2009 The Year That Was

With a little more then an hour left in 2009 and we can say that the hobby changed greatly this past year. The big changes:

-Panini coming to America to join in on the fun
-Panini buying Donruss
-Panini signing an exclusive NBA license

-Topps signing an exclusive contract with MLB
-Topps losing the NFLPA license

-Upper Deck losing out on the NBA and MLB license
-Upper Deck signing an agreement with MLBPA and NCAA

2010 will be a different landscape with certain licenses being exclusive, but just as Donruss produced baseball cards without a MLB license I think we will still see the 3 major brands pushing out releases in the major sports.


A few hopes for the New Year:

-Sticker autographs go the way of the dinosaur.

-Limited edition and SP cards actually marked as such so they cannot be reproduced ala Rookie Premier fakes and fake patches.

-Donruss hires card designers that don’t love lines and odd shaped die-cut windows.

-Chris Olds actually opens a box without a 1 of 1 or case pull.

-Beckett covers the real hobby, including the good and the bad, and not the fluff pieces that appear month after month .

2009 Upper Deck Icons Football

I have been waffling with the 2009 UD Icons releases. I am just not that impressed with what I have seen so far but in reading some of the reviews it seems that some collectors like the set so I decided to pick up a retail box just so I could get a taste of the set. I also picked up a 2009 UD Icons Baseball box at the same time and will review that at a later date.

To start, I should have gone with my gut on this one; I am not to impressed with this release. When it comes to the cards design things just have a sloppy look. You have a nice action shot of the player, which is great, but then there is a sepia colored, de-saturated image of the player in the background and to “artsy” things up someone decided to use a grunge brush. In my opinion it actually muddies up the entire card design and was a poor decision. The back of the card is simple, an image of the player, team logo, name and stats. Keeping the back simple was a nice addition, it kind of balances out the card design overall.

The retail box also contained Silver Board Parallels, which are essentially the base cards where the background image on the card front is chromed up a bit. Otherwise there is nothing special about this parallel. Another insert pulled was the “Class of 2009”, which in my box I pulled Clay Matthews, Green Bay’s 1st round pick, #/450. The Class of 2009 card was a nice addition, while not a true rookie card it added an extra insert to portray the rookies. One thing that I did like about the retail box was that it also included a pack of “America’s Team”, an all-Dallas Cowboys subset. Not that I am a Cowboys fan, but still a cool subset.

Finally was the “Game Day Gear” jersey card, an Upper Deck generic set jersey card used as an incentive in retail boxes. I actually liked this design better then the “Sophomore Sensations” and “Decade of Dominance” jersey cards that are part of the Icons checklist so I am not complaining.

2009 Goudey Baseball

I am a fan of many of the throwback sets. Because I collect vintage cards I enjoy seeing some of the better-designed sets making a comeback. Some of my favorite sets of all time are the Goudey sets of the 1930s, so of course I really liked that Upper Deck brought the set back, keeping it old school but tossing in some new ideas to keep it current.

My wife surprised me tonight with a couple of packs of 2009 Goudey that she picked up from a local shop. This was actually my first chance to bust open some of the 2009 series so I was pretty eager to see what I was going to pull.

The cards are based on the 1933 Goudey set with a solid color background, the player image and “Goudey” along the bottom. The cards are surprisingly similar to the original set from 1933. A couple of cool additions include the Heads Up subset which is actually based on the 1938 Goudey set and the Sport Royalty subset which seems to be loosely based on the 1933 Sport Kings set.

I got a nice variety of players ranging from rookies to veterans to all-time greats. The 4-in-1 cards are unique, some cards have four players that play the same position and other cards have four players from the same team.

#65- Dexter Fowler

#181- Bob Gibson

#251- Adrian Peterson Sport Royalty

#278- Manny Ramirez Heads Up: Like Manny needs a bigger head

#35-40- Mariners 4-in-1 card

I have been a Mariner fan most of my life so this card was a keeper for me. I have been through the good times (1995-2003) and the bad times… every other year; I sure miss 2001 some days. The player selection for this card has me a bit confused.

Ichiro and Hernandez are a given.

Tuiasosopo has some potential down the road but may even have some trouble making it in AAA this year, not to mention that Beltre is cemented at 3rd Base when he is healthy.

Bedard is another one that has me confused. He is a decent pitcher, but he is by no means a Mariner at heart. Hell, he has been with the team only a year and will most likely be traded by the deadline. He is 5-2 with a 2.47 ERA for a team sitting around .500 with 86 games to go; the Mariners are going to trade him away while he has value.

Better choices would have been Griffey, the “Ultimate Mariner” and possibly Beltre, Johjima or even Betancourt (my second favorite current Mariner behind Griffey).

Finally, the card that I was hoping to pull and definitely made this pack busting a positive experience

#46- Ken Griffey Jr… as a Mariner!