i was a late adopter to upper deck baseball. i wasn't buying a whole lot of cards by the time 1989 rolled around, and at that time i was loyal to topps when it came to baseball with my limited hobby spending. i did buy a lot of upper deck hockey starting with their 1990-91 release through 1994 or so. still, i didn't pay a lot of attention to upper deck baseball until i saw some 1992 packs for sale at my college campus convenience store.
later on in the 90's, i went back and started building the 1989 set and completed numerous dodger team sets from their flagship (and other releases). reading "card sharks" in the early days of blogging gave me a new appreciation for what the founders of the company were trying to do. as it mentioned in the book, the cards were certainly an upgrade to what the other companies were putting out at the time.
they put out some weird stuff, too, like this 1997 upper deck sp special fx card of eric karros
which demonstrates their commitment to holographic imagery and die-cut experimentation.
by the end of the 1990's, i was all-in on upper deck baseball. they had, it seemed, more sets with legends than topps and i collected many of them. maybe fleer was the only one giving them a run for their money in that regard. here's a 2005 upper deck artifacts don drysdale card
which is the only one of four dodger "legends" short printed as part of the team set that i currently own.
they put out repetitive and redundant sets, too, like their annual obsession with "x". these three dodgers are from 2009 upper deck spx
they look pretty good scanned, i will admit.
my favorite upper deck baseball flagship set is probably 1994
there was a lot of "stadium club" level photography as andre dawson's card can attest, and i liked the design. topps, of course, took the "phantom zone" inset image and used it in their bowman release the next year, as well as in their 1996 flagship set. that dawson, by the way, is the "electric diamond" parallel, which was upper deck's answer to topps' "gold" full set parallels.
a couple of things that were pointed out in "card sharks" were the large numbers and the holograms on the card backs
one of the pet peeves of the founders (who owned a card shop) were small and/or hard to read card numbers. i am also very frustrated by that as my eyesight declines. the 1990 eddie murray card above is testament to upper deck's commitment to legible card numbers for sure. i don't know if anyone was clamoring for hologram authentication technology back then, but it certainly was a differentiator from the other card manufacturers at the beginning of the junk wax era when reprinting of key cards was somewhat rampant (of course, upper deck reprinted their own cash cow - the 1989 ken griffey jr rookie card - at will).
eventually, upper deck began to stray from some of these design tenants. the numbers got smaller
and there were releases later on in their existence that lacked the holograms on the backs, too. however, in the mid-2000's, they introduced my favorite innovation - one i wish topps would fully embrace. they put the set name on the card back
this was done as far back as 2004 from what i can find - some of their sweet spot base cards from 2004 say "2004 sweet spot" on the backs - but their flagship set in 2007 seems to be the first primary set that included this for all cards. it was issued in two series, and they identified each one on the backs. that nomar garciaparra checklist card is from series 1. that's great to know, although i consider series 1 and 2 of flagship releases to really just be one total set (although i have stopped combining the checklists in my want lists). still, it's a nice touch - one that topps has sort of embraced by putting "series one" or "chrome" under the numbers of their base card releases.
however, here are a couple of insert cards from 2024 topps chrome releases
gerrit cole got an "all-etch" insert in both topps chrome and topps chrome update. they are different, but how do you know which is from which set? in this case, topps added a "u" to the card number
so those who understand the nomenclature might also understand that one of the cards is from the update set. still, would it be so hard to add text above the copyright box stating which sets these cards come from?
here are another two cards, this time from 2025 topps series 1 and series 2
coby mayo was featured in the "stars of mlb" insert set in both releases. here are the card backs:
there is really no way to know which is from series 1 and which is from series 2 without finding a checklist database as topps even restarted the numbering with series 2. i am pretty sure that series 1 is on the left, but i forget at this point.
upper deck treated their cross-release inserts differently. here are a couple of starquest inserts from 2009
the one on the left is one i own and is from their flagship set - series 1. i know this because the back says so
the one on the right is not in my collection but i know straight away that it is from a different release - in this case 2009 upper deck first edition - because they identify that set on both the front of the card and its back:
they are both numbered sq-9, but the set information tells me that they come from different sets. so helpful.
now, upper deck wasn't perfect by any means - check out these 2007 nomar garciaparra and takashi saito cards
that are from series 1
now check out these nomar garciaparra and takashi saito cards
that say they are from series 2
trust, but verify.
i do wish topps would go all-in with set identification and include the information on every card they print. they do it on their autograph and relic cards (for the most part) as well as the base cards (again, for the most part). it would make me miss upper deck a whole lot less.
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