Upper Deck's Little Game

While a lot of baseball card bloggers have discussed Topps' recent gimmick cards at length, many of us have overlooked the little (and far less controversial) games that were found in Upper Deck Series Two.

I reported last week about the announced variation of the Hillary Clinton edges Barack Obama Presidential Predictor card, but I never gave any eBay information about them.

There are currently two auctions for the card. One ends in ten hours and has not received an opening bid for $199. A second ends in a day and a half and has not received an opening bid for $99.

Does this mean that collectors finally aren't going to go nuts for a card that is supposedly very rare. We all saw how many Series One Clintons came out, and I think a lot of collectors learned their lesson then.

But here is one card that no one has been talking about (except Stale Gum last night).



It is a Japanese variation of Kosuke Fukudome's Upper Deck rookie card. It is very similar to the Daisuke Matsuzaka Japanese variation Topps produced last year.

Upper Deck has not announced this card and I have only seen three appear on eBay so far. The first sold for $59.95, the second sold for $41, and a third is only at $5.50 with 11 hours left which is less than some of the regular Fukudome's have sold for.

I don't find these two cards to ne nearly as troubling as the Topps cards though. The Clinton/Obama was announced as a card pulled from production at the last second. Of course, Upper Deck let some slip through production on purpose to create buzz as they did in Series One. The Fukudome makes for a cool variation that is not part of the base set. I enjoyed the Daisuke card last year and enjoy this one this year.

Had Topps made their regular Fukudome card and then made a WBC variation and a Japanese variations, no one would've cared too much.