RIP, Upper Deck?

[TheSportsPredictor]

MLB upper decks Upper Deck by signing an exclusive agreement with Topps as baseball card manufacturer.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/06/sports/baseball/06cards.html

UD can still produce cards thanks to an agreement with the players union, but it can't use logos or picture the players in uniform.

Dave Jamieson, who is writing a baseball card book, says bad idea:

http://www.slate.com/id/2224864/

Of interest to me -- Donruss lost its license agreement in 2005. I had no idea.

 

[KevinmH9]

MLB upper decks Upper Deck by signing an exclusive agreement with Topps as baseball card manufacturer.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/06/sports/baseball/06cards.html

UD can still produce cards thanks to an agreement with the players union, but it can't use logos or picture the players in uniform.

Dave Jamieson, who is writing a baseball card book, says bad idea:

http://www.slate.com/id/2224864/

Of interest to me -- Donruss lost its license agreement in 2005. I had no idea.

Umm...

Fail!

 

[RickStain]

$1.25 for a pack including only 8 cards when I was a kid.

**** Upper Deck.

 

[buckweaver]

Upper Deck's going to be fine. And this news is a week old.

 

[Batman]

Upper Deck, for as pretty as the cards were, symbolized (and in many cases as a pioneer of) everything that was wrong with trading cards over the past 20 years.
Expensive packs that priced out kids?
Check.
Memorabilia cards that cheapened sports history and made a joke of the hobby?
Check.
Incredibly high numbers of cards that were produced, further degrading whatever value the cards had?
Check.
Karma's a *****, Upper Deck.

 

[AgatePage]

if no one ever gets upper decked again, the world will be worse off.

 

[Smasher_Sloan]

Upper Deck's new line. No logos, no athletes in uniform:

A set like that could make me collect again.

 

[TheSportsPredictor]

And this news is a week old.

Probably means that no one cares about baseball cards anymore.

 

[old_tony]

And this news is a week old.

Probably means that no one cares about baseball cards anymore.

Baseball cards had a tangible value back in the 60s and 70s to kids. Games on TV were fewer than games not on TV. Outlets to see pictures of your favorite players and favorite team were far fewer. Now, all a kid has to do is flip the switch on his personal laptop or turn on the TV to either ESPN or MLB.

I'm not saying that things are better now, either. I think it was a lot cooler as a kid when seeing a highlight or a picture of your favorite player was special, rather than ho-hum.

 

[buckweaver]

Cards also had a tangible value when you didn't have anywhere to find stats from previous years.

Unless you were lucky enough to get a Baseball Encyclopedia for Christmas (and wore out the pages so fast that you begged your parents to get you another one the next year. Not that that ever happened.)

 

[Batman]

Cards also had a tangible value when you didn't have anywhere to find stats from previous years.

Unless you were lucky enough to get a Baseball Encyclopedia for Christmas (and wore out the pages so fast that you begged your parents to get you another one the next year. Not that that ever happened.)

Mamaweaver: Buck, what are you doing in there? You've been in the bathroom for 45 minutes! Are you OK?
Youngbuckweaver: I'm fine ma. Just looking at my Baseball Encyclopedia. Hmmm...the pages on the 1919 White Sox seem to be stuck together...

 

[BYH]

Upper Deck, for as pretty as the cards were, symbolized (and in many cases as a pioneer of) everything that was wrong with trading cards over the past 20 years.
Expensive packs that priced out kids?
Check.
Memorabilia cards that cheapened sports history and made a joke of the hobby?
Check.
Incredibly high numbers of cards that were produced, further degrading whatever value the cards had?
Check.
Karma's a *****, Upper Deck.

Word for ****ing word. Nobody ever understood why I hated Upper Deck. They ruined the hobby and I never thought the cards were all that good-looking anyway. Great post.

 

[StormSurge]

I, for one, look forward to our new Topps overlords.

 

[wicked]

Upper Deck, for as pretty as the cards were, symbolized (and in many cases as a pioneer of) everything that was wrong with trading cards over the past 20 years.
Expensive packs that priced out kids?
Check.
Memorabilia cards that cheapened sports history and made a joke of the hobby?
Check.
Incredibly high numbers of cards that were produced, further degrading whatever value the cards had?
Check.
Karma's a *****, Upper Deck.

Word for ****ing word. Nobody ever understood why I hated Upper Deck. They ruined the hobby and I never thought the cards were all that good-looking anyway. Great post.

