Which would you rather have?

I’m sure that many of you reading this also follow the Upper Deck Blog.  One of the things that they love to do on that blog is post pictures of stuff that they are going to cut up and insert into their various products.  Today, they posted an entry about a Michael Jackson photo that they can’t wait to cut up and put into 2009 Prominent Cuts.  They’re going to take an autographed picture from the coolest music video ever and chop it up so that they can put the signature in an upcoming set and capitalize on the death of a celebrity.

Once they’re done with it, the Frankenstein card will probably look something like this.  I’m sure that the design will be a little fancier, but you get the gist.  You get the autograph, Jackson’s shoulder and a zombie’s mouth.  Would you rather own that or the complete picture?  Imagine if the Upper Deck redemption got you a nice, framed Upper Deck Authenticated piece that this were to be put into.  It could still be a 1/1 and say Upper Deck on it, but it wouldn’t require the destruction of a nice piece of memorabilia in order for it to be made.

I decided to share my thoughts on the Upper Deck blog comments, but I guess that they didn’t care for them since I wasn’t singing their praises.  I didn’t see anything about comments not showing up until they are approved so I can only guess that they decided to delete my comment:

This is the reason why I think cut signature cards are the worst idea to come into the hobby in a long time. It’s fine when the documents that are being destroyed are things like cancelled checks. Cutting those up betters the way that they look, but when it comes to stuff like this autographed picture or historical documents it’s a shame to have those destroyed for a silly trading card.

Have you ever thought about doing redemption cards in products where the person is sent an autographed picture or historical document intact? I know that it won’t say “UPPER DECK” all over it, but maybe you can transform it into an UDA piece and then send that off to the person.

I really can’t believe you’re bragging about cutting this up. It’s really not anything to be proud of.

I guess my criticism wasn’t welcome.  There goes my shot at ever writing a guest column in the Upper Deck blog.  IS it just me thinking this way?  Which item would you rather have?  Does hacking up this card and slapping a 1/1 on it make it more desirable?

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