2004 Upper Deck National Trading Card Day

e46yttttt(All of these cards are available for trade)

Hey everybody, happy National Trading Card Day!

Okay not really (it's actually April 3rd), but I do have this pack to share with you that commemorated the day in 2004. See:
Ewwww, LeBron's on the front...boooooooo. But hey, I can get cards from 5 different sports, including MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL, & Golf! COOL! I wonder who I'll get first...maybe Albert Pujols, or Paul Pierce, or Tom Brady...

Nope. None of the above. It's a golfer. And it's a she. Random!
#1 Annika Sorenstam - Okay, not so random - the 15 cards are in number order from 1 to 15, so anyone who got this pack would pull her first. So hats off to Upper Deck for making card #1 a female in a male dominated set, but hats back on since there's no variety in a pack. Ah well, it's still all new to me right? Here's the back of her card:
Little blurb, vital stats, picture recap...and that'll do 'er!

#2 - Hideki Matsui - Starting things off internationally apparently with Sweeden and Japan...tricky tricky. Was Matsui really big enough in 2004 to be included in this set? I'd argue no, but what do I know?

#3 Ichiro - Continuing the international theme, we have Ichiro, who certainly deserves to be in this set. I also like the color scheme for his card with that teal-y-ness.

#4 Jack Nicklaus - Good old Columbus, OH breaks up the non-U.S. monotony. The back of the card calls him the "greatest golfer of all time." I don't disagree.


#5 - Ken Griffey Jr. - 13 homeruns and a .247 average in 2003. Riding on those mid 90's coattails. But man, they were good coattails.

#6 Kevin Garnett - Ooo a basketball card of a current Celtic! Sadly this is where the pack goes downhill, starting with...

#7 LeBron James - Ewwwww. It's kind of a rookie card, but he's kind of a douche.

#8 Michael Jordan - One of the greatest of all time, but also the precursor to Brett Favre. Luckily Favre is having a MJ-with-the-Wizards-esque final run this year.

#9 A Bunch of Cleveland Browns - Okay, so really it's a Michael Vick card, but the Browns actually WON that game in 2003, so I had to mention them. Kevin Johnson and William Green scored 4th quarter touchdowns leading to a 24-16 Browns victory. Suck on that Vick!

#10 Patrick Roy - Certainly one of the best goalies ever, if only for messing with Americans who have to try to pronounce his name correctly. I was stunned as a kid when I realized it was not pronounced Roy, but rather "Rue-ah." Crazy Canadians!

#11 Peyton Manning - As a Browns fan and a Patriots fan...booooo. Not as bad as LeBron, but boooo.

#12 Sammy Sosa - Oh Sammy...How we used to love you so...

#13 Sergio Garcia - Brief pack upswing (literally) just before...

#14 Tiger Woods - This guy goes and ruins everything. Tiger AND Peyton AND LeBron? Throw in the Favre I got in the box from Troll and damn...what an unfortunate set. Ah well, one more card left to check out...

#15 Wayne Gretzky - Cool, the Great One, I can dig that. Nice finish! Oh but wait, there's the insert:

I would've shown you the back, but it says "Win an experience with Ken Griffey Jr.," and that creeped me out. What kind of "experience" do I win? Do I even want to know? They said you could go to www.upperdeckkids.com to find out, but I don't think I really want to know. So I'll stop the pack there, no research needed!

- SpastikMooss

1993 Classic Games Deathwatch 2000

Time to bust some more of those sweet packs given to me by The Collective Troll. This next one was my favorite because of what I could have pulled. The foil stamped "Brink of Deathwatch 2,000" card is pretty sweet. But even better? Well check the pack itself:
Hard to read in the scan given the shiny, but at the bottom it says I can potentially look forward to "7 Limited-Print HYBRID Cards of Shaquille O'Neal, Manon Rheaume & Ken Griffey, Jr." How cool is that? It's a completely random set from some random comics...and you can get sweet cards of Shaq, Griffey, and a female hockey goalie! YEAAAAH!

Sadly I didn't get one. Which is a bummer because those cards are sweet! Here's the Shaq, here's the Manon (Couldn't find the Griffey).

That said, the base cards are cool too, as is the foil card I got. Here's the official list of foil cards I could've picked up in the pack. Yay foil, especially at one per pack:


But the real cool part of any pack is the cards. So here they are, all 16 of them. And for the record, I have never read this comic. So although I may make silly comments about the cards due to my ignorance...I mean no disrespect to Deathwatch 2000 or anyone who enjoys it:
#39 Cyberrad's First Battle - No idea what it means, but the card certainly looks cool. I mean, check out that super cool laser behind his right shoulder! Is he shooting something? Or is someone flying past him?

Maybe the back of the card can explain?
"Underneath the Mount St. Helens Crater, CyberRad Joings the Fray Alongside Shaman Megalith and Shealth"

Yeah...no idea. But sweet. At least the back of the card explains what that laser is kind of:

"A band of tight, laser-directed plasma energy blows the chest out of a Stopper robot"

Good to know. I still have no idea what's going on, but there's your standard card back anyways.

#40 First Strike - Apparently this guy's a steroid monster, so Barry Bonds made an appearance in this set too I guess. Oh wait, it was 1993. So Jose Canseco made an appearance in this set instead.

