Upper Decks bits and bobbleheads

Upper Deck's fun range, known as 'Collector's Choice' had a few gimmicky things like bobbleheads and various competition giveaways. Let's start with the second 'bobblehead' to feature on this blog and then go back in time to see some other bits and bobs...

Card Number 1021: Upper Deck Collector's Choice "push out", 1998; #23

I have some of the little bobblehead cards from 1999 (including one that has been pushed out), but I didn't realise that Upper Deck made these inserts in 1998 as well until Glenn sent me this a couple of weeks back. 

Upper Deck made sure Tony had his game face on for this bobblehead. It was only when I realised that Tony's disembodied head was in a batting helmet, that I realised the 1999 version is meant to show Tony fielding!

On the back are the intructions on how to assemble the bobblehead for display. 

These bobbleheads were in Series 2 of the Collector's Choice set and only appeared in 1 in 3 packs.

Upper Deck sometimes included odd things in their regular sets as well. In 1996, collectors had the chance of winning a shiny foil card.

Card number 1022: Upper Deck Predictors Redemption, 1996; #R57

There were 60 cards that could be exchanged for instant win cards found inside Upper Deck packs. 

For some reason I haven't got an overhead scan of this card in my folders, so this dirty desktop scan will have to do. Some of the marks on this card are dust and fluff on the scanner surface.

The back is relatively plain, but neatly laid out. The write up begins with Tony's incredibly low strike out rate. 88 times in 5 years!

This card arrived in a small box of cards from Gawain way back in November 2021. Six months later - thank you, Gawain!

Card Number 1023: Upper Deck Collector's Choice You Crash the Deck game piece, 1994; #unnumbered

You Crash the Deck (later Game) was a scratch off and win redemption thing that ran in Collector's Choice (with some adpatations) for several years.

There were 15 different varieties of this "game piece" each featuring two players. Tony shared the spotlight on this with Andres Galarraga from the Rockies.

This card sized 'game piece' folds out to reveal a large number of scratch off areas. The most important one is the one saying whether it's a winning card. That is the only bit that has been scratched off. 

And on the back are the huge list of terms and conditions in a tiny font.

Why were Canadians set a relatively simple maths question? I presume there is some rule about giveaway competitions that meant there has to be a quiz question. Otherwise that's just weird!

Total: 1023 cards

Saturday shout out - cheers, Gawain!

Over the past couple of months I've bought a few cards from Gawain who I met through one of the UK Facebook groups. Gawain is a keen collector of Cuban baseball. I say keen collector, it's a bit more than that, as this video makes clear.

Gawain knows I collect Tony Gwynn baseball cards and a while back he told me he had asked one of his contacts in America to send some Gwynn cards over. Two weeks ago he sent me this photo.

The tall stack at the back was all Tony Gwynn cards.

We had a chat about sorting through them, and that resulted in him emailing me scans and us discussing the cards on a couple of Zoom calls, until eventually Gawain took the executive decision to just send them all to me for me to look through and return any I don't want.

He timed this well as I've taken this week off work so I've had plenty of time to really look closely through them. I'm glad he sent them to me because there are some cards with variations that are only spottable when you have the cards in hand. I kept finding new minor ways that card companies altered their cards. (And I'm starting to really despise some card companies!)

The result is I have now acquired a load of new cards.

Several evenings of scanning await me. Several blog posts await you, dear readers.

Gawain also took great pleasure in sending me another copy of the Upper Deck "push out" bobblehead that I posted about in a Monday Mixer a couple of weeks ago. The card looks like this:

Gawain wanted me to use the second card for its intended purpose. So I did. When you push it out, the bobblehead looks like this:

As Fuji said, back on the Monday Mixer post, Tony really has his game face on! He's now glowering over my desk space where I am sure he will inspire me when I go back to work next week.

He also needs a bat. I'm going to have to fashion one for him.

