2009 Upper Deck Artifacts A Piece of History Baseball, A Brand With a Name So Long That Footnotes Might Soon Be Required

This blog has been on life support for the last few months, due in no small part to my lack of posts. I guess that's happened mostly because I've become wary of retail and haven't bought that many cards in 2009. Perhaps this will change?

Let's tear in.

Top to Bottom:
33 Miguel Cabrera

17 Kosuke Fukudome

105 Alfredo Aceves (RC) Green Parallel (023/150)

121 Chris Lambert (RC)

157 Discovery of Penicillin

Not the best pack, but not too bad for retail. Unfortunately there wasn't a companion card to the Historical Moments card that would have made good fodder for an STD joke. Oh well. I have to say that I like the design more than the last few years.

2008 Upper Deck A Piece of History Retail (aka Artifacts)

This is the type of thing I normally stay away from, at least until it ends up being picked through by a year's worth of pack searchers and those creepy people at stores that feel the need to touch everything they lay their eyes on. Once that $1.59 sticker gets slapped on it, the curiosity starts to churn within me. This time, I didn't have to wait for that to happen. I dropped by our area monthly card show the other day and one guy had a table full of nothing but retail packs and boxes at a discounted price. I grabbed this pack for $2 and opened it here, for you, on the internet. I don't really know anything about this set other than that it has two names for some strange reason.

74 - Jimmy Rollins (He's a champion. He has a stupid nickname. He is a SHORTSTOP.)

151 - Fall of the Berlin Wall (History? Yep. Baseball history? Nope.)
128 - Carlos Muniz (RC) (The design for the rookies reminds you that he is a rookie. Twice.)

CSC-WS - C.C. Sabathia / Dontrelle Willis Cut From the Same Cloth 334/799 (Why does this card exist? This design was obviously made for jersey swatches, right? They would go where the gold team logos are, I assume. Willis is pictured in his Florida uniform, but with a Tigers logo, which means they probably only have pieces of his Marlins jersey to spare. Also, what do these guys have to do with each other? They're both pitchers... that's it.)

147 - Luis Mendoza (RC) (Ditto for what I said about rookies up above. I think it's pretty strange that there are any cards of rookies in a set that is as pompously named as this.)

2008 Upper Deck Artifacts Baseball

This pack was purchased because I'll try anything once.
Let's tear in.

Top to Bottom:
167 Eiffel Tower

139 Eugenio Velez (RC)

46 Torii Hunter (Come on, Upper Deck, get with the funny faces already!)

16 Dustin Pedroia
191 Nobel Prize Slightly Lighter (?) Parallel (This card stands out as the reason not to buy any more of this set. I looked it up, and up this very this moment, a total of 797 Nobel Prizes have been awarded. That means there are 797 of these medals out there. Would be nice to get to see what one looks like up close, right? But we get drawing of one. Great. To me this drawing in merely of sticker book quality. I'm talking about the ones that you can buy at a drug store, they're about 20 pages long, with two pages of punch-out stickers that a child uses to complete various pictures. Cheap.)

Verdict: Garbage.

2008 Upper Deck Artifacts

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.

2007 Heritage blister pack

My misadventures with old Heritage packs recently have got me on the lookout for more goofy packs. I saw a pack of '07 Heritage in a three pack blister recently and decided to get it.

After busting it open, I got a pack of '07 Artifacts, a 2006 Hobby pack of Upper Deck Future Stars (whatever that is) and the Heritage pack. Inspection of the pack revealed that the seals on the ends are kind of krinkled, but there's no blatant evidence of tampering. This thing was five bucks or so, so I probably overpaid for a dumb experiment. Let's rip.

Pack 1: 2007 Artifacts
I actually like this stuff, but gave up on trying to complete it when Bowman Heritage came out. Hopefully I get a card or two for my set.

