Friday, August 01, 2008

1st Impressions: Upper Deck MLB Documentary.

On the same week Topps killed off Moments & Milestones, Upper Deck has unveiled plans for another equally massive, and equally confusing, trading card set.

2008 MLB Documentary will have 166 cards....

... for each of the 30 teams!

That's right, a 4980-card base set.

In what may be the understatement of the year, UD calls MLB Documentary "The most extraordinary set ever to be completed."

Clearly, UD isn't expecting anyone to actually build the nearly 5000 card base set, and is marketing MLB Documentary towards team set collectors as each card will be sequentially numbered twice (as part of the full set and as a team set).

But even if you only wanted to collect all 166 cards of your favorite team, there's one other issue: price. Each fifteen card waxpack will cost $2.99.

Considering the massive size of the base set, the large size of each team's subset, and the odds of finding any particular card from the team you want to collect in a pack, $2.99 is a lot of money.

Each 24-pack waxbox will yield an autograph, and each pack will have a Gold parallel.

Street Date: Late December 2008

10 comments:

Steve Gierman said...

As primarily a team collector, I am thrilled with the idea of this set. The reality is something quite different.

dayf said...

Two words:

E

Bay.

Two more words:

The

Bench.

Anyone buying packs trying to build a team set is crazy. But it would be a fun challenge to build a team set buy buying lots on the Bay and trading for the rest. The price is definitely wrong for this product though. Compare Topps total and UD 40-man. a buck for 10 cards of a huge set = not too bad. 3 bucks for 10 cards of a huge set = eh, maybe not.

UD should bring back the vending box for this set... 500 cards for 20 bucks with no inserts or autographs, just cards. they'd fly off the shelves and you'd still need to buy TEN of the bastards to even attempt to complete the set.

madding said...

I can't decide if this is the coolest thing ever or the worst thing ever. I like idea of documenting every single game, no matter how meaningless or important and I sure do love the team sets, but... ehh?

Andrew Harner said...

Where did you find the product info for this? I have scoured all over the net and can't find it.

As for my two cents, this set has potential but is a little out there.

Anonymous said...

I really like this idea. It shouldn't be incredibly tough to complete a team set, depending on whether anything is short printed or not.

One box should yield around 300 cards, which theoretically is more than enough to get started on 'your' team set and give you trade bait to make a run at completing it.

Chris Harris said...

Harner:

The Beckett boards.

Anonymous said...

I just hope that they have an actual picture from the game on the front of the card, and not just a "random" picture of a player on that team.

These cards could be a fun way to remember specific games that you attended.

I think I like it.

deal said...

Is there going to be an insert set of leftover Spectrum of Stars cards of Dee Snider, Rikki Rocket, and Sebastian Bach called UD Rockumentry?

Goose Joak said...

FC, I completely agree. Stock photography will pretty much invalidate the entire set for me. Game-specific photography, on the other hand...now that may be interesting.

Also, why not base the card design around a ticket stub concept?

Unknown said...

So I just learned about this set and have a dream of compiling a COMPLETE Phillies set. That would mean collecting each of the Phillies cards in their team set and then one card from each of the opponents. Has anybody done this?