2010 Upper Deck retail pack break #2

2010 Upper Deck retail [$1.50 each / $4 for three packs from a booth at a card show] - I think Upper Deck messed up on Carlos Pena's card [#481], because it seems like Carl Crawford pictured and not the slugger who hit 39 home runs and shared the American League home run title in 2010 with Mark Teixeira.

Pack two  
15 Michael Dunn Star Rookie

192 Edwin Jackson
257 Chone Figgins
332 Brian Schneider

304 Seth McLung
353 Phil Coke
173 Jensen Lewis
481 Carlos Pena
SB-111 Ted Lilly / July 5th

228 Darin Erstad - his status as an active player seems to be in jeopardy. He represents one of the last links to the Angels I grew up watching through the mid 1990s, hounding at the ballpark, et al.
533 Livan Hernandez
271 Jose Arredondo
199 Miguel Cabrera
503 Darren O' Day
335 Tim Redding
375 Raul Ibanez
596 Seattle team checklist - featuring Ichiro and Felix Hernandez
258 Kevin Jepsen

2010 Upper Deck retail pack break #1

2010 Upper Deck retail [$1.50 each / $4 for three packs from a booth at a card show] - I wasn't looking for any particular hits [like I've read and heard, flagship products are all about 'set building' and this product is UD's flagship baseball brand, not Ultimate Collection].

I was hoping to get a smattering of base cards - particularly some of the 40 Star Rookies featured, even though they are part of the set and I assume are not anymore special, other than they feature rookies who made their debut in 2009 and feature UD's own version of the Rookie Card logo.

The fact these cards are not licensed by Major League Baseball is something to think about - but I'm not a baseball card traditionalist/snob and was more intrigued, than put off by the idea these cards are only licensed by MLBPA.

Like previous UD flagship releases, the images on the cards are generally sharp - the images are not as distorted as other collectors would like to assume.

Perhaps choosing suitable images [i.e. team names/logos on jerseys either obscured or not visible at all] to use on cards made the people at Upper Deck take a closer look - rather than just plopping any old photo on a card.

Pack one  
93 J.D. Drew - Dustin Pedroia cameo

407 Chase Headley
5 Brian Matusz Star Rookie - pronounced 'Mattis,' probably the best lefty pitching prospect in all of baseball.

269 Ervin Santana
315 Glen Perkins
363 Daric Barton
501 C.J. Wilson

242 Willie Bloomquist

SB-191 Sonia Sotomayor / Sept. 26
400 Zach Duke
131 Josh Fields
443 Ian Snell
449 Taylor Teagarden
96 Clay Buchholz
415 Luis Perdomo
577 Reds team checklist - featuring Brandon Phillips and Joey Votto
478 Evan Longoria
555 Ballparks - not identified by name, it is the one in Los Angeles, where Kirk Gibson hit his iconic home run in the 1988 World Series.

Featured custom card: 2010 Upper Deck 'Tribute to 90' Buster Posey #1

I've been dabbling with the idea of creating my own custom [or tribute] cards and while I'm a total newb, I hope to learn and gain some expertise - just to come up with unique images of trading cards, I'd never pull out of packs or find as singles anywhere, because they exist only in fantasy.

I didn't know how to really make these fantasy cards, though reading a tutorial on making your own baseball cards - inspired me to mess around on Photoshop and see what I can whip up on the fly.

I wanted create a Buster Posey card since he is probably going to be one of the top rookies in 2010, but he came up too late to have a 2009 MLBPA Rookie logo card produced - it is still a mystery, how any of the 2010 UD cards are going to look, especially if it is only licensed by the Players Association and not Major League Baseball.

For me, the most interesting aspect of custom/tribute cards is the ability to manipulate an original trading card design - it blew my mind to think custom/tribute cards using certain trading card designs were created by scratch.

With the most basic custom/tribute cards, all I really had to do was find an image/scan of a trading card - and change certain qualities on the original card, through an image editing program like Photoshop.

I can remove an original image on a trading card, but still retain the basic graphics as a template to layer onto a suitable image - before I do anything else, I have to make sure the image is proportional and not stretched.

It is kind of fun trying to cobble up something together - I'm not going to get every single thing right, but creating custom/tribute cards seems more fun than maybe simply consuming, purchasing, buying, picking up new cards.

The Posey 'card' is designed with the idea UD creates an insert set of 2010 rookies with the 1990 design and old school Star Rookie logo as a tribute [maybe as a potential 'Fat Pack' insert] - Posey's potential would definitely land him the No. 1 spot for 2010, if UD still had its Star Rookie subset after all these years.

Places of note -

Goose Joak

Custom Card Blog

Creating a Custom Retro Card