its sad really...

Business is business. Topps won. Yeah yeah yeah, we all know Upper Deck is a ghost in the baseball card industry, but here are three fantastic reasons why they shouldn't be:

Bar none, Upper deck KILLS with their photography. Yes, I've stated this before, but recently I got a box of 2007 UD really cheap and cards like these make me want to finish this set off. Maybe someday...

set appreciation

Generally I consider myself a Topps collector, almost exclusively. I'll dabble in other brands stuff but more often than not, I'll stick to Topps (well....now I have no choice). Target sells these repack packages of 10 packs for 10 bucks. Its an interesting mix of stuff, usually from 2006 to 2009. Much of it is 2007 and 2008 though. They are fun to open up when I'm looking for something to rip open and I don't want anything else on the shelf. Many of these repacks have a lot of 2007 Fleer Ultra and 2007 Upper Deck, both of which I've grown to like very much. Especially the Upper Deck set. The minimal silver border on two of the sides, the as usual great photography, it just really appeals to me. I won't collect the set, its well over 1000 cards but I definitely won't pass them up when I get them in these repacks or where ever I find them. Nice set. I think 2007 seems to be a year I like most of the set designs, seeing as how I stated in an earlier post that I'm a big fan of 2007 Topps and Fleer.

factory sixth

I am a big fan of 2007 Topps. Another set I had not seen until recently, well I'm not really sure why I say this because I didn't see anything past 1995 until I started collecting earlier this year. I really like the black design, its good to get away from the white for a while. Very reminiscent of the 1971 issue, with the exception of being able to be kept in good condition. Team cards are included! As I have stated before, I'm a big fan of them and apparently this was the final year for the 'traditional' team card. You know, the card where the entire team sits in for the picture? I love 'em. 2008 didn't have them, they opted for 'Classic Combo' cards instead, but that is a future post. Every team has its color squares in their colors on the card face. A nice facsimile signature like Topps did in their early days. While these came back in a previous set, I feel they work better on the black. I have gotten a few packs of this year, so I do have some inserts. They seems pretty rounded out, with the exception of the continuation of the Mantle-fest that Topps decided to pull the year previous. Generation Now inserts are horribly lame and way too vast in number for anyone to really collect. I do like the Distinguished Service (history!) , Topps Stars (shiny!) and Opening Day (the one that shows an opening day game with both teams standing on the field) subsets. This is also the set with the famed Derek Jeter card that featured Mantle and Bush II in the picture. I do remember hearing about the buzz surrounding this card but didn't pay all that much attention due to me not being into baseball at the time. Overall this is probably one of my favorite modern (2000 to now) sets that I own (maybe even the favorite). Kudos Topps!

factory fourth (fleer edition)

I am mainly a Topps collector. I have many cards from other sets, years, etc. We all do. None of us have exclusively one company's cards. Its not as much fun that way. Fleer has had a long history in not only the card business, but in the candy business as well. from their humble beginnings in 1959 with their Ted Williams set, and vintage players the following two years, to their first annual set in 1981. Fleer ran into some financial trouble and was bought by Upper Deck in (I think) 2005. 2007 was their final year as a baseball card manufacturer, and now with Upper Deck out of the picture, it seems very unlikely that we will ever see the likes of Fleer again in the card biz. I feel the 2007 set, besides being a very nice issue, has some great historical element in our hobby, as much as 2010 Upper Deck does. The final issues of two of the 'big four' seem significant as a point of where the hobby changed forever. Never again were we to see Fleer packs sitting next to the Topps and Upper Deck, giving us a nice healthy choice of product to sift through. Yes it all became too much eventually, but the choice was certainly there. I ended up with some of this set from some random packs I picked up at Target one day. I liked them from the start. It felt just like the Fleer of old, back when I collected as a kid. Except my Fleers were bright yellow (1991 for those who chose to forget :) ). Nice set, and once I saw that there was a factory set, I knew I wanted it. Much like I would want a factory issue of 2010 Upper Deck (that we will never see), for that significance I explained above. Its sad to see a respected company leave the hobby, but sometimes shelves run out of room for the glut of product, or the collectors leave due to their own personal reasons. Whatever the reason may be, we can still look back at the previous years and see how they fared, what they did right, wrong and everything inbetween, and just remember then fun of collecting.