High end sets - the thorn in the player collector's side?

Being a player collector, I want to collect as many of my chosen player’s cards as possible. For many players, this would be a pretty much impossible task that would be take forever, and cost an arm and a leg. For instance, searching all sets for Alex Rodriguez on beckett.com brings up a whopping 10681 items. Since A-Rod is such a superstar, this is not really unexpected. He is probably in just about every insert set since 1995, and of course, Topps gave him a whole 500+ cards last year with their road to 500 set.

Since I am neither a billionaire, or a Yankees fan, I don’t bother with him. But, I still have favorite players. Take Kevin Kouzmanoff. He might not have the stardom or the power that A-Rod has, but he had a hot bat in the minors, hit a grandslam in his first MLB at bat, and had a good run late in 07 - right about when I was getting interested in cards again.

Back in August 2007, beckett.com showed the Kouz as having about 250 cards. Today, there are 421 of them. 98 of the extras are found in the UD Exquisite Collection Rookie Signatures set which retails for about $300US. Are they 98 exciting different variations? Are they a continuity set, or a sub set? No. They are boring parallels.

Take for instance the Exquisite Ensembles tri-signed card. You have the 'normal' card numbered to 35 and shown below:
Then you have the parallel numbered to 3:

Aside from the not-so-good pic, there isnt much difference is there?

And then of course the is the mandatory 1 of 1 of the same card. (no scan available as i havent seen it pop up on ebay yet)

This kind of annoys me. Essentially these are the same card, with the only difference being a serial number added by UD.

Next up we have the patch cards:

Numbered to 199

Numbered to 99

And....numbered to 25 (looking at $300US for this baby).

While there are some noticeable differences in these cards, the artificial rareness is just insane. The fact that people will pay significantly more for these short numbered parallels really annoys me, and I will be surprised if these cards maintain that sort of value over time. Especially when in the last ten years there have been more than 400,000 memorabilia cards made!

Another annoyance is when UD put 'regular players' (if you want to call them that) on the same card as superstars. Take for instance the Ripken All Rookie set:

This card, featuring Hall-of-Famer Cal Ripken Jr, and a heck-of-a-long-way-from-being-a-hall-of-famer Kevin Kouzmanoff, and numbered to 8, recently went for more than $200 on ebay! This is a real kick in the teeth Kouzmanoff collectors. How could we justify spending more than $200 for that card? It is very difficult. Ripken collectors (of which there are probably many many more, and therefore statistically more likely to include people willing to pay big bucks for this sort of thing) would probably not be all that enamoured by this sort of card. However, those completists out there would cough up anyway.

This sort manufactured rarity and importance is a real shame (and a sham!). I dont see why the card companies do things this way. I guess they want to make sure that people who bust expensive product always get something with some sort of re-sale-ability. But surely there has to be a better way?

What to buy?

Well, after much umming and ahhing I made a decision.

Elements and Ultra.

A&G I think is too expensive for what it is, and co-signers i didnt really like the look of much. Plus I have set a target now of trying to get all the Kouzmanoff co-signers cards, so that could be fun and interesting.

So, stay tuned for a couple of box breaks coming up soon....

What to Buy Part 2: UD Elements

Next up for consideration is Upper Deck's Elements:

These boxes are going for about US$75 at the moment, and you get 15 packs of 3 cards. So looking at about $1.70 per card. They are bloody great looking cards, I already have a couple of singles I picked up off ebay.

According to the release notes, each box contains 3 mini-boxes of 5 packs. Each box will contain 1 autographed game used, 1 autograph and 1 memorabilia card. They have some crazy different card technologies. Each mini-box features a different technology.

The first is 'foil board', which contains 42 cards on foil board, 42 rookies, 'Essential Elements' Memorabilia cards (1 per mini-box), dual, triple and quad elements cards falling 1 per case on average. There are also Elemental Autographs featuring 2, 3 or 4 signatures. And of course there is the 'snowball's chance in hell card' the 1/1 printing plates.

The auto cards look pretty sweet, and if lucky enough to hit one of the multi signed ones, you'd be cheering. There some awesome looking cards, with top players signed on them. There are 'multis' with Hanley Ramirez, Tulowitzki and others, Jeter, Ramirez and Tejada, and Cal Ripken and Jeter. Representing the Padres are Kouzmanoff and Peavy.

Mini-Box 2 is called 'Lt Fx Technology' and features 42 base cards, 42 rookies, and elemental autos falling one per mini-box. Despite wasting about half an hour on google, I have been unable to find out exactly what the heck 'Lt Fx Technology' is. Anyways, I shall move on.

Mini-Box 3 is PETG technology (google tells me this is something to do with polyethylene-terephthalate). It is pleasing to know that if the cards are shit, they will make excellent use in many shop fitting and display applications, including industrial guarding and machine covers! Awesome! Topps is still using chrome, but UD are leading the way in cutting-edge, useless card material. I want to see someone come out with some titanium cards, or maybe even kryptonite! But I digress. The mini-box 3 contains 42 base cards on PETG, 42 rookies as well, some 'clear-cut elements' and parallels, PETG auto/memorabilia cards numbered to 350 or less and rare 'elements patches' foil numbered patch cards falling 2 per case on average.

This all sounds pretty good to me. By this time i am really liking the look and the sound of them. The whole 3 mini-box thing is a bit of a gimmick I think, but it sounds kinda cool. I havent been able to find too many reviews though, so I dont know what the deal with that is. There are a few mixed reviews on the Beckett forums, but the negative reviews seem to be mostly from Topps lovers, or UD haters - however you want to class them. I am not a Topps lover, and am open minded about UD. While I didnt really love the UD Series 1 cards this year, UD Goudey was pretty awesome.

I like the look of these cards a lot more than the co-signers. The checklist seems a bit more favourable to my tastes too. Hmmm, food for thought.