How four packs of cards changed my world
What follows is the first part in an overly long missive documenting my 20+ year on-again/off-again relationship as a customer of a corporate entity that produces precisely-cut pieces of cardboard. As with any love story, there are ups and downs, blind devotion, shattered dreams, renewed passion, false hope, and a tragic ending that Dickens would have to rewrite to appeal to his simple-minded readers. I am no Dickens and I have no readers, so this story will be told as it happened, with no punches pulled.
Looking back, it’s hard to remember those feelings from so long ago. Back in those days, the idea of a world without them was beyond my imagination. The sheer joy of finding something new and exciting, the realization that this was something to be cherished… It’s been about two years now. Two years since we lost Upper Deck as a licensed baseball card manufacturer.
This story has its start in the same place that is (probably not) the birthplace of baseball itself – Cooperstown, NY. It was a cool spring Sunday morning in the quaint upstate New York town. The year was 1989. This was my first pilgrimage to baseball’s Mecca, this time with my Scout troop on a weekend campout. Having broken camp that morning, we made a trip into town for church.
Our first destination that day was a parking lot situated between two churches, one Catholic and one Protestant. We were free to attend service at either of the churches, or, if neither was of our particular denomination, go off on our own. Three other Scouts had already chosen the latter, one older kid who knew of a good shop nearby and my two tentmates. Now it was my turn.
While we had visited the Hall the previous day, our excursion was limited to the building itself and not the surrounding town (which is a very nice place to wander around in, I highly recommend taking some time to do so if you’re ever in the neighborhood). This would be my only chance to explore, but it would mean skipping church and lying to the Scoutmaster. I was still new enough to the troop that the particulars of my religious upbringing were not common knowledge, so nobody could say otherwise if I denied that either of the two churches was appropriate. Could I risk being found out as a liar? Something out there was calling to me, as if our meeting was destiny. How could I deny that?
And so I did what any good Scout would do; I ditched church and went to the shop with my friends. My deception would be found out several years later when I went on to earn my religious award, but it was still worth it for what I found on my fated journey. On that day, far-off consequences were the furthest thing from my mind. For down the street, past a small walkway, and inside a building set back from the road sat a glorious wonder unlike anything I had ever seen before – 1989 Upper Deck baseball cards.
This was a dark time in the early days of my collecting. 1986 was such a high point, when everyone was gleefully trading cards and marveling at the wonder of baseball en route to a Mets World Series championship. It all ended so suddenly; baseball cards had come and gone in just one year. The world had moved on. I tried to fight it, but the new year brought new cards that just didn’t live up to expectations. Sure, Topps had one of its best designs ever, but Fleer and Donruss faltered. Then came 1988, with the introduction of a new manufacturer, Score, that made the rest look like dinosaurs. Still, Score just wasn’t right for me. None of them were. My local card shop carried little in those years, making me wonder if the glory days of 1986 had been just a dream. 1989 began in much the same way, with Topps making a rebound and the others largely unseen. My heart yearned for something to take my breath away, but there was nothing there.
All this changed with one chance encounter on a cool spring Sunday morning. My friends were perusing the comics, more interested in the heroics of mutant turtles and skull-clad vigilantes than men who played a game with a bat and a ball. At the card counter, I was shocked to find not only plenty of stock from the manufacturers of my earlier youth but also something new. “Upper Deck.” “The Collector’s Choice.” What was this I found before me? Foil wrapping. High-quality card stock. Color everywhere. Holograms on every card. Could this be real? Could I afford to buy it? Could I afford not to?
It was as if my life to this point had all been just a build-up to this moment. I had spent most of my money the day before, not realizing that something so wonderful was in my immediate future. My wallet held a mere $5. Packs of Upper Deck were marked at $1.75. Had I come so far just to walk away with two packs of cards? No! That price was for adults, the price for children was a mere $1.25 per pack. That was still more than twice the going rate for a pack of cards, but these weren’t ordinary cards. And now I could afford to buy four whole packs of them. There really never was any decision to be made, as soon as I saw them I just knew that they would be mine.
Beauty, thy name is 1989 Upper Deck
All I remember from the rest of that morning is sitting down before the ride home to open the packs. Wax packs I was familiar with, and Score’s plastic packs were similar in structure, but I had never dealt with something so magnificent as Upper Deck’s paper-backed foil wrappers. Even without the cards, these packs were clearly something to treasure. I desperately wanted to release what they held, but I couldn’t bear the thought of damaging them. Ever so carefully, I pulled apart the seam at one end of each of the packs, carefully extracting the cards within.
Clearly the one on the left has the position upside down. Or is it the one on the right... No, no, definitely the one on the left.
What I found inside was like a glimpse of the future. These weren’t cards that looked like they were cut out of the side of a cereal box with gum residue on the top of the stack and wax on the bottom. Cards like this weren’t destined for bicycle spokes or children’s unwashed hands. These were mature, sophisticated cards. They demanded attention and would stand for nothing but the most careful treatment. Life would never be the same.
Most striking of the cards in my hand was a particular Star Rookie card. No, not that one. The big pull in my $5 purchase was a rookie card of Gary Sheffield, nephew of Mets ace pitcher Dwight Gooden (which I didn’t know at the time). Even better, the card had an obvious error, making it all the more brilliant in my eyes. You see, Sheffield’s position was typed upside down. Yes, his position then was shortstop, or SS. And that SS was upside down. I knew this from the moment I saw it.
My brother was not convinced. He said that there was nothing special about the card, that I was just imagining the minor flaw that made it beautiful. I would not be dissuaded though and that card held a special place in my collection ever since. Those first packs would also be the last packs of 1989 Upper Deck I would ever purchase; the next time I saw them, at a card show in 1990, they were selling for $5 or more per pack. I was lucky to have gotten my four packs for that price, but now it was time to move on to new and better products. My relationship with Upper Deck had only just begun.
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