Sunday, March 29, 2009

2008 Upper Deck Timelines Baseball box break

Hanley This is the final box from my first purchase at Dave and Adam’s Card World.  I was intrigued by 2008 Timelines and the box was cheap so I decided to pick one up.  It had the retro thing going for it and… well, there must have been some other reason why this looked like a good purchase at the time.  I can’t recall why at the moment though.

The base set isn’t bad at all.  There’s no letter X to be seen anywhere which is a good thing.  I always like when the card borders are in a team’s colors.  It’s a little touch that usually makes a set look better.  It’s especially true on cards like this Hanley Ramirez.  The borders really make the picture pop.

Kazmir

The first subset of cards reuses the design from the 1992 Minor League set.  It’s a pretty good set and I’ve got one in my collection that I put together back in 1992.  The card design is similar to the 1992 MLB design with a few differences.  It even makes Red Sox killer Scott Kazmir look good.








Longoria

Next up is the 1994 All-Time Heroes design.  I’m not really crazy about this design.  The floating head is kind of creepy.  I don’t mind not having any of these cards from when they were originally released.










Votto

Next up is the 95 SP design for a Top Prospects subset.  I really don’t understand why this design was used when it was included in last year’s SP Rookie Edition set.  Why not use a Star Rookie design from an early 90s Upper Deck set?  How about something from Collector’s Choice?  I don’t care as long as it is different.

These cards came with the roller marks through the middle of every card like you find on every other card from this subset pulled out of Timelines packs.  Since it was less than a year from the release date, I sent them in to Upper Deck customer service to see what would happen.  I had a Kobe Bryant Heroes card that I had to send in anyway so I figured that it couldn’t hurt to see if I could end up with some super rare mint condition cards from this subset.  I’ll definitely update on this blog once I get something back from them, but who knows when that will be given the current status of the company.

Dice-K

2004 Timeless Teams is probably the best best subset in Timelines.  I know that it’s a popular opinion, but there’s a reason for that.  The design on the front is nice and again the color of the border matches the team colors.  The backs of these cards are beautiful as well with pictures of the stadium that the player plays in.  This subset is one of the things that makes busting open boxes of Timelines fun.  The Red Sox are well represented in this subset with cards of Ellsbury, Big Papi, Dice-K, Buchholz, Lowrie and Masterson.  As you can see, this set skews towards the younger players especially those that have a rookie card logo such as Buchholz, Lowrie and Masterson.


Cueto

Here’s another design that was used in the previous year’s Rookie Edition set.  1993 SP.  Been there, done that.  Why not choose something else?

I’ve got the original 93 SP set.  That was back when Upper Deck’s gimmick was actually getting mint cards in packs.  Oh wait, you still rarely get mint cards out of Upper Deck packs.  I don’t know what it is about how they cut their cards or package them that leads to so many soft corners right out of the box.  It’s extremely annoying.




RossOhlendorf

Next up is the 1994 SP set which is a good choice due to it not being a part of the previous year’s Rookie Edition set.  The various foil cards don’t scan well, but I like this set a lot.  I’ve got the original set and will watch as A-Rod chips away at the value with each new revelation of how much of a douche he really is.








BrandonJones

Last, and certainly least, is another visit to the 1995 SP design.  These cards are Premier Prospects instead of run of the mill Top Prospects.  You can tell that these guys are Premier by the fact that their cards are gold colored as opposed to the silver Top Prospects.  While I don’t understand using sets that were in another retro set last year, I really don’t understand using a set design twice.  The cards from this subset tend not to have the roller marks that the silver cards do.





YankDees

Of course there were Yankee Stadium cards in here.  Posada, A-Rod, Matsui and Big Unit.












Autos

I got an serial numbered (to 93) autograph of a player Beavis and Butthead’s would love, Brian Bocock as well as a non-numbered auto of Clete Thomas.  I know that I certainly didn’t purchase this box for the “hits.”




Manny

The only decent pull that I got in the box was this Manny card numbered to 25.  Dodgers fans love them some Manny right now.  If he behaves, they’ve got themselves one hell of a player.

I should have listened to all of the complaints online, but I didn’t.  In retrospect, I wish that I hadn’t purchased this box.  Between the damaged cards, poor choice of sets to reuse and lack of anything decent in the packs it’s not really a set worth buying.  I put together a checklist for the set, but I doubt that I’ll be putting it together unless someone were to contact me with 75% of the set they want to trade away.

 

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