Disagree on the design aspect. UD may have ruined the hobby, but they forced everyone to get on their games vis-a-vis production. Stuff was clean, crisp, clear. Nowhere near the amount of printing issues like you found in the Topps packs. Some of the Topps design stuff from the early and mid-'80s was brutal, too.

 

[TwoGloves]

At least you can still upper deck somebody you don't like.

 

[mb]

At least you can still upper deck somebody you don't like.

Sorry, Topps acquired the rights to that, too.

 

[2muchcoffeeman]

At least you can still upper deck somebody you don't like.

Sorry, Topps acquired the rights to that, too.

In that case, I'm going to upper-deck Topps.

 

[Bad Guy Zero]

I still collect sportscards. It's a nostalgic thing from when I was a kid. I remember buying pack after pack of 1980 Topps Baseball trying to put a full set together. Factory issued sets were a few years away. Sportscard shops were a rarity. I bought most packs at convenience stores like 7-Eleven. Stop 'N' Go, Howdy Doody? And EZ Chek. I never did manage to get a full set put together. Those cards were damaged by the card pages of the time that eventually stuck to the card over time. When you removed the cards the image on the front would remain in the page pocket. Someday I want to work on putting that set together by getting a card lot off eBay and then work on tracking down the single cards I need. Buying a hand-collated set is not an option. The fun is in the search.

The card companies sold their souls to the investor collector in the mid-90s. It's near impossible to put a full set together now because there are so many short prints, parallels, and inserts. I've come really close to putting together the entire set of last year's Topps Football save for the 1/1 cards [platinum parallels and printing plates].

So now I stick to collecting the cards of a handful of players.

I still pick up packs of cards just to see what they're all about. But it's a rarity that I feel compelled to put a hand-collated set together. I wish the card companies would realize that they need to create a solid basic set of cards that have nice design and no short prints or parallels. I don't mind inserts as long as it's kept to one or two sets and there's one in each pack. There's people like me that have sons and/or nephews that we'd love to show our love of collecting sportscards. But because the companies are catering to the investor/collector they've priced kids and casual collectors out of the hobby. Eventually the investor/collectors will move on to something else and the card companies will be stuck. There's an entire generation of kids they've neglected to reach out to. And it's going to be hard to lure them into the fold once they're in their late teens or twenties.

 

[zebracoy]

I still collect sportscards. It's a nostalgic thing from when I was a kid. I remember buying pack after pack of 1980 Topps Baseball trying to put a full set together. Factory issued sets were a few years away. Sportscard shops were a rarity. I bought most packs at convenience stores like 7-Eleven. Stop 'N' Go, Howdy Doody? And EZ Chek. I never did manage to get a full set put together. Those cards were damaged by the card pages of the time that eventually stuck to the card over time. When you removed the cards the image on the front would remain in the page pocket. Someday I want to work on putting that set together by getting a card lot off eBay and then work on tracking down the single cards I need. Buying a hand-collated set is not an option. The fun is in the search.

The card companies sold their souls to the investor collector in the mid-90s. It's near impossible to put a full set together now because there are so many short prints, parallels, and inserts. I've come really close to putting together the entire set of last year's Topps Football save for the 1/1 cards [platinum parallels and printing plates].

So now I stick to collecting the cards of a handful of players.

I still pick up packs of cards just to see what they're all about. But it's a rarity that I feel compelled to put a hand-collated set together. I wish the card companies would realize that they need to create a solid basic set of cards that have nice design and no short prints or parallels. I don't mind inserts as long as it's kept to one or two sets and there's one in each pack. There's people like me that have sons and/or nephews that we'd love to show our love of collecting sportscards. But because the companies are catering to the investor/collector they've priced kids and casual collectors out of the hobby. Eventually the investor/collectors will move on to something else and the card companies will be stuck. There's an entire generation of kids they've neglected to reach out to. And it's going to be hard to lure them into the fold once they're in their late teens or twenties.

Very well said.

 

[BYH]

Disagree on the design aspect. UD may have ruined the hobby, but they forced everyone to get on their games vis-a-vis production. Stuff was clean, crisp, clear. Nowhere near the amount of printing issues like you found in the Topps packs. Some of the Topps design stuff from the early and mid-'80s was brutal, too.

The photos were crisp and clear and UD definitely produced a quality card free of all the stuff you mentioned. But for the price we were paying per pack and per card, I wanted more than a generic design. I thought Topps did a great job recovering from its '80s malaise in 1990 and 1991 as well as with the first edition of Stadium Club ('91? '92? I was out of collecting by then but really liked how those cards looked).