2008 Upper Deck Icons Football

Almost immediately after I posted a long rant on how hobby wax is for suckers, I went out this weekend and dropped 30 bucks on a hobby wax binge. Yep, I'm a sucker. I watched some dude pull three jersey cards out of three straight packs and got caught up in the excitement. Plus there was a dearth of Braves stuff to buy so I had a little extra cash to blow. On the plus side, I have a week's worth of packs to share. I'm still a sucker. Today's pack is the most egregious of the bunch, an EXPENSIVE football pack. Some nifty stuff was coming out of the product so what the heck. Let's open 'er up.

7 Ray Lewis

I'm not sure how to describe these cards. It's kinda like if UD Legends and UD Artifacts had a crack baby. I guess there's like a leather thing going on... the foil (which is tough to see here) is simultaneously subtle and awkward...the photo looks like the player is about to be guillotined... and weirdest of all, the spot UV coating has a football pebble texture to it. VERY weird looking cards. Ray Lewis isn't my favorite, but he's a damn good player.

53 Ted Ginn Jr.

It's not worth wasting pixels on a scan for this card.

RS15 Roger Staubach Immortal Letterman #35/64

Wow, this is what I meant by nifty stuff. Thick, shiny, numbered, and a letter that barely fits. The back says to collect them all to spell COWBOYS, so it's a manufactured patch and not the S off a jersey or anything. Can you imagine if Upper Deck cut up 64 Staubach jerseys? They could put regular Staubach relics two per pack. No, this is definitely manufactured and unfortunately not autographed, the kind of thing that drives Gellman insane. Gellman is like the Mikey of the blogging world, he hates everything and that's why we love him. This is actually my very first letter... thingy... ever and it's of a Hall of Famer so what the heck. These cards are not at all hard to pull, the odds are 1:5 packs. Heck, the Hollywood Icon cards are a much tougher pull at 1:20. I'd surely love to pull a Billy Dee Williams card!

RB1 Donnie Avery Rookie Brilliance #81/99

Forget it Donnie, you're out of your element! Sorry, I watched about a half hour of Lebowski before game two of the Braves - Mets doubleheader started. You know, I can't tell if this is a legit rookie or a rookie insert. Or if there's even a difference. Ok, let's go over the pluses and minuses for this card. Rookie card: +3. Maybe an insert: -2. Rookie of a wide receiver: -3. Wide receiver for the Rams: +5. Below the trainer on the WR depth chart: -7. Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiny!: +11. One in 5 pack odds: -2. Serial number under 100: +1. Not Matt Ryan: +398563798571. Eh, not a bad card. In two years when he's driving a beer truck it's won't be that good but right now, not bad.

This pack was way too expensive and if I had pulled four of the atrocious looking base cards I would have been throwing things at the wall. I gambled though, and hit the come bet. Somebody out there better kick me in the nuts if I ever think about buying a second pack of this stuff.