Blaster Box Break: 2008 Upper Deck Masterpieces Baseball

I wasn't sure if I was going to collect this year's UD Masterpieces set. The 30 short prints were a major turn-off and there doesn't seem to be as many iconic renditions as there were in last year's set. The Curt Schilling bloody sock was brilliant.

That said, this is still a gorgeous set. Little has changed in the design, and that I don't mind. I actually think it's a good idea to have a couple of sets continue on to make for a larger collection that is on-going. While bidding on a couple of other cheap blaster boxes, I decided to throw down a $9.99 bid on this blaster to combine shipping costs. Obviously my bid held up, otherwise I'd be writing about some phantom blaster box. So let's see what the eight packs bring me:

Pack One:

43. Chin-Lung Hu RC
Black Border 113. Steve Carlton

7. Evan Longoria "RC"
84. Jason Varitek

So far, pretty good. But when I'm really only after the base cards anyway, I'd think all packs are going to be good.

Pack Two:

64. Joba Chamberlain
50. Joe Mauer and his Food Handling Safety certificate

Yankee Stadium Legacy 1429. Phil Rizzuto
35. Magglio Ordonez
56. Jose Reyes

Nice to see the YSL inserts don't count toward a card in the pack.

Pack Three:
2. Justin Upton
79. Russell Martin

77. Jake Peavy
63. Hideki Matsui

Landed a Canadian. The images are definitely not as memorable as last year's so far. They all seem like random moments. Still nice though. And the card stock is kinda bumpy.

Pack Four:
22. Kosuke Fukudome RC
16. Jonathan Papelbon is about to dance.

34. Gary Sheffield
13. Curt Schilling has clean socks.

Pack Five:
54. David Wright
40. Alex Gordon
6. Mark Teixeira
83. Ozzie Smith's sunglasses.

Pack Six
69. Chase Utley
Captured on Canvas GU Jersey CC-CF. Carlton Fisk (White Swatch)

What, only two cards!? What a rip off ; ) Good thing one of them has a piece of a Hall-of-Famer's jersey. Wait a sec'. It has "a piece of memorabilia that has been certified by [Upper Deck] as having been used in an official Major League Baseball game." What the heck does that mean? Did Fisk wear this "memorabilia" or not? Is it a jersey? Pants? Something else that's gross to mention? Oh, well. At least I can feel safe it wasn't worn by a Foot Locker employee during his beer league game. But what if he wore it to the Strato-Matic baseball regional championships? Isn't that game licensed by MLB, thus making that an official MLB game. And they wonder why we're a little more cynical toward game-used jersey memorabilia cards now. It's still a cool card, though.

Pack Seven
47. Prince Fielder and his giddy school girl excited face.

26. Grady Sizemore is trying out for John Woo's upcoming baseball movie (somewhat obscure film reference to a director who always loves his heroes to carry two guns rather than one).

Yankee Stadium Legacy 1454. Joe Dimaggio
27. Victor Martinez
62. Alex Rodriguez

Pack Eight
75. Tony Gwynn
93. Frank Robinson and his Food Health Safety certificate SP

55. Johan Santana
41. Vladimir Guerrero

For $10, this was a nice break. I'm guessing Walmart and Target have them closer to $15-20. At that price I'd be avoiding it. While I want to build the base set, the short prints are what's tough to come by. With only one per blaster box, there's not a lot of value in them at the regular price.

Although I don't think the pictures - the selling point of the set for me - are nearly as good as last year, I'm still going after the set I think. Upper Deck Masterpieces is great because it's a set with a purpose. It has a gimmick outisde of being another generic set that offers two or three "hits" per box. The focus here is and should be on the base set. While there's plenty of opportunities for autographs and game-used in the hobby version, they alone don't justify the price point. Ninety percent of the autographs are commons that can be had for less than the price of a pack on eBay. But for those wanting to build the 120-card set, some packs are going to be needed to get it going.

If I find another blaster or two at the same price I paid, I might consider opening some more. But it's likely time to get the wantlist together and start some trading.

***2008 Upper Deck Masterpieces Trading Section***

After sorting through the blaster and the three hobby packs I got a few weeks ago, here's my trade trade list for the set:

13. Schilling
47. Fielder
63. Matsui
75. Gwynn
77. Peavy

Black Border:
90 Ryan Zimmerman
113. Steve Carlton

Captured on Canvas GU-Something:
CC-CF. Carlton Fisk

Other traders are indexed here.

And here's my wantlist (I went out and bought a bunch of the short prints as they were less than a couple of bucks each save for a couple of Ripkens) (* denotes transaction pending):

1, 3, 4, 5, 8, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 23, 24, 25, 28, 29, 31, 32, 33, 36, 37, 38, 42, 44, 45, 46, 48, 49, 51, 52, 53, 57, 58, 59, 61, 65, 66, 67, 68, 70, 73, 74, 76, 78, 80, 81, 86, 87, 89, 90, 91, 92, 94*, 95*, 96, 97, 98, 99*, 100, 101*, 102*, 103*, 104, 105*, 106, 107*, 108*, 109*, 111, 112*, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119*, 120

So if you want to trade, please send me an email.