Now take a look at what you didn't win

Readers chose the Mystery box over the Upper Deck fat pack blaster. Here's a quick run down of the sheer cardboard perfection you gave up. Yes, I bought the blaster and then let you guys pick because I am an idiot.

Base cards in the box: 165

Base cards I actually needed: 37

Infield Power inserts in the box: 10

Number of Infield Power Inserts that other people might want 'cause I sure don't want 'em: 3

Yankee Stadium Barrrrrrrf: 5

Ok, there was one good one:

You know I have to post this now:



Tears shed over dropping $20 on this mess instead of a regular UD blaster where I would have gotten a crappy jersey card at least: 4

There was a silver lining, I have all my 2008 Upper Deck Doubles sorted out finally so I can start checking people's wantlists. As for posting my 2008 UD wantlist? I'll get to that eventually.

2008 Stupid Year In Review - Part 9: Upper Deck Series 2

Upper Deck Fat Packs - Series 1 and 2

Upper Deck Series 1 and 2 Combo Fat Packs are in stores now, you can get one pack of 36 cards for five bucks or a blaster of 5 packs for 20. It's a good way to amass some '08 UD if you're coming into the game late. You're not going to find 165-170 base cards for 20 bucks many places. For comparison the regular blasters have about 65 base cards, 10 StarQuests, a jersey card and a handful of inserts. The catch with the Fat Packs is there are no game used or inserts other than Yankee Stadium Cards and the two per pack bonus inserts. The pack I got (solely for the card below, I admit) contained 15 cards from series 1, 18 from series 2, a Mariano Rivera YSL insert and two of the following bonus cards:

All the packs I saw had these Infield Power cards showing on the back. Strange since the wrapper (featuring Derek Jeter and Josh Beckett) says in big bold letters at the top '2 ROOKIE DEBUT CARDS in every pack'! Well, there was no Rookie Debut cards in there but I did get my 13th Kosuke rookie in the pack. I'm happy with the Chipper insert instead of even more cards of this year's lackluster rookie crop. This card has a serious mid nineties Ultra insert vibe going on with it. It's nice enough looking though. The other insert in the pack was the Rays' first baseman Carlos Pena. If any Rays fans out there absolutely have to have it let me know.

2008 Upper Deck Stars and Stripes Series 2 Blaster

I needed a pick me up from the Bravo's recent sweep at the hands of the Philthies (again) so I splurged and went over my weekly recommended allowance of blasters. It's July Fourth, so what better than a Stars and Stripes blaster from Upper Deck Series 2? I'm not going to get too detailed into this thing, I'll let the cards do the talking. In short, Stars and Stripes boxes are different from regular blasters in that they:

1. Have no StarQuest cards
2. Have a Team USA jersey card instead of a MLB jersey card
3. Have 2 exclusive Star Attractions inserts per box

Other than that, it's the typical 1 predictor, 1 Team USA and two Yankee Stadium cards per blaster. Let's rip:

Pack 1
471 Norris Hopper
472 Josh Barfield
531 Ervin Santana
596 Bobby Crosby
680 Jason Jennings
649 Erik Bedard
737 Grady Sizemore Highlights
724 Ramon Troncoso RC

Pack 2
442 Carlos Zambrano
617 Jason Bay
676 David Murphy
642 Adrian Beltre
602 Chris Denorfia
461 Nick Swisher
781 Brandon Webb Highlights
780 Derek Jeter Checklist

Pack 3
499 Curtis Granderson
488 Ubaldo Jimenez
513 Lance Berkman
532 Francisco Rodriguez
692 Johnny Estrada
620 Jose Bautista
717 Evan Meek RC
PP-11A McCain Vs. Hillary - Taxes

Pack 4
417 Yunel Escobar
695 Odalis Perez
589 Robinson Cano
YSL6117 Paul O'Neill Yankee Stadium
633 Scott Hairson
749 Torii Hunter Highlight
766 Johan Santana Checklist
SA-6 Nick Markakis Star Attractions

Pack 5
487 Ryan Spilborghs
433 Jason Varitek
546 Hong-Chih Kuo
651 Chris Carpenter
555 Eric Gagne
462 Carlos Quentin
754 Scott Rolen Checklist
739 Ichiro Highlight

Pack 6
425 Melvin Mora
416 Tyler Yates
526 Mark Teahen
672 Jason Botts
650 Brad Wilkerson
621 Nyjer Morgan RC
705 Gregor Blanco RC
782 Brian Roberts Highlight

Pack 7
460 Brain Anderson
536 Gary Matthews
585 Kei Igawa
510 Andrew Miller
520 Michael Bourn
775 Troy Tulowitzki Highlight
716 Kyle McClellan RC
USJR-18 Tyler Hibbs

Pack 8
616 Tom Gorzellanny
479 David Dellucci
694 Ryan Zimmerman
654 Skip Schumaker
403 Chris Burke
693 Paul Lo Duca
738 Greg Maddux Highlight
SA-7 Prince Fielder Star Attraction

Pack 9
406 Eric Byrnes
450 Geovany Soto
562 Francisco Liriano
YSL6142 Paul O'Neill
569 Delmon Young
635 Noah Lowry
761 Andruw Jones Checklist
712 Eliot Johnson RC

Pack 10
497 Carlos Guillen
577 Pedro Martinez
541 Jason Schmidt
USA-JR Josh Romanski
665 Cliff Floyd
603 Emil Brown
795 Josh Beckett Highlight
757 Troy Glaus Checklist

The wrapup:

Base cards - 73/400 (18%)

Yankee Stadium Legacy - 2 (Paul O'Neill, Paul O'Neill)

Star Attractions - 2 (Nick Markakis, Prince Fielder)

Presidential Predictors - 1

Team USA - 0

Team Junior USA -1 (Tyler Hibbs)

Team USA Jersey - 1 (Josh Romanski)

Whew. I probably should have gotten one of those Tri-Star "Chase the '54 Topps" boxes instead. The USA jersey card is of a Pirates draft pick (and they don't do well with prospects) The predictor card had roller marks all over it and seriously, two Paul O'Neill cards? I suppose I got a good chunk of the set and some trade bait for the Star Attractions, but not a great box overall.

Upper Deck Has Exclusive Retail Inserts Too

Taking a page from Topps, Upper Deck has retail inserts exclusive to Big Box stores. Topps has been doing this for a few years with Wal-Mart's Baseball Card History and Dick Perez inserts and Target's Ted Williams and T205 cards in their respective packs. UD copies this in Series Two with two different insert sets found only in Wally World and Target packs.

The Wal-Mart inserts you've seen here before. The Superstar Scrapbook cards are fairly simple designs with a large picture, a title at the top and an unobtrusive name and logo at the bottom of a card with a colored border and a little extra gloss. I originally thought there were no Braves cards until I inspected the box a little more closely:

Well, there's Chipper right there at card number 4. I got confused because I read a checklist on the side of a Target blaster and ended up ignoring the checklist on the blaster I actually bought at Wal-Mart thinking it was the same. Here's the insert set for Target:

Hit Brigade! A little more gaudy than the Wal-Mart cards. It's funny that Chipper didn't make this insert set even though batting average is prominently featured. That's not all for UD though, Fat Packs are out and this is what they have:


The Diamond Collections reminds me a lot of an upper deck subset design from the mid '90s. I'm going to have to scrounge through my UD box to see what it is soon because it's driving me nuts. Here's Brian McCann from the set. There will probably be a Fat Pack Series 1 and 2 Combo pack released in the next couple of months too so there's at least one more insert set to look out for. I just need to find that Chipper in the meantime.