratios off of the back. Finally, some answers. Let’s take a look!

Oops – must be under the flap.

O.....kay, so they gave us nothing in terms of what cards you could pull and what the odds were. Well, at least we can bust the pack and hopefully pull something cool. Maybe one of those Griffey autos. Here goes nothing:

Ugh. FINE, 2007 Spectrum. Keep your secrets.

With such an apparently prolific showing, it’s a wonder there aren’t more examples of 2007 Spectrum Griffeys online. It’s probably to do with the fact that all but a couple are serial-numbered to 99 or less. That is also one of the reasons I suspect Grand Slamarama to be a case hit insert with comparable sub-100 scarcity.

But like almost everything in this post, I can’t prove it. This has been more or less all guesses, so none of this matters.

Sorry fam.

Make Like a Tree: 1991 & 1992 Leaf, 2017 Leaf History of Baseball, and 2019 Leaf The National

So 1990 Leaf is awesome – everybody knows it. A simple but attractive design, some quality rookie cards, and everyone’s favorite Big Hurt rookie (or at least favorite one with his name printed on the front). And on top of all that there weren’t a whole lot printed, lending a certain mystique and desirability not often found in major sets of this era.

Leaf turned down the heat for the ’91 set by overproducing the living daylights out of it, but it’s not like the cards are awful or anything – they’re just plentiful. The same is true for 1992 Donruss. There’s a damn bajillion of them floating around so they exude cheapness and inspire resentment in collectors who, for the most part, want a certain amount of scarcity in their collectibles. Like if someone collected plumbuses. EVERYONE has a plumbus or two around the house. How’s that collector supposed to feel special?

1991 Leaf #372

There is one damn Griffey in 1991 Leaf, and here it is. They embraced the hint of silver from the previous year and did up the whole border in it along with graduated corners that resemble those paper corners you see in photo albums. The uber-centered nature of this design makes miscut cards appear even miscuttier. Check this baby out:

I shelled out 60 cents for this mamma-jamma just because of how laughably off-center it is. It is the Charlie Brown Christmas tree of my ’91 Leaf Griffey collection.

Hey, look at this thing:

2017 Leaf History of Baseball 1991 Leaf Acetate
Throwback #11

I’m just going to lump these reprints from 2017 in with the regular set here. Also, what if this set had thrown off the shackles of its silver predecessors and embraced color?

2017 Leaf History of Baseball 1991 Leaf Acetate
Throwback #11 Blue #/35

2017 Leaf History of Baseball 1991 Leaf Acetate
Throwback #11 Purple #/25

So smitten am I with reproductions of originally-overproduced cards that I just had to have these crazy colorways. They’re even kind of scarce.

Now that we’re on the subject, a little planned scarcity on Leaf’s part combined with a little more discretion in the photo selection could have helped this set a lot. Still, you don’t run into single-Griffey sets too often, so grab one of these on COMC for 38 cents or whatever they’re going for now and be done with it.

And be thankful Griffey didn’t make it into the preview set this year. The 1990 preview is prohibitively expensive these days.

1992 Leaf #392

Welcome to the most boring Leaf ever got. I mean EVER. I’ve heard it argued that the universally-beloved 1990 set is boring, but NOPE. ’92 takes the cake. Just silver squares and Times New Roman font and that’s freakin’ it. They threw a rando red line in the nameplate for…well, I don’t actually know TBH. Try and squeeze a droplet of joy out of these things. I dare you. There was a time when this was my favorite of the first three “silver sets” of the Leaf timeline, but I guess the rampant overproduction has finally worn me down. 1990 for life.

This is also the last time we’d get the classic Leaf script logo which has returned with a vengeance in recent years.

1992 Leaf #392 Black Gold

I feel like they could have put that design in just about any other color and they would have been more interesting. The gold foil helps, too. Not a bad parallel here.

Speaking of color:

2019 Leaf National Convention 1992 Design #TN-33

2019 Leaf National Convention 1992 Design #TN-33
Blue Refractor #/20

2019 Leaf National Convention 1992 Design  #TN-33
Purple Refractor #/10

2019 Leaf National Convention 1992 Design #TN-33
Red Refractor #/2

How easy was that?

By the way, I love when any brand does this. Shiny, refractive, multicolored re-imaginings of classic cards we're already intimately familiar with ('specially purple ones) are some of my favorite modern cards. I just cannot get enough of them. I even shelled out a pretty penny for that #/2 red because it is awesome. Gold star for Leaf.

