I’ve recently come in to a few unopened wax boxes of cards. Well, they aren’t actually all “unopened” necessarily. But there are cards in a wax box and it’s the right amount of packs and some of them are wrapped in plastic. And when I say “come in to”, I bought them. OK, geez, are you guys running an intervention? What step am I on?
Anyway, I’ve collected a lot of wax boxes of cards. None of them were too much money and they all fit in my budget (read: mostly junk wax), but I am always up for looking at a ton of cards at once and reminiscing. I think for future posts I might put a poll out to see what you guys want me to open.
For this round it’s 1994 Upper Deck Collector’s Choice. A purty set if you ask me.
1994 Upper Deck Collector’s Choice
So right away you can see the “Upper Deckness” of these cards. Nice pictures, kind of minimal layout (at least for early UD), but in general they look damn good. The photography continued to be amazing five years after the original Upper Deck set. And if you look at the competing sets and what was happening around this time, everyone had to pick up their game.
Another thing I like about these cards is that they have a hint at two sets that I really like from Topps. Both the 1973 and the 1976 sets had the little icons on the cards that correspond to the player’s positions. This is in a way a combination of the icons for those to years. In some ways it’s a little closer to 1973 because of the way the color is and the border. It’s just a nod to it that I’ve always liked.
Hey There Rookie!
Stadium Club and others had started the full-bleed trend and these getting into it as well. These guys are the best of the bunch that I got in this box. Of course Manny became an icon for “Manny” reasons (get it?) outside of baseball. As for Carlos, I always loved that he started out with that “C” on his cards. I never really knew him as that, but with him being a Met later I kind of went back and noticed it. I wasn’t actually collecting much in ’94 as I was on the way out.
Cliff Floyd and Shawn Green are other guys, like Carlos, who would go on to be a Met. Maybe not being known for being a Met, but Cliff was a big guy behind the scenes for guys like David Wright and what they became. These were just more rookies that I recognized. At some point when you look through these old packs, that’s all you’re really looking for is to recognize a name and hopefully its for more reason than why I recognize Carl Everett.
The (Draft) Pick of the Litter!
There are two reasons why I like this. First is that I rarely thought of the Draft in those days and these days some players are thought about before they make the majors, IF they even make it. But back then a lot of companies were getting into the “Draft” level of players. It’s fun to see these guys this young. At one point both of these guys had signed TTM but I’m not sure if they are any longer.
Colors and Collections of Players
That is the best looking checklist I have ever seen in my life. They had a series of them in different colors and different players, but of course Junior is the maybe the most iconic… especially a young Junior.
The Top Performers cards are actually something I don’t like about the set. I like them in that I love the different subsets in releases like this, but I don’t ever feel that this design fits the rest of the design in the set. It feels a little bit fancier than the rest of the set to me. I don’t hate it, I just don’t think it goes very well.
Goldies and Sigs
I love the Bordick card and I would love to try to get it signed. I probably have a better chance doing that than I do with the Alomar card. He used to sign as a coach but I haven’t had a success with him in a while. Normally I don’t like a facsimile signature on cards, but I mean c’mon! These are shiny!
This is also around the time that parallel sets, and gold parallel sets popped up in different releases. I don’t know if this is the first, but it’s definitely an early multiple parallel set.
A Ton of Stats
Normally Upper Deck never had full stats on the back of the cards. But I guess with Brett and Ryan you kind of had to given where they were in their careers and all that. That is just a ton of stats on there.
Overall, I love this set… pretty simple design, great photography, pretty good content. It’s always fun to open this one because something good generally comes out of each pack. I’m never feeling like I didn’t know all the cards or something like that. Definitely a good time.