As I mentioned, I have a lot of scanning to do, but I wanted to show at least one card in this post from the haul that Gawain sent me, and I've chosen this one because, well, it kind of stood out from the herd when I went through them.

Card Number 132: Upper Deck Ionix, 1999; #R84
Nothing says 90s than the words "Techno, techno, techno"

In terms of design, there are two photos on the front, blotchy patterns, foil bits, the word techno repeated all over it with a 3 instead of an e, and so on.

It was also flipping hard to track down on Trading Card Database! For some reason the Techno themed cards have an R in front of the number, which means they have the same numbers as the "Reciprocal" parallel set. It was very confusing.

That's the Late Nineties Weird Card Challenge. If you can find the bloody thing, then you can add it to your list!

The back has a lot of information on it, and another photo.

They also use Tony's roster number as a design element, just to add even more confusion. I picked it up and thought, "Oh, great, they gave him card number 19!" But that wasn't the card number despite being the most obvious number on the cardback.

This whole palaver bodes well for sorting the rest of the cards. It will keep me out of mischief for a good while, and I'm sure a lot of people will be thanking Gawain for that! But they probably won't be as grateful as I am for the huge haul of cards.

[In terms of blog milestones, this is my 50th blog post. Happy half century to me!]

Total: 132/394

Monday Mixer Miscellany

The usual round up of unconnected odds and sods today, although there is sort of a theme here. These cards are just slightly odd ones.

Card Number 101: Upper Deck Collector's Choice "Push Out", 1999; #24

Trading Card Database lists this as "mini bobblehead". I'm intrigued whether they actually work as bobbleheads, but I'm not pushing out my push out card to find out.

The back has the instructions of how to assemble it.

This is one of those innovations from a card company that leaves me wondering if anyone actually did this.

Card Number 102: Score, 1992 (All Star), #779

Another case of putting Tony's real head atop a cartoon body.

I actually really like this card. I even love the funny way they've written 'All Star' in a cartoonish font. Panini own Score now, and they've revived this style of card, which is a great choice for a retro card design in my opinion (I have a card of Fernando Tatis Jr in this style that somebody sent me.)

In a previous post about Score base cards I said that Score tended to have better cardbacks than card fronts. Not true in this case, but this is definitely one of the better cardbacks for an All Star card. For one thing it has the National League line up for the 1991 All Star Game.

For the record, the 1991 All Star Game was in Toronto and the National League lost 2-4. Tony had 4 at bats, got 2 hits, scored 1 of the National League's 2 runs. He made it home when Andre Dawson hit a home run. (Box score)

Card Number 103: Upper Deck Collector's Choice You Make the Play, 1996; #17 (Groundout variant)

I think that is officially the longest set name I will ever write on this blog. 'You Make the Play' was a baseball card game you could, um, play, in some way. There are two versions of this card, a "Groundout" and a "Single". Every card in the 90 card set has a variant, making it a 180 card set in actuality.

Every time I see this card with Tony surrounded by a neon glow it makes me think of the Ready Brek Kid, with his bright orange outline after he'd eaten Ready Brek. The adverts had the tagline "Central heating for kids!" Which in turn reminds me of the rumour that Viz Comic got done for a tasteless joke that a high strength lager was "Central Heating for Tramps!" It's funny where a train of thought ends up, and mine always ends up there every time I see this card.

The back is like this.

All the card backs in the set are the same, so that you can actually play the game. From the packaging pictures on TCDb, it looks like You Make the Play cards were inserted as 'bonus cards' in regular packs of Collector's Choice cards. 

Card Number 104: Upper Deck Collector's Choice Stick-Ums, 1998; #23 

Another insert from Collector's Choice packs. They are stickers, not cards.

You actually get five sticker elements on the front, which include Tony, his name, and two San Diego logo motifs. The fifth sticker is a generic baseball.

The back is a checklist of the Stick-Ums. There are some star names on the list.

That's the end of this week's Monday Mixer. I hope you enjoyed it.

Total: 104/394