38 Derrek Lee
10 Grady Sizemore
54 Jose Reyes
96 Ryan Braun
94 Oswaldo Navarro

Good News: I needed Grady and Derrek.
Bad News: Further inspection shows all the cards have a small crease on the left side, either from getting jammed in the blister pack or from asshats abusing the retail packs. Oh well. Next pack.

Pack Two: 2006 Upper Deck Future Stars
I have no clue what this stuff is. 2006 was right in the middle of my "Upper Deck is the Devil" phase and I'm not sure I've ever seen any of this stuff before.

27 Miguel Cabrera
62 Ichiro
21 Victor Martinez
WBC-23 Nicholas Dempsey

Ahh, now I recognize this stuff. I bought a John Smoltz card from this set for 50 cents thinking it was an Upper Deck insert card. It sure looks like an insert. Not a bad pack, Miggy and Ichiro are always nice to get and Victor is underrated like most catchers. The World Baseball Classic insert is useless though, I got South Africa's cleanup hitter. Hooray. Much better than the first pack, but if I get a pile of 1990 ProSet football in the Heritage pack, this will be a disaster.

Pack 3: 2007 Topps Heritage
I'm looking for three things from this pack for it to be a success:
1) actual 2007 Heritage cards
2) an insert or SP
3) at least one card I don't already have
I'm not getting my hopes up.

241 Mike Gonzalez
152 Jason Schmidt
341 Pirates team / 6th series Checklist
394 Jeremy Sowers
THC93 Chrome Refractor Carlos Beltran #240/558
52 Jason Bay
7 Todd Helton
96 Kip Wells

Well, this pack sure wasn't searched... too bad it's Beltran. I've been pulling Mets like mad lately for some reason. Is there a Met fan out there who has a ton of Braves cards they don't want who would like to trade off enemy hostages? Especially Delgado fans, JEEZ I'm getting his cards like there's no tomorrow. And Paul LoDuca. Ugh. this isn't a bad pack at all though, Schmidt, Bay and Helton are nice cards and I pulled a Brave on the DL. Back by June! Maybe! Woohoo! I didn't pick up any for the set though, so better luck next time.

2007-2008 Upper Deck Artifacts Hockey

So the Thrashers start the season at 2-8 and they fire their coach. I figure hey, they suck, I can safely ignore them. I check the standings and they are somehow at .500 for the season. What the hell? Let's have some consistency, people. I really shouldn't have bothered with this pack, I didn't really want to mess with hockey cards this year. However, I've already opened a pack of baseball Artifacts (good), football Artifacts (bad) and basketball Artifacts (really good) so what the heck, let's go for the complete set. I'm interested to see what they look like anyway since the baseball and hoops sets had a dirt motif going on and ice and dirt don't really mix well. Besides, Bobby Orr is on the wrapper.

79 Alex Tanguay
16 Evgeni Malkin
82 Paul Stastny
74 Pavol Demitra
153 Jaroslav Halak Rookie #493/999

No dirty cards for Hockey. Upper Deck used an ice blue marble theme instead. These cards look really nice, but I just don't know who any of these people are. That probably means I no longer know a damn thing about hockey because according to the stats on the back, Malkin and Stastny scored 85 points and 78 points respectively last year. Tanguay also scored 80 points and Demitra (who rings a bell now that I think about it) is also a big goal scorer. It's ok if I don't know who the rookie is, I don't know who most of the baseball rookies are either and I actually follow that sport.

Since I have nothing to say about the players to pad out this post, I shall instead compare the team uniforms. The Canadians uni is classic, yet boring. I've never been a big fan of the CH logo. The Avs have a snazzy uniform but I always played the Red Wings in EA Hockey '94 so I feel compelled to hate them. The Penguins sweater kicks ass. I'm glad they went back to the old school cartoony penguin. I really like the Flames sweater with the red, yellow and black, but that flaming evil horse face logo sucks. The Wild uniform is disgusting, it looks like a Christmas nightmare. Red and Green just don't work for sports uniforms. Ask the New Jersey Devils, they changed their colors to red and black and immediately won a bunch of Stanley Cups. I don't think that will work for the Wild though, no matter what they do they'll still have the same name as the worst Disney flick ever. That movie managed to make Eddie Izzard unfunny, and I didn't think that was even possible. Ok, I'm completely off topic now.

