Card Replacement from Upper Deck
August 4th, 2009 by slangon
So it turned out that one of the three packages that I got in the mail the other day was from Upper Deck. A few months ago, I bought a blaster of 09 Goudey from the local Target and a mini blue back of James Shields that I pulled was all gnarled up on the one corner.
I’m sure I’m not the only one in this boat, but I tend to get pretty excited when I get a card in a pack that’s out of the ordinary, especially being that I don’t have a ton of extra cash laying around for cards. I dig inserts, parallels, mini’s, whatever. Since the damaged card in question was both a mini and a parallel, seeing all that mangled cardboard really took the wind out of my sails.
After a few brief seconds of mourning, I hopped on the interwebs to see if there was anything I could do about this. Sure enough, on the Upper Deck website, I tracked down instructions for returning damaged cards, so I threw young James into an envelope and sent him on his way. This was so long ago that I had forgotten that I sent that in.
Over the last week or two, I had won a handful of eBay auctions and arranged for a few trades, so I just assumed that this particular envelope was one of those, especially, since the envelope had nothing on it to connect it with Upper Deck. When I cracked it open, and peered down inside, I was a bit thrown off by the presence of an unopened pack of some sort. I don’t remember buying or trading for an unopened pack. What the hell?
I reached in and pulled out a top loader with a regular old 2009 Goudey James Shields base card, and the wheels started to turn. This was followed by the very same gnarled James Shields blue back mini that I had sent off all those months ago. Intriguing. What else is in this envelope?
Upon further investigation, I found that the envelope contained the aforementioned unopened pack, and a letter. First, the letter.
Basicly, they didn’t save enough James Shields mini blue backs to replace the f*@&ed up one that I got, so they had to give me a regular James Shields card. To make up for that, they sent me something else.
My eyes went straight to the pack, which was a pack of 2007 Fleer with an unfamiliar white sticker on the front that read simply “Bonus”. What does that mean? Is that a hot pack? Did you give me a hot pack to make up for the fact that you couldn’t replace my jacked up mini blue back? Can you do that? Does the company know which packs are loaded and which aren’t? What the hell? Did I just uncover some crazy card company secret? Only one way to find out.
Well, no smoking gun hot pack. Heres what I got:
34 – Kris Benson (Ex-Met)
39 – Aaron Harang
12 – Jeff Kent (Another Ex-Met)
192 – Mark Grudzielanek
9 – Hank Blalock
63 – Ryan Feierabend RC
16 – Jeff Fiorenrino RC
RS-MK Matt Kemp Rookie Sensation
RS-DU Dan Uggla Rookie Sensation
CA-FT Frank Thomas Crowning Achievement
Initially, I was a bit bummed that I got that jacked up card, especially a jacked up mini parallel. But I must say, the fact that Upper Deck replaced the card, let me keep the jacked up card, and sent me a pack with 2 ex-Mets, plus 3 shiney insets, well… I guess I can’t rightly complain too much. That Frank Thomas card is especially sweet. I’m just a sucker for them horizontal cards.
In the next few days, I’ll break down the 09 Ginter blaster I picked up over the weekend, as well as the other packages I got along with this one. Stay tuned.
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