A Quick Peek At 2013 Upper Deck All-Time Greats Basketball

What do you do with $360 that is burning a hole in your pocket? For those who answered “Buy cards”, Upper Deck is hoping that you are willing to drop some coin on a box of 2013 All-Time Greats Basketball. Each $360 box contains 4 cards, an autograph and 3 base cards. Each box will be player specific and all of the cards in the box will be from the same player. All autographs are on-card autographs and all cards are hand numbered.

 

To keep the value for the set Upper Deck has limited the checklist to only 18 players:

Michael Jordan

LeBron James
Dr. J
Magic Johnson
Bill Russell
Larry Bird
Hakeem Olajuwon
Grant Hill
David Robinson
Dennis Rodman
Jason Kidd
Allen Iverson
Karl Malone
Gary Payton
Paul Pierce
Ray Allen
Isiah Thomas
Reggie Miller

 

The base set checklist is made up of 100 base cards plus an additional 20 Jordan Vs. cards that focus on a connection between Michael Jordan and the player. The base cards are #/150 and the Jordan Vs. cards are #/23; there are three base card parallels too with Silver #/50, Gold #/10 and an autographed Signature 1/1. There is a Jordan vs. Dual Autograph parallel where both Jordan and the player autographed the cards.

In addition to the autographed versions of the base cards and the Jordan Vs. cards there are 7 different autograph insert sets (plus a couple with parallels). All autograph cards are limited to #/55 or less depending on the insert and parallel.

 

Michael Jordan autographs are seeded 1:6 boxes and Upper Deck is also including hot boxes called “Team for the Ages” boxes, which contain 5 autograph cards. The 5 autographs that you will pull are Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Bill Russell, Magic Johnson and Gary Payton. No odds have been announced regarding the Team for the Ages hot boxes.

 

This is an expensive product and some of the names, while having solid careers, are not going to really offer the value you would expect from a product this expensive. I just don’t see a Grant Hill or Reggie Miller autograph, no matter how limited, bringing in much value over $175-250 and the base cards will have some value but not enough to make up the difference. I know that is part of the gamble of buying in to a product like this and obviously every 6^th box will contain a Michael Jordan autograph so the odds are not horrible. If I had the necessary disposable income I think I would take my chances and buy a couple of boxes though with my luck I would end up getting all Isiah Thomas boxes.