2007 Upper Deck Future Stars

I ended up with a pack of this Future Stars stuff in a repack box (I swear I will stop buying those one of these days) that I got recently. I don't remember anything about this set or even seeing it in the stores, but it was probably there. It's just generic looking and useless enough for someone like me to completely miss it. There's 4 cards in the pack and it most likely retailed for $2.99, which means I wouldn't have touched the stuff anyway at full price. Sets like these are the reason the powers that be have put a limit on how many products the card companies can release each year. Let's see if I got a "Dice-K" autographed card or one of "2007's Hottest Rookies."

24 - Felix Hernandez (I suppose King Felix qualifies as a future star, though it's going to be hard for anyone to be a star playing in Seattle. Someone must have cast an RPG-style curse over that entire town and its sports teams.)

21 - Jon Garland (In what sense is a player with 7 years of ML experience and 82 career victories a future star? The card design isn't the worst thing I've ever seen, though it has some cheesy looking Tron effects.)

25 - Travis Hafner (I'm pretty sure Hafner was already a star at this point. Unfortunately, being in this set seems to have cursed him.)

76 - Zach Duke (In the future, the Pirates will be a team full of stars. In fact, they will enslave the rest of the league. Ryan Doumit will be the Demon Lord and Zach Duke will be the Supreme Master.)

Don't I even get a rookie card?

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 Upper Deck Future Stars

I should have known better on this pack. I got caught up in all the empty promises on the wrapper and was allowed to be seduced by the evil Upper Deck marketing staff. Look at the wrapper for Future Stars baseball. It's got "Future Stars" right there on the package twice in a bold weird computer type font. It's got pictures of no less than 6 of the hot rookies from this year on there too, including Matsuzaka, Igawa, Gordon and Tulowitzki. There's a big Dice-K Autographed Cards logo on the bottom. There's even an official MLB Rookie Card logo on the pack for Pete's sake! Surely this set is just chock full of rookies right?

21 Jon Garland
38 Dontrelle Willis
43 Emil Brown
61 Carlos Delgado

These are future stars?!? Carlos Delgado hasn't been a future star since 1993. Jon Garland could be a star if he can get his ERA back under 4.50 like he did in 2005. Dontrelle is a future Tigers star I suppose. I didn't even know Emil Brown was still in the league to be honest. This is the Pirates' Emil Brown right? I thought he was long gone from the league. Well, he's with the Royals, so I'm half right. Plastering future stars and rookie logos all over the wrapper and then not delivering with at least one damn rookie is bootleg crap. It's a shame, because I like the cards. The green and gold looks really nice and the FS logo reminds me of the Tron Cycle Game. You gotta deliver the goods though. I think this is a revamp of the old Pros and Prospects sets that had lots of Pros and very few Prospects. At least that product acknowledged there were pros in the set. There's also only 4 lousy cards per pack. Bowman Chrome only has three, but at least they put a rookie in every pack. Again, I should have known better. I even read Joey's pack break from Squeezeplaycards.com a while back, but forgot about it until I ripped this thing. Don't make the same mistake I did. If you want rookies, buy some Bowman.