Sunday, April 26, 2020

The Joy of a Completed Team Set - 2004 UD Vintage

I am up to 36 binders to store my Giants collection and that doesn't count a few boxes with auto and relics in them. Despite having an extensive collection like I have, I still get great joy in completing team sets, particular ones that have been challenging to finish off. 

In 2004 Upper Deck released their 4th and final edition of UD Vintage, printing sets with throwback designs and cardboard stock.  A few years back I set out to complete a bunch of runs of Giants base sets and the 4 years of UD Vintage was part of that quest but I fell 2 cards short.  I had forgotten about that incomplete quest until recently and sought out to finish them up.  I was able to track down the final card from 2004:


This card is part of the 90 card subset that was issued with lenticular technology and features the majors leading sluggers.  These were numbered 351-440.  These were pretty hard to come by with listed odds of 1:12 packs.  I can't imagine trying to put this set together.  This Cruz card was hard to find and set me back about $10 with shipping, worth it to me to finish off the team set.

Here is the Giants' team set in its entirety:



As you can see, the Cruz was one of two Giants in the 3-D Sluggers subset.  Fully absent from this set is Barry Bonds which is odd.  I checked and he is in the Upper Deck base set for the year so I am not sure why he isn't here.

The Giants only had base cards, the two 3D Sluggers cards and one update card.  There were some other subsets. Here is a full breakdown of the 500 card set:
  • There was an initial 450-card set released in hobby boxes 
  • Cards numbered from 1 through 300 were printed in higher quantity than the rest of the set. 
  • In that group of 300 the final three cards feature checklists. 
  • Cards numbered 301 through 315 are Play Ball Preview Cards
  • Cards numbered 316 through 325 are World Series Highlight Cards
  • Cards numbered 326 through 335 were players who were traded during the 2003 season
  • A few leading 2003 rookies were issued as Short Prints between cards 335 and 350
  • As mentioned above, cards 351-440 were issued with lenticular technology and feature 90 of the majors leading sluggers
  • The set concludes with 10 cards made in the style of the 19th century Old Judge cards. Those cards were issued in "Old Judge Packs" which were issued as one per box "boxtoppers"
  • A 50-card Update set of cards 451-500 was issued in factory set format and distributed into one in every 1.5 hobby boxes of 2004 Upper Deck Series 2 
I am down to needing 1 card to finish up the full run, a 2003 Barry Bonds #269 which is also a 3D Sluggers printed with lenticular technology.   I looked at my usual sources, eBay, COMC and Sportlots and couldn't find one for sale however there were two sold fairly recently on eBay for what I would call reasonable prices.  I set up a search in hopes of finishing the full run.

3 comments:

  1. Holy cow 36 Giants binders? And damn I was unaware of these 3D cards. gonna have to add those to the searchlist.

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  2. This is a great reason why I try to keep up with a lot of card blogs--I also wasn't aware of the 3D cards you showed here, or that they were part of the base set. Good luck finishing up the Giants!

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  3. I built the 2003 vintage set and consider it complete even though I am missing most of the 3d cards

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