Ok, this is a pack of 2008 Upper Deck Artifacts. These are retail packs, 5 cards for 3 bucks. The pack, uh, looks a little familiar... Hey! SHENANIGANS!!! It's the same stuff with a different picture of Griffey on the front! Yup, A Piece of History has been rebranded Artifacts for the retail version, even though they're the exact same cards. They even have "A Piece of History Baseball" underneath the Artifacts title. I have no clue what's going on here, but I hope it counts towards the 17 sets dictated in their license with MLB. Anyhoo, you can get these in 5 card blister packs (probably to deter searching for the ridiculously thick Hollywood memorabilia cards) or go for a 7 pack blaster with a guaranteed relic and a weird new box where the left corner is curved for some reason. I got a really ugly David Ortiz jersey card in my box, which I'm not bothering to post because a) it was a boring box other than this pack and b) I already sorted it. Here's the good pack out of the box though.
10 Chipper Jones
YES!!! The rest of the pack could have been David Wright mooning me and it would still be the best of the bunch. This pack has a distinct Braves flavor however as you will see:145 Jeff Ridgway
Ah! A rookie card. How nice. Acoording to Upper Deck, Jeff is a pitcher for the Rays even though he was actually traded to the Braves LAST FREAKING JANUARY. Jeez UD, it's only been 6 months.180 Hindenurg
Keeping with the Braves theme, here is our pitching staff.CSC-60 Magglio Ordonez & Curtis Granderson Cut From the Same Cloth #446/799
Pretty typical insert card. Heavy gloss, serial numbered, two foil Tigers logos for no reason, bland text on the back and potential relic placement design given far more importance than the player photos. It's pretty difficult to get excited about the kitty cats this year too.173 Hubble Telescope
I have extremely mixed emotions about this card. I had a bit of a nerdgasm when I saw it since I'm a big fan of its work. However, the card looked a bit... off. Compare the border with that of Led Zeppelin up there. That's right, it's a tiny fraction lighter. It's got a slightly less tarnished look to it. I checked the rest of the box and the last card in every pack are all like that. So there's a one a pack parallel where the big difference is the borders look a little more polished than the other cards if you look at them side by side. You might want to stick to the Hobby boxes if you like this set, no parallels there as far as I can tell.
Up next is a pack from a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. You can vote for the pack you want to see after that here.
I got a couple of blaster boxes of these a week or so ago. I believe that the 'different' card per pack is the silver parallel. According to Upper Deck's web site there is also a gold parallel. There may be others but I can't remember. I don't understand these history cards. They are not listed on UD's page about the set (they appear to be cards 101-200). Are you interested in them? With only 200 cards in the set and only 100 are players, there are a lot of players excluded. I also got a Hollywood Memorabilia card. A piece of Kevin Costner's shirt from the movie JFK. If it had been a piece of JFK's shirt I'd have been excited.
ReplyDeleteson of a .... I could open 12 blasters and not get Chip.
ReplyDeleteThere are 50 history cards. 1-150 are players.
ReplyDeleteYeah, that's right 150 player cards and 50 history cards. I swear when I looked at this on Upper Dack they only had 100 cards listed. Beckett.com has the whole set listed, including the 50 history cards.There are blue, gold, red and silver parallels.
ReplyDelete