Friday, September 21, 2007

2007 Upper Deck Artifacts


Upper Deck Artifacts has never really interested me that much. I love the hell out of a Retro themed set, but an archaeological one? I like my baseball card ancient history to be from 1909 or at the earliest 1887. 5000 BC is a bit much for me. This is the first time the brand had been offered in retail packs though, so I thought I'd take a risk and check out a pack. I was actually suckered in by the wrapper. It has a really cool T204 Ramly sort of vibe going on. Upper Deck should take this design and use it for 2008 Artifacts, and make them minis like the Goudey set.

9 Victor Martinez
1 Miguel Tejada
76 Cesar Jimenez RC
31 Mark Teixeira
98 Sean Henn RC
I must admit I was pleasantly surprised by this set. The design has a kind of Indiana Jonesey feel to it. It's weird to say that the dirt borders are attractive but they are in an odd way. I think the design on the front is supposed to look like an old pirate treasure map, just with Sean Henn instead of Skull Island, but they kind of remind me of badly cut old W-series strip cards from the 20's for some reason. The backs on these kinds of oddball sets are usually lousy, but this one is remarkably well designed. The name, team and bio look like a spy dossier hand typed on and old Underwood typewriter. The cards have full career statistics which is very nice.

The player selection out of this pack is not bad at all either. Three bona-fide stars and two rookies. I bought this pack before the Teixeira trade, so the pack has only improved with age. Yeah that's right, I bought this pack weeks ago and am just now digging it up for public display. Isn't that the point of archeology after all? Besides, there's still plenty of this stuff out there. The blaster boxes I've seen have a relic in every box, which is not bad value for a nice little set.

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