#30 Hovering Death - Man, how bada** is this set? This is "Pete Stavey," who escaped a bunch of robot-bikes "only to be cornered by their extractor," which appears to be a sweet helicopter. It's like Mad Max on crack or something.

#29 Escape from Death-Jaws - "Werebreds dodge giant, enraged dinosaur." This card ends with the phrase, "their rescue mission could easily end in horrible death." Not exactly 1993 Leaf here folks.

#28 Fiiiiiir's Revenge - Wow...this dude's name looks like I fell asleep at the keyboard. I mean, I get that Fir doesn't sound totally awesome, but Fiir almost sounds Viking-esque, and Fiiir could be cool. Fiiiiiir just seems overboard. The best part? Fiiiiiir is only taking that dude out with a lightning bolt because that dude (Cyclone) downed Fiiiiiir's ally, named Ursssss. Creative names all around guys.

#27 Lith Kasti's Victory - This dude can "melt steel with a single fire-blast from his hands." Plus he seems pretty tall. I wouldn't eff with him.

#13 Megalith Rescued by Security Team - Man, so many crazy monsters/robots/whatevers in this set, and card #13 features a bunch of humans. LAME. Luckily the next card rules because it is FOIL!

#BC1 (aka the foil card) Highperion Faces Extinction - It's so hard to tell from the scan. but this card is very shiny. The backs look pretty similar to the other backs though:
I have to say that I don't totally understand the title - Ms. Mystic is the one on the ground truly facing extinction as she would've died if the raptor bit her, while Highperion is just killing the raptor. Maybe it means he's facing metaphorical extinction? Like dinosaurs went extinct and he's battling a dino? Meta? Yeah...no clue. Sweet card though.

#75 Rem's Wicked Tricks Fails - This card makes me laugh a lot. For one, Rem is a giant horsefly. For two, the words "FAILS" is stretched out so epically...it's like they're trying to rub it in Rem's face.

#76 Gravity Battering Ram - Gravity made a rock crash into a big monster dude. Science wins again.

#77 Earth 4 Attacks Their Dopplegangers - If Sealab 2021 taught me anything, it's that doppleganger is the best word of all time. On a side note, I could totally kick my doppleganger's butt.

#78 - Mite Bounces Into The Fray - Whoa, it's that horsefly again. Totally freaked out the skeleton looking thing in this case. His face looks like he just got a wedgie or something.

#79 Evil Elementals - "Stagnant water, stench-filled air, moldy Earth, and irradiated Flame" and Heart...GOOOOOO PLANET!

Captain Plaaaanet, he's our herrroooooo. Gonna take pollution downnnn to zerrrooooo...

Moving on...

#80 Dinosaur Rampage - Highperion makes another appearance after saving Ms. Mystic from dinosaurs. Apparently the dinos were a big deal, as some of them get an appearance on this card as well.

#70 Morph's Deadly Gaze - If I understand the perspective of this card correctly, the guy on the right is Jimmy Stewart, aka Rear Window, watching his robot neighbor do dastardly deeds. Or something like that.

#69 Stop That Madman - Last card of the pack, and it's a doozy! If those 3 giant robots don't stop that human from swinging a crow bar at a supercomputer, then the Earth will be destroyed. To be honest, knowing nothing about what will happen, I'm siding with the 3 giant robots over the 5'5" scientist. Just seem like they've got the upper hand here.

And there we have it - 1993 Classic Games Deathwatch 2000! I hope you guys enjoyed reading about it as much as I did opening it!

- SpastikMooss

2005 All-Star Classics

I was at Target looking through their discounted packs and I came across this beauty:

I had never seen it before and was not even sure what the base cards looked like, so I figured I would give it a try.  I was pleasantly surprised.

I scored two Legendary All-Stars: Nolan Ryan and Bob Gibson.

Here is the back of the Legendary All-Stars card, which is similar to the next subset of cards: All-Star Futures.



Here is a really nice looking Joe Mauer All-Star Futures:

Now a much less accurate prediction of All-Star Futures: Oliver Perez.

If you, like me are a Met fan, you are quite upset with Perez's unwillingness to go down to the minors this season to work out his mechanics.  You also hope that he is not in a Met uniform next season.

The other four cards were normal base cards.

Here is the front and back of a Gagne card, remember how dominant he was?



The pack finished up with an Alfonso Soriano, Miguel Tejada, and Randy Johnson.

For me this pack was definitely worth it: good players and an interesting design I had never seen.

Hope you enjoyed seeing them too!

2002 Upper Deck MVP

I picked up a hobby box of 2002 Upper Deck MVP recently at a card show and have been posting the results on my blog. Here's a pack I more or less randomly selected for APTBNL.

14 - Miguel Tejada (Tejada has been surprisingly useful for the Padres down the stretch, or at least that's the impression I'm getting.)

289 - Todd Helton (I think Helton has a disproportionate number of cards relative to how many fans he has.)

1 - Darin Erstad

296 - Derek Jeter Checklist (Jeter has had kind of a down year. Does anyone care?)

270 - Mike Williams

10 - Brad Fullmer (Lots of Angels in this one.)

2 - Ramon Ortiz

283 - Aaron Boone