29 February 2012

What Could Have Been...

A while back I came across a very interesting blog (http://sportscollectorinparadise.wordpress.com/2010/10/26/the-story-behind-the-collectible-my-beckham-mancrush/) about the excellent Manchester United trading cards Upper Deck produced years ago. The article offers insight into the blog author's experiences working on the products, his fandom of David Beckham and getting to meet Becks himself, among other things. What really caught my attention however was the excerpts that are quoted below:


"After a trip to London the next day to talk with distributors and to make a pitch presentation to get the English Premier League trading card license, I went back to Manchester for more meetings.
He would be sold to Real Madrid after the season and with him went the sales of Upper Deck’s trading cards. Real Madrid was unrealistic in their expectations for Upper Deck to get a trading card deal done, so we didn’t follow Beckham there. Further, it would take the next Man Utd #7, Cristiano Ronaldo, a few years to become one of the top players in the world and a household name, so Upper Deck did not continue producing Manchester United cards."
Upper Deck producing cards for the Premier League and Real Madrid was apparently a possibility. It's no secret that I'm a huge fan of Upper Deck's trading card products in terms of design and quality, so I would have been absolutely thrilled with UD having both of those licenses. Obviously none of these possibilities came to fruition but all of this leaves me wondering about what could've been...

24 February 2012

Upper Deck's World Of Sports Is Now Live

I must say I'm not a huge fan of this multi-sport release which includes basketball, American football (gridiron), baseball, track & field, hockey and even politics as can be seen below.

Well at least they didn't use the other, infamous, corndog pic. LOL :)

Of interest to this blog though, there are quite a few soccer cards to be found in this product of which there are the standard base cards as well as jerseys, autos and - in a first for soccer cards, SPx 'shadow box' inserts. I understand these shadow box cards are very tough to pull and very popular with collectors of other sports. I'll have to keep a eye out for them as they do look to be cool cards but what I'll really be searching for out of this year's product is the Rafa Márquez auto. It appears as if it's one of the short printed sigs so it probably won't come cheap. Also of note, I saw a preliminary checklist which listed a Thierry Henry auto. I have yet to see one on eBay so I suppose only time will tell if such a card actually exists. If it indeed does exist that would be Titi's first certified auto on a trading cards so that'll definitely keep me tuned in...

09 February 2012

Trading Card Games Suck

Panini and Topps are at it again with their soon to be released Adrenalyn XL and Match Attax branded Euro 2012 collections. The preliminary images I've seen show the same old tired, boring, fugly design we've come to know from these two card makers. I would post an image but it's not even worth it. I suppose they'll stop milking this TCG crap when people stop buying... Surely I'm not alone in my hatred for this shit?