Night Owl Cards

Hey, it's not me. The polls said it. As you'll remember, I wanted to know the biggest year-to-year improvement in Upper Deck's history and the biggest year-to-year bust, too. Well, 1994 Upper Deck came up the loser in each poll. Here are the results: Biggest Bust 1993 to 1994: 13 votes 1989 to 1990: 4 votes 1997 to 1998: 3 votes 1999 to 2000: 3 votes Biggest Improvement 1994 to 1995: 12 votes 1992 to 1993: 6 votes 2007 to 2008: 3 votes 2002 to 2003: 2 votes Not a ton of votes there, but I thank those who checked the little boxes. Look, 1994 Upper Deck isn't the worst base set UD ever put out. I think it's a lot better than some of those late '90s things they produced. In terms of photo quality, it's an improvement over some of UD's earlier sets, too. 1994 Upper Deck simply had the misfortune to appear between two of the most pleasing Upper Deck sets it ever produced -- the near perfect '93 set and the simplistic beauty of...

If I was determining the biggest improvement or biggest bust among all of Upper Deck's flagship sets, 2006 would figure in there somewhere. It's not quite as good as 1993, or maybe 1995, but I do like it a lot. It's better than 2005, which is just like 2004, which is a lot like 2003. And it's better than 2007, which is a big disappointment. But 2006 didn't get a lot of mention in the previous UD post. There was also love for an Upper Deck set that is just awful. The whole 1999 set looks like giant salad tongs are trying to devour every card. It's horrific. I was shocked to read that people like it. But that's Upper Deck for ya. I'm out of element with UD. It attracts many collectors whose card habits are different than mine. And that's why I'm letting everyone else decide the biggest bust and biggest improvement in UD's brief baseball card history. It shouldn't be me. Except for 1993 and 2006, I barely collected the set. So here ar...

Almost a year ago , I compared all of the Topps base sets, from 1952 on, and wondered which sets were the "biggest busts" or "biggest improvements" when compared with the set that they followed. I received a lot of feedback on that post, which led to a poll , which led to me procrastinating for about five months, which led to the final results . During that whole saga, I threatened to do the same thing for the other card manufacturers, so I can then start a poll, procrastinate and finally -- dear lord what is he DOING back there -- spit out the final results. Well, tonight's your lucky night. It's Upper Deck's turn. Comparing the looks of past Upper Deck sets is a bit odd, because Upper Deck has never been about the design on the front. It's almost always been about the photo. But if you take a moment to look, there is a bit of a design on every set, or otherwise you wouldn't be able to tell one year from the next. The sameness of sets...