From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary:
Finite - Having a limit; limited in quantity
That was not a word I would expect to see in use with the words Upper Deck, but maybe it's time for a nice change in our hobby. For years Upper Deck has been producing set after set and card after card with relatively little respect for production limits. Sure, there have been insert sets numbered to 100 (quite a few in recent years), but one common thread in each of these limited inserts was that the pack never gave you the odds on finding one. So even guessing at the number of base cards produced was pointless.
Last week Upper Deck took a giant step forward toward making things better for our hobby and their company. That step is called SPx Finite Baseball. In a week when Fleer/Skybox released a beautiful baseball set of their own (E-X2001 Baseball) it's SPx Finite that deserves to be examined.
With SPx Finite, Upper Deck has been able to correct a number of things that were wrong with the SPx brand and UD cards in general. The SPx brand had grown stale. I've been really tough on it in my reviews recently because I found the Holoviews boring and the small set size (50) no fun for the singles or team set collectors. I've also commented on the poor card design with graphics often going right through pictures. Making five parallels of the 50 cards only made matters worse.
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Each card in the 180 card set is numbered including ten "1 of 1 cards" |
In 1998 SPx Finite Baseball we find Upper Deck taking a lesson from Leaf and fracturing their 180 card base set into five different groups. Then in a move similar to Pinnacle's Totally Certified, they numbered each and every card in the set. Sure there are still two parallel sets, but with the parallels numbered even lower (including the first ever UD one of one cards), you don't mind them so much.
Besides less parallels and a bigger set is something that all collectors care about, card design. These cards are well designed. Each of the five subsets that fracture the main set have a unique design using an inlaid foil section to determine what type the card is by style, and which parallel it is by foil color. The 90 base level cards are each numbered to 9000 while other base levels come in 7000, 5000, 4000, and 2000 quantities. The Radiance parallels are gold and cut the quantities down to a range of 4500 to 100 of each card. Spectrum parallels use a rainbow silver foil with no card more than 2250 in quantity and 10 Spectrums are one of one's!
A group of the Radiance Power Explosions were thought stolen, but Upper Deck reports to us that they were just temporarily lost in transit so if you come up with a trade card for one of these you can expect a quick turnaround on redeeming it. I'm not a fan of trade cards, but in this case it was fast thinking that kept us from never being able to get some great cards including one of Mark McGwire.
In all I'm expecting SPx Finite to be a huge success. The three card packs aren't cheap at around $6 each, but the thought that you will know exactly how many of every card was made should keep collectors and investors satisfied. I had a chance to speak to some of the folks at Upper Deck recently and even they seem excited to see their company starting to listen to what their customers demand. I hope that the customers get out there and appreciate what Upper Deck has done. What's your opinion about SPx Finite? Feel free to let everyone know on our Mining Co. bulletin board today!
CHAT