2000 Upper Deck Redux

Yeah, I know, I've posted this junk before. I can go much lower, though. I bet I could even dig up one of those World's National Greatest Hidden Card Chases packs if I really wanted to. Don't dare me. I actually am starting to like this set a lot right now, and at $1 a pack it's not much of a budget burner. I'm not entirely sure what "Game Jersey Edition" is supposed to mean, though.

338 - Brian Rose (With a 8-10 record and a 5.58 ERA in 3 major league seasons, this guy would probably still have his own talk show and popular website in this day and age considering that he played for Boston, but as it stands I've never heard of him.)

312 - Armando Reynoso (Okay, Snakes fans. What's up with that cap there that Armando is sporting? I don't recognize it at all.)
519 - Darrin Fletcher

479 - Ruben Rivera (Rivera has been out of MLB for five years now, but he was on Team Panama in the WBC. That's one of my favorite things about the WBC. I want to see more Bernie Williams.)
453 - Gil Heredia

427 - Jacque Jones (A fancy gold seal for Mr. Jones.)
344 - Jose Nieves

526 - Derek Jeter All UD Team (The white dead space in the upper right corner is kind of strange looking.)

275 - Jason Marquis (Marquis and J.D. Drew will likely go down as the least popular Cardinals of the current decade, and they were essentially traded for each other. The awesome thing is that the Cards got Adam Wainwright out of the whole ordeal.)
396 - Roger Cedeno (A former cup-of-coffee Cardinal.)
- Reggie Jackson sweepstakes entry card thing

2000 Upper Deck

I discovered a hobby store near me that, while very disorganized, had a large quantity of bargain wax. I grabbed fistfuls of 50 cent and $1 packs on my last trip there and plan on doing it again soon. In the meantime, here's one of the packs from the last trip, with sluggin' Mark McGwire featured on the wrapper. Has anyone here heard my McGwire rant? Probably not. Maybe someday...

470 - Aramis Ramirez
444 - Ramiro Mendoza (The good kind of Mendoza. Not the kind that can barely hit .200)
418 - Jose Hernandez

392 - Mark Kotsay (It seems that teal has fallen out of favor the further we get away from the '90s. That's really... too... bad.)

(Upper Deck gets bonus points for the dark blue backs, but serious negative points for cutting off the top of Kotsay's cap. They did that to Ramirez, too. It just looks terrible.)
350 - Brian Simmons
324 - B.J. Surhoff
298 - Mo Vaughn (Another thing that annoys me is that Mo, like most of the cards in this pack, is pictured in a spring training uni. A few of those a set are okay with me, especially when they're players you know they couldn't capture easily any other way, but it seems like spring training photos are always relied on way too heavily.)

296 - Wily Mo Pena (Even though this card kind of reminds me of failed early '90s prospect Hensley "Bam Bam" Meulens, it looks really nice. Check out the background.)

499 - Jamie Moyer (Moyer was coming off of the four best seasons of his career to date.)
481 - Phil Nevin
- Reggie Jackson rookie jersey Upper Deck collection ad

2000 Skybox Metal

I found this pack in an old abandoned briefcase in the basement. There was a CVS down the street from my job back in 2000 and when things got intolerable in the office I'd sneak out to get a couple of packs and a soda from the Quik Trip across the street. If you look at the pack there's a big hole in A-Rod's head. This is because for no apparent reason the CVS decided to switch up the card display so that the packs went from being in boxes where they belonged, to hanging up on a rack. They had a bunch of sticky plastic hanger hooks to paste on the packs to make them hang, but when they ran out of them they took a hole punch to the wrappers. No seriously, they hole punched at least a whole box of Metal, Fleer Tradition and Press Pass football. Possibly more but I don't remember. This pack has been abandoned in the basement for about 7 years so now it's like getting to open it all over again!


197 Rico Brogna
171 Warren Morris
142 Charles Nagy
71 Chad Allen
53 Kevin Millwood
8 Vinny Castilla
22 Alex Gonzalez
185 Al Leiter Green parallel
186 Roger Clemens
40 Albert Belle

Wow. No wonder I left this pack to rot in the basement. Metal is one of many great ideas Fleer had in the mid-90's that they had completely ruined by the time this millennium came around. Metal Universe debuted in 1996 with fantastically creative "comic book' backgrounds on textured foil and was one of the most unique sets ever made. They kept up the comic book theme in '97, switched to cityscapes in '98, did a sort of industrial thing in '99 and then devolved to this. Sort of a swirly metal fingerprint kinda thingy. I guess it's sort of a unique concept and you can spend a minute or so wiggling a card back and forth under a light and watching shiny concentric circles swirl behind Roger Clemens but overall it sucks compared to the fantastic comic book sets. My hit for the pack (remember when "hit" meant an insert and not a jersey card?) is a crummy Al Leiter Green parallel. I at least pulled a Brave in Kevin Millwood and with the Bravos' starting rotation woes, the rumor mill has him maybe making a return to the ATL. There will sadly be no return for Skybox Metal Universe.

The 20 for $40 re-wrap: The Final Pack. 2000 Fleer Showcase

All good things must come to and end, and so this experiment in baseball card gonzo journalism does as well. Was it successful? Was it a failure? More experimentation is needed.

We finish up The 20 for $40 Re-Wrap with a really bad pack from a really, really, bad product: 2000 Fleer Showcase. With this set, Fleer took the one thing that made Flair Showcase unique -- the multi-tiered, multi-fractured base set -- and disposed of it with a formulaic 140-card set with 40 short-printed "rookies."

Yawn.

On the other hand, there are autographs to be had. You get a 1:24 chance of pulling an on-card "Fresh Ink," and a 1:250 of hitting an on-leather "Sweet Sigs."

