Upper Deck come back for more

My recent eBay purchase alerted me to the existence of an Upper Deck set that I'd not heard of before - Encore. (Not to be confused with the Fleer subset called Encore from a few years earlier.)

Card Number 654: Upper Deck Encore Upper Realm, 1999; #U4

Upper Realm is a bit of a weird name for an insert series. The UR swirling around Tony's legs makes this look a bit messy. 

This card scans very blue due to the foilboard effect, but looks more purple in real life. The back is more obviously purple.

The cardback points out that Tony's career average was the highest among active major leaguers. It's also higher than any major leaguer since Tony retired.

Card Number 655: Upper Deck Encore Strokes of Genius, 1999; #167

This subset was actually very blue.

The graphics on this give it a very sci-fi look; a theme that continued onto the back.

There are three years worth of stats arranged vertically, which makes a nice change. However the really wide kerning on the word 'In' at the start of the write up shows the perils of using justified text in an odd shape. As an aside, I hate justified text. It makes text harder to read and is especially difficult for people with impaired vision. (I consider it one of my best achievements in a previous job when a directive came out saying all our documents had to be in justified text and I successfully got that rescinded by citing good practice guidance from a charity supporting people with sight loss!)

I now have the fun task of trying to find Tony's regular base card from Upper Deck Encore, now that I know the set exists! Still, what is collecting without little challenges?

Total: 655 cards