Fossil Cards

Last month I touched on the blurring of lines between sports cards and non-sports cards. I bring this up because I was reading a story on the Upper Deck Blog regarding a special 1/1 redemption card from the 2008-2009 Champs Hockey set.

In the 2008-09 Champs set Upper Deck included redemption cards for a very rare insert, actual fossils and other artifacts. These shadowbox cards, which are suppose to be up to 10 times the thickness of a regular card, contain various fossils including femur bones and teeth. The top dog from the set is a 1/1 Tyrannosaurus Rex tooth, the entire tooth, and as pointed out in the story the redemption card for this treasure is still out there in a pack somewhere on a shelf. With other fossil cards showing up on eBay ranging from about $90 and up you have to wonder how much this bad boy might fetch.

This is a cool insert, I would love to pull any of these fossils but I don’t see the connection between dinosaur fossils and hockey. What brought UD to create an insert like this for the Champs set?