One of my favorite brands of the late 90s was Upper Deck's Collector's Choice. The brand was ostensibly geared toward kids but, in reality, the set features great photography, interesting subsets, and fun inserts that can be enjoyed by collectors of all ages.
To date, I've completed several of the Collector's Choice sets but for some reason, I only completed the Series 1 portion of the 1998 Collector's Choice set back in the day. Last week, I decided to rectify that oversight in my collection by heading to eBay and picking up a box of 1998 Series 2 Collector's Choice.
With 36 packs in a box (and 12 cards per pack), this box is a throwback to a time when you actually got many cards in a box. As a set collector, I miss full boxes of cards like this! That said, if memory serves, Collector's Choice was often rife with collation issues so we'll see if this full box actually nets me most (all?) of the base set.
My plan is to rip the box over the next several days and while I have no plans to type or show every card in the box, I did think it'd be fun to at least highlight my favorite card(s) out of each pack. Let's take a trip in the "way back machine" and enjoy a kid-friendly product from 1998!
Pack 1:
280. Tim Salmon
Upper Deck differentiated the star players (in their estimation) by using gray borders rather than the usual white borders of the rest of the base set. In a sense, this allows kids to immediately know they've got a star card in their hand which sort of plays into the same senses that tingle when opens up a pack of collectible game cards that holds a "rare."
Pack 2:
348. Dave Burba
How often do you see photos of pitchers batting on a baseball card? Back in 1998, I suppose it was fairly rare but moving forward to today you'll probably never see given that pitchers no longer bat in either league! Cards like this are now historical artifacts of the game gone by.
Pack 3:
382. Chris Holt
This is a great example of the interesting photography that Upper Deck employed in its Collector's Choice line. I find dugout shots to be interesting and this one has a particularly great line of sight into the dugout (peep those phones on the wall).
Pack 4:
391. Jeff Conine
From the dugout in the previous pack to the outfield (or maybe bullpen) for this Jeff Conine jump rope shot. Again, such a fun image and something that you typically don't see in most card sets.
That's a solid start to the box for sure - the photography is as fun as I remembered it. No inserts of note (each pack does contain a Star Quest insert but I never loved the Series 2 Star Quest design). That said, there's plenty more to come from this box in future posts!
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