Friday, November 6, 2020

Friday fun with Upper Deck

Let's end the week with some slightly unusual cards from Upper Deck.

Card Number 461: Upper Deck, 1996; #116

The "Young at Heart" subset were 18 cards within the main range dedicated to players who had been playing a while and still performing at an elite level. Tony is in catching mode on the front.


There's a photo on the back from early in his career.


The factoid about Tony's .394 season eschews the comparison with Ted Williams recording .406 in 1941 (which occurred in the American League) and takes Tony's record back another five years, to 1936 and Bill Terry's .401 average in the last season of his career. "Memphis Bill", as he was known, played for the New York Giants from 1923 to 1936. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1954. The Giants organisation retired his uniform number in 1984. As ever, Tony is in illustrious company!

(Also, "Young at Heart" gave me a Bluebells earworm!)

'Card' Number 462: Upper Deck Collector's Choice Stick-Ums, 1997; #19
Given how these are still widely available, did anyone ever, um, stick a Stick-Um? 


19 bonus points for giving Tony Stick-Um number 19!  The number indicates that this was from a hobby pack rather than a standard retail pack, as those Stick-Ums weren't numbered.


Card Number 463: Upper Deck Collector's Choice Memorable Moment insert card, 1997; #5
There's always something fun about a die-cut card.


The Memorable Moments cards were only inserted into 6-card retail packs. There were 10 in each series of Collector's Choice cards released, although they don't have the Collector's Choice logo on the card. This one is from the Series 2 release, because it had bronze foil. The Memorable Moments cards in Series 1 had gold foil. Both releases were numbered 1-10, just to add a little bit of confusion to things.

On the back, the "memorable moment" is about Tony securing his seventh batting title.


The text layout is awkward on the back. It's rare to see right-justified text on a baseball card and it's not easy to read. On yet another occasion, Tony is compared to famous Hall of Fame inductees.

Total: 463 cards

2 comments:

  1. Never stuck a Stick Um's... but I did enjoy collecting them. I think I built the hockey set one year.

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  2. I like that they matched up #19 as well as the jersey numbers for several other players.

    ReplyDelete