Tuesday, July 01, 2008

2008 Upper Deck A Piece of History

I had a day off so I hit the card shop to pick up the last card in the Topps Trading Card History giveaway, a 1968 Topps style Derek Jeter:

Isn't it purdy?

While I was there the shop had just put out some brand new A Piece of History boxes that had come in today. I had forgotten all about it until I saw Hand Collated mention it a few days ago and I wasn't sure what to think of it. I always buy a pack of something when I get the freebie cards from the shop though and Griffey looked pretty good on the wrapper, so I got this pack. Let's see what this stuff is all about.

1 Brandon Webb
38 Hanley Ramirez
HM9 A Piece of Hollywood Pants
107 Kevin Hart RC
195 The Supreme Court
149 Ross Detwiler RC
YSL2846 Whitey Ford

Well this was an interesting pack... I pretty much got a little of everything. The base cards are trying a little too hard to be classy. There's lots of swirls and flourishes and whatnot in silver with a sort of pale gold marbleized effect on top of that. It's like you're being beat over the head with the Victorian Era. The Rookie cards are worse, with ROOKIE spelled out in overly ornate letters not once but twice - and they're off centered to boot - plus the mandatory Rookie Card logo. According to the barely decipherable checklist on UD's web site, Cards 1-100 are veterans, 101-150 are rookies and 151-200 are "Historical Moments". The moment I pulled isn't a moment at all, but a card of the Supreme Court. Instead of writing up an actual moment on the back, say an important case decided by the Supreme Court, there is instead a second grade civics lesson describing what the Court does. Bonus points for mentioning John Jay as first Chief Justice I suppose. Here's the biggie in the pack though:

YAY. PANTS. From Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery. I pulled a card that may or may not have touched Michael Myers' butt. It didn't say whose pants they were on the front so for a brief fleeting wonderful moment I thought I might have scored some Seth Green britches. No luck, it says they were worn by "Mike" on the back. The pants are sort of a blue velour, maybe. There's also a little bump with some dirt or... something on them. I don't wanna know really. The card's nice and shiny though and there's a picture of the pants on the back which is neat.

THE VERDICT:

I don't know man, the stuff is loaded with an autograph and three relic cards per box, so why do I have a feeling boxes will be cheap as dirt in a few months?

1 comment:

Chris Harris said...

Jesus Christ, Upper Deck. You bought a movie worn pair of Mike Myers' pants, but you couldn't pony-up the $$$ to license Myers' image.

A Piece of History? More like A Piece of Crap.

Although if I got the Undershirt worn by "Scarlett" in the Nanny Diaries, I'd be a very happy card collector.