And now, for the final time, here's the video.




Base
Fernando Tatis
Did you know? Fernando Tatis was the first player in Major League history to hit two grand slams in the same inning?

Preston Wilson
Did you know? Preston Wilson's step-father AND uncle are Mookie Wilson. (Mookie's brother is Preston's father, but then Mookie married Preston's mother.)

Greg Maddux
Did you know? Greg Maddux shares the same birthday (April 14th) with his one-time teammates David Justice and Steve Avery.

Mike Piazza
Did you know? Mike is the godfather to Zakk Wylde's youngest son Hendrix. His full name is Hendrix Halen Michael Rhoads Wylde.

Autogamer
Fresh Ink (1:24) Kip Wells
Alright! An autograph of a career 64-91 pitcher!

Well, there it is; 20 packs o'junk. I did pull a pair of autographs and a few inserts, but I didn't get any RCs. All-in-all, these were cards I did not have a need for. Hopefully, Mr. Andrew Schmidt of Brighton, Michigan (the winner of my contest) will have a better use for them.

The 20 for $40 re-wrap: 2000 Fleer Mistake, errr, Mystique.

You want to know why Fleer went out of business? It's crap products like 2000 Fleer Mystique.

For those unfamiliar, the whole concept behind Mystique just reeks of gimmickry. Each five-card pack contained a "Mystique" card which had a sparkled covering that must be peeled off to reveal the card.

Stupid?

Yeah.

But not just stupid. Asinine is more like it. You see, all the 50 short-printed "rookies," all the one-per-box "Gold" parallels, and all of the non-autogamer inserts come exclusively as "Mystique" cards. All of which means that when you get a "hit," you run the risk of damaging the card attempting to figure out what you received.

Great idea, huh?

There are, however, some cards in this set that are actually worth something. I could pull a gimmicked rookie of Johan Santana. Or I could get a $400 Hideo Nomo "Fresh Ink" autograph. (This, I believe, was Nomo's first certified autograph card.) But the odds of pulling either one in a single pack -- or any gimmicked rookie, autograph, or "Feel the Game" jersey card for that matter -- are so remote, I shouldn't be getting my hopes up too high.

Here's the rip.



Base:
Tom Glavine
2000 Stats: 21-7, 3.40, 1.19 WHIP, 152 Ks
Finished second to Randy Johnson in the NL Cy Young balloting.

Mo Vaughn
2000 Stats: .262/36/117, .365 OBP, .498 SLG

Tony Gwynn
2000 Stats: .323/1/17 in only 127 ABs

Vladimir Guerrero
2000 Stats: .345/44/123, .410 OBP, .664 SLG
Finished sixth in the NL MVP balloting. Won second Silver Slugger and named to his second All-Star team.

Insert:
Supernaturals (1:10) Ivan Rodriguez
2000 Stats: .347/27/83, .375 OBP, .667 SLG
Named to ninth consecutive All-Star team and won ninth consecutive Gold Glove.

2000 Pacific Private Stock

This is the baseball version of the football pack I opened this weekend. This set is the same deal as before, the base cards are really thick with a computerized photo that looks vaguely like a painting and two mini T206 size cards per pack. There's not a whole lot in this set other than short printed Alfonso Soriano and Rick Ankiel prospect cards, but I'm a sucker for the mini cards. This pack was cheap though because it's the retail version instead of hobby. Plus Tony Gwynn's on the pack. How could I pass up Tony? Time to open.

114 Jason Kendall
104 Jason Giambi
PS-2000 14 Manny Ramirez
PS-2000 34 Alfonso Soriano
16 Cal Ripken Jr.

Sweetness. A gorgeous Ripken card and two superstar minis. Plus Jason Kendall as a Pirate. A real, actual bloodthirsty pirate. Arrrrrrrr...

2000 Pacific Private Stock Football

For this week's football pack, I went to the local overpriced card shop looking for a pack from 2000. Since Tom Brady has all but won me my fantasy league's championship (three games up, with three to go!) I wanted a pack from 2000 to try to pull one of his rookies. The store I got this from never clears out anything so there's plenty of old packs there for the picking. I found this pack and 2000 Fleer Tradition packs there, but I already have Brady's Tradition rookie. The odds are long in pulling any of the serial numbered rookies out of one of these packs, but what the hell. I really like the mini cards from this set so it's worth taking a shot.

13 Steve Beuerlein
56 Randy Moss
PS2000 Action 46 Isaac Bruce
PS2000 Action 7 Cade McNown
Gold parallel 40 Peyton Manning #036/181
86 Jerry Rice
83 Junior Seau

No Brady, but I got an awesome serial numbered parallel of his arch-rival. I'll bet there's at least 182 Peyton Manning player collectors out there. The pictures on the base cards are slightly blurred with an added canvas texture to make it look like a painting. The cards are actually smooth though and don't have the bumpy feel of a Diamond Kings or UD Masterpieces set. This looks good on some (Rice), not so good on others (Moss). There's a regular portrait on the back so they are not completely artsy fartsy. They are also really thick, these are heavy duty cards. Three out of the four base cards have Hall of Fame players on them, not bad at all. There are also two mini cards per pack designed to like like T206 cards. They do look kind of like an old tobacco card design, except for the gold foil and UV coating. Isaac Bruce is a nice card, but Cade McNown is a big busterooni. Then again, he dated Heather Kozar, so I only wish I could suck as bad as him. Heather left Cade for Tim Couch (why the hell didn't I ever learn to throw interceptions) and I'll bet he doesn't have a sweet Peyton Manning card like I do. Sucks to be you Cade, that'll teach you to park in handicapped spaces.