I wasn’t sure if I was going to collect 2008 Upper Deck Masterpieces Baseball. There didn’t seem to be as many iconic renditions as there were in last year’s set. Turns out the artistic take was too much to resist — especially at a reduced price.
That said, this is still a gorgeous set. Little has changed in the design over 2007, and that I don’t mind. I actually think it’s a good idea to have a couple of sets continue on to make for a larger collection that is on-going. While bidding on a couple of other cheap blaster boxes, I decided to throw down a $9.99 bid on this blaster to combine shipping costs. Obviously my bid held up, otherwise I’d be writing about some phantom blaster box.
Here’s what the eight packs brought me:
Pack One:
43. Chin-Lung Hu RC
Black Border 113. Steve Carlton
7. Evan Longoria RC
84. Jason Varitek
So far, pretty good. But when I’m really only after the base cards anyway, I’d think all packs are going to be good.
Pack Two:
64. Joba Chamberlain
50. Joe Mauer and his Food Handling Safety certificate
Yankee Stadium Legacy 1429. Phil Rizzuto
35. Magglio Ordonez
56. Jose Reyes
Nice to see the YSL inserts don’t count toward a card in the pack.
Pack Three:
2. Justin Upton
79. Russell Martin
77. Jake Peavy
63. Hideki Matsui
Landed a Canadian. The images are definitely not as memorable as last year’s so far. They all seem like random moments. Still nice though. And the card stock is kinda bumpy.
Pack Four:
22. Kosuke Fukudome RC
16. Jonathan Papelbon is about to dance or do something else.
34. Gary Sheffield
13. Curt Schilling
Pack Five:
54. David Wright
40. Alex Gordon
6. Mark Teixeira
83. Ozzie Smith’s sunglasses.
Pack Six:
69. Chase Utley
Captured on Canvas GU Jersey CC-CF. Carlton Fisk (White Swatch)
What, only two cards!? What a rip off ; ) Good thing one of them has a piece of a Hall-of-Famer’s jersey. Wait a sec’. It has “a piece of memorabilia that has been certified by [Upper Deck] as having been used in an official Major League Baseball game.” What the heck does that mean? Did Fisk wear this “memorabilia” or not? Is it a jersey? Pants? Something else that’s gross to mention? Oh, well. At least I can feel safe it wasn’t worn by a Foot Locker employee during his beer league game. But what if he wore it to the Strato-Matic baseball regional championships? Isn’t that game licensed by MLB, thus making that an official MLB game. And they wonder why we’re a little more cynical toward game-used jersey memorabilia cards now. It’s still a cool card, though.
Pack Seven
47. Prince Fielder and his giddy school girl excited face.
26. Grady Sizemore
Yankee Stadium Legacy 1454. Joe Dimaggio
27. Victor Martinez
62. Alex Rodriguez
Pack Eight
75. Tony Gwynn
93. Frank Robinson and his Food Health Safety certificate SP
55. Johan Santana
41. Vladimir Guerrero
For $10, this was a nice break. I’m guessing Walmart and Target had them closer to $15-20. At that price I’d be avoiding it. While I want to build the base set, the short prints are what’s tough to come by. With only one per blaster box, there’s not a lot of value in them at the regular price.
Although I don’t think the pictures — the selling point of the set for me — are nearly as good as last year, I’m still going after the set.
Upper Deck Masterpieces is great because it’s a set with a purpose. It has a gimmick outside of being another generic set that offers two or three hits per box. The focus here is and should be on the base set. While there are plenty of opportunities for autographs and game-used in the hobby version, they alone don’t justify the price point. Ninety percent of the autographs are commons that can be had for less than the price of a pack. But for those wanting to build the 120-card set, some packs are going to be needed to get it going.
