alamo50
08-01-2006, 11:36 AM
7/21/2006 2:35:33 PM
By Pepper Hastings
When you pull a card that leaves you too dizzy to drive, you’ve hit your pack-ripping peak.
So it was with 16-year-old Matt Moser of Whitehouse, Ohio, (pictured) who recently pulled a quad bat barrel card of Babe Ruth, Jimmie Foxx, Mel Ott and Eddie Mathews.
http://www.beckett.com/images/news/mattquadcard.jpg
“I went to work at my local card shop, Bases Loaded Sports Cards in Toledo,” Moser remembered of July 14 pull. “During the day, a shipment of Upper Deck Epic Baseball came in. I thought I would try a box. Once I cracked the box, I noticed one of the packs was huge. I opened it to find the best card I have ever pulled or ever will pull in my life.
“I was in shock. I had to call my parents and have them come pick me up because I could not even drive home.”
Released in early July, Upper Deck Epic packs are beginning to yield some high-end cards. Some of the key bat barrel cards now are making their way out of packs and onto online auctions and message boards.
Packs may cost $50, but with bat barrel cards of Thome/Pujols/McCovey/Dawson ($2,200), Stanky/Drysdale/Hodges/Campanella ($2,500), J.D. Drew/Beltre/Glaus/Beltran ($550) going for premium prices, and with a guaranteed hit in each four-card pack, thrill-seeking pack rippers have found a product to satisfy their risky needs.
“Outside of signature cards, these are some of the most valuable pure memorabilia cards ever seen,” said UD Baseball Brand Manager Gregg Kohn, who said the quad bat cards are “about as thick as two Sweet Spot cards stacked on top of one another.” That makes these cards well over one-fourth inch thick.
http://www.beckett.com/images/news/epic_quadbatbarrel.jpg
The construction of these brick-like cards is a story in itself. Game-used bats previously harvested for earlier bat piece cards yield premium pieces, including the trademark, the bat knob, and the player’s flame-treated signature or name on the barrel.
“When we cut a bat up for a regular bat card, we kept all of the signature pieces for this product,” says Kohn. In their raw form, the signature wood pieces are sometimes too long, too short, too thick or too wide to fit into the card’s pre-produced, die-cut window.
“That’s when we have to decide what part of the name we’ll show,” said Kohn, noting that a name like Babe Ruth easily fits into the die-cut, but a longer moniker such as Roy Campanella doesn’t. “We have to make a choice about using the first or last name, and usually the last name is used. With a player like Reggie Jackson, either his first or last name could be used on two different die-cut areas or cards.”
The signature wood pieces are sent to a graphic converting department within the Upper Deck facility. There, the bat pieces are sawed, chipped and whittled so they eventually fit into the card you see pictured on this page.
“They use a type of table saw to get the wood down to size,” says UD spokesman Don Williams. “The graphics conversion people do all of the cutting of jerseys, bats, pants, any game-used items we use for cards.”
Kohn said that the Epic packs are not search-resistant for cherry pickers - maybe a good reason to go in with friends and split up an unopened box. But the bat barrel cards are hand-seeded into packs and boxes under on-floor security and video surveillance.
“Once the bat barrel cards go into the pack, the pack goes into the box, the box goes on the pallet, and we don’t know where in the country it will end up from there,” says Kohn.
Link (http://www.beckett.com/news/index2.asp?a=7426&s=2)
By Pepper Hastings
When you pull a card that leaves you too dizzy to drive, you’ve hit your pack-ripping peak.
So it was with 16-year-old Matt Moser of Whitehouse, Ohio, (pictured) who recently pulled a quad bat barrel card of Babe Ruth, Jimmie Foxx, Mel Ott and Eddie Mathews.
http://www.beckett.com/images/news/mattquadcard.jpg
“I went to work at my local card shop, Bases Loaded Sports Cards in Toledo,” Moser remembered of July 14 pull. “During the day, a shipment of Upper Deck Epic Baseball came in. I thought I would try a box. Once I cracked the box, I noticed one of the packs was huge. I opened it to find the best card I have ever pulled or ever will pull in my life.
“I was in shock. I had to call my parents and have them come pick me up because I could not even drive home.”
Released in early July, Upper Deck Epic packs are beginning to yield some high-end cards. Some of the key bat barrel cards now are making their way out of packs and onto online auctions and message boards.
Packs may cost $50, but with bat barrel cards of Thome/Pujols/McCovey/Dawson ($2,200), Stanky/Drysdale/Hodges/Campanella ($2,500), J.D. Drew/Beltre/Glaus/Beltran ($550) going for premium prices, and with a guaranteed hit in each four-card pack, thrill-seeking pack rippers have found a product to satisfy their risky needs.
“Outside of signature cards, these are some of the most valuable pure memorabilia cards ever seen,” said UD Baseball Brand Manager Gregg Kohn, who said the quad bat cards are “about as thick as two Sweet Spot cards stacked on top of one another.” That makes these cards well over one-fourth inch thick.
http://www.beckett.com/images/news/epic_quadbatbarrel.jpg
The construction of these brick-like cards is a story in itself. Game-used bats previously harvested for earlier bat piece cards yield premium pieces, including the trademark, the bat knob, and the player’s flame-treated signature or name on the barrel.
“When we cut a bat up for a regular bat card, we kept all of the signature pieces for this product,” says Kohn. In their raw form, the signature wood pieces are sometimes too long, too short, too thick or too wide to fit into the card’s pre-produced, die-cut window.
“That’s when we have to decide what part of the name we’ll show,” said Kohn, noting that a name like Babe Ruth easily fits into the die-cut, but a longer moniker such as Roy Campanella doesn’t. “We have to make a choice about using the first or last name, and usually the last name is used. With a player like Reggie Jackson, either his first or last name could be used on two different die-cut areas or cards.”
The signature wood pieces are sent to a graphic converting department within the Upper Deck facility. There, the bat pieces are sawed, chipped and whittled so they eventually fit into the card you see pictured on this page.
“They use a type of table saw to get the wood down to size,” says UD spokesman Don Williams. “The graphics conversion people do all of the cutting of jerseys, bats, pants, any game-used items we use for cards.”
Kohn said that the Epic packs are not search-resistant for cherry pickers - maybe a good reason to go in with friends and split up an unopened box. But the bat barrel cards are hand-seeded into packs and boxes under on-floor security and video surveillance.
“Once the bat barrel cards go into the pack, the pack goes into the box, the box goes on the pallet, and we don’t know where in the country it will end up from there,” says Kohn.
Link (http://www.beckett.com/news/index2.asp?a=7426&s=2)