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Barry Larkin Collection 676: 2001 Upper Deck Victory - #518

Barry Larkin
Year:  2001
Brand:  Upper Deck Victory
Card number:  518

I don't think anyone was as disappointed as I was when Upper Deck changed their inexpensive "kid" offering from the Collector's Choice brand to the Victory brand.  I loved the Collector's Choice line, but for whatever reason most of the Victory sets didn't excite me much.  That said, the 2001 Victory set is basically Upper Deck's version of Topps Total.  It's a 660 card set with zero inserts and zero parallels.  The set collector in me appreciates that - but the card collector in me acknowledges that without a more interesting base card design I imagine that opening up boxes of this stuff is rather dull!

As for Larkin's card in particular, it's perfectly fine.  The front photo is alright, though the cropping leaves something to be desired (why cut off that tiny bit of Larin's foot)?  The back of the card is nice in that it has full career stats (yay!) but the write-up is one of the laziest that I've ever seen on a baseball card.  "Larkin's perhaps the best Red ever."  Sure, that's nice praise but it sure could use a bit more elaboration - after all, the Reds had the Big Red Machine with a Hall of Famer at almost every position...a bit of justification to the statement made by Upper Deck would have been appreciated.

In the end, this is a perfectly fine card from a perfectly mediocre set.  When you have over 675 Larkin cards scanned and written about, they can't all be amazing, right?!

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