To sum up: 2007 Upper Deck Artifacts baseball is good, football sucks, basketball is really good and hockey is also really good unless you don't follow hockey and then it sucks even if you pull a rookie goalie. Remember this, because there will be a quiz.

2007-2008 Upper Deck Artifacts Baketball

Ok Halloween frivolity is over. Time for serious business. Let's open up some packs!

I've never been real interested in the Artifacts sets before this year, but a few months ago I tried the baseball set and liked it. I then tried a pack of the football set and hated it so much I didn't bother with a review. For the record, here's my 2007 Upper Deck Artifacts Football review: Recycling card designs for a particular brand throughout a year is lazy but acceptable. Recycling classic card designs for a new product can be quite nice if done properly. Recycling a card design from two years ago is neither nice nor acceptable. A 2007 football set with a 2005 baseball design is so mind-numbingly stupid that it doesn't deserve the bandwidth to gripe about it. Even typing 502 characters about it is way too much.

So, when I found a pack of the basketball edition I was interested but apprehensive. Would this be like the good baseball set or the bad football set? The wrapper looked good at least showing MJ dribbling out of a gilded frame. Since I'm more geeked up about the NBA season then I have been in years and because there is really nothing else good out there right now I decided to go for it and try a pack. The store only had the blister pack version so I unfortunately had to buy 4 cards worth of trash to buy the one 5 card pack. it would be nice if whoever repacks these things would at least put a card to cut out on the back of these things so it's not a complete waste.


13 Luol Deng
29 Monta Ellis
Upperdeckstore.com code card
15 Andres Nocioni
31 Yao Ming
163 Dave Cowens Legendary Legacies 251/999

My fears were unfounded. They not only used the attractive baseball design, but they took the time to tweak it to reflect a basketball motif. Good job, Upper Deck art designers! They did bling it up with some foil stamping, which the wrapper foreshadowed with the gilded frame. I've resigned myself to the fact that using foil stamping on cards for the player's name is just an ugly trend right now and will pass eventually. At least it's somewhat readable (and scannable) in this design unlike the eye-straining Topps and Upper Deck base cards. There are only three changes from the baseball design. The foil stamping, a parquet floor border that gets very dirty at the bottom of the card, and a neat old fashioned map design in the background behind the player. The map shows the fictional kingdoms of Gulicher and Nider and it looks like it was really fun to draw. More kudos to the art department. The back is identical to the baseball 'spy dossier' design.

This pack netted a couple of Bulls, Yao Ming and a player from Golden State I've never heard of before. There is also a numbered insert of Celtics legend Dave Cowens. Uh oh, wait a minute... that's no insert that's part of the base set. The checklist on Upper Deck's website is damn near incomprehensable, but this is how the set breaks down: 100 base cards of veterans, 50 short printed 'Legacies' rookie cards, 50 short printed 'Legacies' legends cards and 30 'Artifacts Exclusives' cards that include a handful of rookies and stars and about 4 cards each of Michael Jordon, LeBron James, Kobe Bryant and Kevin Durant. The legends cards are all numbered to 999, the rookies are infuriatingly numbered to 699 for most of the lottery picks and 1299 for everyone else and the Exclusives appear to be box toppers. Box toppers as part of the set? Yipe. I must admit I covet the Al Horford box topper though. Apparently the numbered cards are inserted 1 per pack in the $9.99 a pack hobby edition, but only God knows the retail ratios. This is a nice looking set, but there's no value in retail packs unless you get really lucky like this pack. Too bad.

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.