1992 Leaf Preview #24

They skipped Junior in the previous year’s preview set, but he’s back for ’92. Also the previews this year were more plentiful than ever before (they were seeded in ’92 Donruss factory sets of which they probably produced like 900,000 – again the concept of planned scarcity was not yet in their playbook), so they’re not expensive.

1992 Leaf Preview Black Gold #24

They even previewed the parallel. They were still exciting back then. Again, not expensive! Go get ‘em…

Here are the cards I still need from 1991 Leaf, 1992 Leaf, 2017 Leaf History of Baseball, and 2019 Leaf The National:

2019 Leaf National Convention 1992 Design #TN-33 Pink Refractor #/7
2019 Leaf National Convention 1992 Design #TN-33 Green Refractor #/4

1991 and 1992 are complete (that's easy), but there is a pair of colorways I am still on the hunt for from last year's National set. There may or may not also be a 1/1 (I'd be surprised if there wasn't), but these are all the colors I can find references for online.

The same goes for the 2017 History of Baseball acetates in the 1991 design. I assume there are more, but what are they?

I do indeed like the 1990 set (everybody does, it seems), but I am not wild about the ’91 and ’92 sets (though I will always make exceptions for colored acetate and shiny refractive metal). I wouldn’t really care much for Leaf cards until the glitz and glamour of the glossy, befoiled ’93 set. And the ’95 set remains one of my favorite sets of cards to this day. Leaf did get better, and they've been rocking it just in the past few years as well. Overall I’m glad they managed to trudge through these two relatively forgettable years because Leaf turned out pretty darn good in the long-run.

Thanks for reading.

1997 Donruss Elite – They’re Mostly Just Foilboard. Mostly.

Donruss had already been making the Elite insert for six years when in 1997, amid a flood of other premium offerings from all the other big players in the card market, they decided to flip it into its own premium brand. The Elite name had the advantage of existing desirability and pedigree, so it made a lot of sense. Plus being a Donruss/Leaf nut myself, even I picked up a pack or two of these when they came out.

1997 Donruss Elite #5

Elite cards were usually characterized by holofoil and fancy script, but they cooled things off a bit by using simple foilboard which I’ve always found a bit underwhelming, especially when you try and scan it. The picture is pretty sweet, but I am just not crazy about foilboard in general. Especially scans of foilboard. Yeesh.

Looks a lot better far, far away from a scanner

And while we were already used to thick, stately borders from the Elite insert cards, these feel like overkill. Half the card is foil border and massive nameplate, and the other half photo. Again, great photo, but geez, guys. Let’s pump the border brakes, you know?

I will always sing the praises of post-1992 Donruss card backs. For this set they didn’t give us blurbs or stat analysis or anything fancy – just a nice layout, big player photo, and plenty of stars. It’s certainly more focused on aesthetics than content, but that seems to have been the theme for most premium sets of the ‘90’s. Donruss did it well.

There is also a 1:9 gold parallel of this card that I don’t have because it’s just gold-tinted foilboard. Meh.

1997 Donruss Elite Leather & Lumber #1 #/500

Leather & Lumber is a legacy insert in that Donruss gave us several iterations of it (and even its own set, eventually); but of all the L&L Griffeys they produced, this is the best of the lot. The most notable characteristic here is that the front is printed on real wood and the back on genuine leather. Subsequent L&L inserts would also feature fun design gimmicks like bat relics or a simulated leather surface, but none were more on-the-nose design-wise than this first one.

Either side would make a perfectly reasonable card front with complete nameplates, insert AND brand logos, and some tasteful gold foil. Being serial numbered to only 500 is pretty significant, too, given this was only 1997; but it also means the cards are pricey and getting moreso as the years roll on. Don’t dawdle.

There are only three Griffeys in all of 1997 Donruss Elite, and I have two of them. Here is the one-and-only 1997 Donruss Elite Griffey I don’t have:

1997 Donruss Elite #5 Gold Stars

I’m in no hurry. Maybe if I find one for five bucks somewhere I’ll bite, but as far as I’m concerned the biggest box (Leather & Lumber) is checked, and that’s plenty.

I feel like this post would be incomplete without mentioning the totally awesome (but Griffeyless) Passing the Torch insert, so here it is:

Just like Leather & Lumber, these would also make appearances in later Leaf/Donruss products across multiple sports; and also like Leather and Lumber, the original is still the best. If you count all the sports Donruss cards have been made for, this is arguably their most prolific insert of all time.

And the design is always good:

And speaking of legacy inserts, Leather and Lumber is still around today as its own standalone brand, and darn it if it isn’t pretty neat. Here’s some of the cards of neatness:

Panini reminds me more of Pacific every damn year. Go ‘head, Panini. You do you.