Christmas Cards (The Kind Without Glitter) Part IV
January 7th, 2010 by slangon

I finally got around to sorting and scanning that box of 2009 Upper Deck A Piece of History. Initially, I picked this box simply for that fact that it was pretty cheap ($40) but it was supposed to pop out 4 hits. On average, each box is supposed to have 1 Piece of Hollywood relic, 2 MLB memorabilia cards and 1 autograph card. Not bad for that price. Outside of that, I wasn’t sure what to expect from it. Let’s get into it.

First of all, I thought the base cards were pretty nice. I usually lean towards retro themed products, but for a non-retro set, I think they’re well put together. They certainly feel good in your hand. Nice stock, nice finish. Here’s some Mets base cards that I pulled.

09APOHparnell
09APOHwright
09APOHsantana

Of course, what would an Upper Deck set be without colored parallels?

09APOHpridie
09APOHniese

Another big thing with this set is the Historical Moments cards, which are sort of like the Upper Deck 20th Anniversary Retrospective cards, except not so crappy looking and they’re not just events from the last 20 years. Most of them were pretty cool, with a few clunkers thrown in. I thought the baseball ones were pretty nice, especially that Cubs one.

09APOHhalloffame

09APOHnl
09APOHcubs

Speaking of the 20th Anniversary set, that rears it’s ugly head here as well. I did manage to get one pretty cool card out of the 7 or 8 that were in this box.

09APOHjabbar

It also seems like this product is all about the serial numbered card, which is fine by me, since I happen to like them. I know it’s silly, but I like knowing how many other copies are floating around of a card I own. I feel like a pulled a serial numbered card every pack, which may well be how they were seeded. Here’s a sampling.

09APOHburrell

09APOHguerrero

09APOHmartin

09APOHdamon

09APOHwright_longoria

09APOHredsox

09APOHpapelbon

09APOHhoward_fielder

As you can see, they’re pretty much all numbered to 999, outside of the colored parallels.

Now for what everyone has been waiting for. The big hits. As I mentioned at the start this box was supposed to contain 1 Hollywood relic, 2 MLB relics and an auto card. I however only received 1 MLB relic. It seems that Upper Deck is very consistent with their use of the phrase “on average” so I doubt that I can whine too much. Also, the one relic I did get was pretty awesome, so I’m not too mad. Anyway, here they are.

First the autograph.

09APOHleblanceAuto
Not too bad. I’m not sure how I feel about owning a purple baseball card, and it is a sticker auto. On the other hand, even though it’s not a Met, it is a rookie I actually have heard of, so that’s cool.

Next is the Hollywood relic card, which initially was the hit that I was least excited about. After seeing what I got though, I think it’s pretty cool.

09APOHwashingtonRelicF

09APOHwashingtonRelicB
That’s pretty cool. I haven’t seen John Q, but I do like Denzel. That would’ve probably been enough to make me like this, but it just makes it cooler that the swatch is from a sweet throw-back little league Orioles jersey.

And finally, the hit that made me not care that I got beat out of a hit.

09APOHortiz

A David Ortiz patch swatch, numbered to 25. I don’t really own too many patch swatches, so that’s a big plus. Also, even though I’m not a Red Sox fan, I do like Big Papi. I like his swagger. Although, not even counting this card, I really think Upper Deck meant this particular box to end up in the hands of a Red Sox fan. Aside from the Sox cards I ended up scanning, I must’ve gotten another thousand that I didn’t scan. I must say however, even though none of the hits were of Mets, I feel like I did pretty well with this box on the Mets front. Maybe this was the ’86 World Series replay box. And the Sox won this time.

So there you have it. I liked the box. It was fun to break. I got some cool cards. Everyone’s happy.

3 Responses to “Christmas Cards (The Kind Without Glitter) Part IV”

  1. That set was downtalked so badly when it came out that I never bought a single pack of it… Looking at your box break, it doesn’t seem like that bad of a set (not as good as say Allen & Ginter, but still, not terrible). How close to the whole base set did you get with the one box?

  2. It’s not too bad of a set, especially for the price. I’m with you, I like all of the numbered cards still, even if I know it’s ridiculous.

    I’d still be mad about the missing hit, though.

    Oh, and I got your card last week in the mail. Thanks. I should have yours in the mail tomorrow.

    I meant to email you about it, but I didn’t…which probably doesn’t surprise you very much at this point.

  3. I was a bit cheesed off about the missing hit, but the Ortiz was cool enough to make up for it a little. Besides, everywhere they talk about the relics and autographs in the box, they always use the phrase “on average”, so I doubt I would get very far if I did contact them.

Leave a Reply