Saturday, July 2, 2011

Upper Deck Anomaly

Upper Deck issued baseball cards for 22 seasons, from their groundbreaking 1989 set to their unlicensed 2010 set. There was one design feature that was a part of every single set...



....except for 2003.

Do you know what the 2003 cards were missing?

Well, you won't be able to figure it out by looking at the front of the card. Now look at the back.



Now have you figured it out?

The 2003 set was the only one of Upper Deck's twenty-two that did not include a picture of the player on the back of the card.

So why the change? Did Upper Deck think they had to change things just to change them? I suppose no one could come up with a decent answer, because the picture on the back returned in 2004.

1 comment:

  1. I wonder what the pack configuration is for Upper Deck 2003. I think it is a little more costly to put a picture on the back of the card.

    My guess is that instead of raising prices or reducing the number of cards in a pack Upper Deck forgo the photo.

    I am guess in 2004, the either raised the cost per pack or reduced the number of cards in the pack.

    Also, the backs look a lot like their MVP brand. Did they have an MVP brand in 2003 (was it dropped after 2002?). Maybe Upper Deck was thinking of repositioning it base brand to be the low end set that they made.

    ReplyDelete