Sunday, July 15, 2012

Sunday SIL: what's on the other side?

For a ton of years, cards we're pretty much alike. Oh yeah, the designs changed, some good and some bad. But it was always a chipboard card with the player on the front and stats on the grey back. When Upper Deck came out in 1989, everything changed. From the quality of the card to the look and feel, card collecting changed forever. Today's SIL is really nothing special, at first. I'm not kidding. Here, see for yourself:


Matt Williams. I am sure a few people are turned off by the name. Don't matter to me - he never wore Sox black. And the picture on the front is pretty goofy. Can't decide if Matt is shocked or surprised about the slide, or if the pre-game burrito took a turn for the worse. I would think out of the hundreds of pictures UD had, the front of the card could have been better. But the back? Oh - the back is pure heaven in my mind...


YAY BABY!!!! That's what I'm talking about. And more of how UD changed the game forever. No longer are we just seeing the pros hitting, fielding, diving to make a play or posing for a staged shot. Here's Matt, goofing off in throwback unis prior to what I believe is this game. The uniforms a pretty nice, but Matt stuffs the front with a few towels and we now have gold. We can talk about Upper Deck's influence in the trading card biz with the changes in the card look and style, as well as the quality of the images. But I think we forget how Upper Deck changed the type of pictures that we see printed on the cardboard stock. And for that, I thank you.

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