UD Baseball Heroes easily dwarfs UD Football Heroes but still has flaws

One of the many Derek Jeter parallels in Baseball Heroes
Hitting stores on August 11, UD Baseball Heroes mixes the perfect combination of current stars, legends and no cards that would fit better in Upper Deck Celebs and World Legends (the exception being the case hit Presidential Cuts).

A 200 card base set is divided into four different sections: 175 singe heroes, 10 dual heroes, 10 triple heroes and five quad heroes. Featuring players from Josh Hamilton to Joe DiMaggio, chances are your favorite star player of today or superstar of yesterday will be included in this set. The multi-player cards can include all current stars, all retired stars or a mixture of both. The most significant is the quad heroes cards of Derek Jeter, Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio and Lou Gehrig.

But the fact that they got the player selection right may be overshadowed by the massive amount of numbered parallels that Upper Deck produced for this release. Ten levels of parallels - Emerald, Black, Beige, Red, Navy Blue, Brown, Sea Green, Light Blue, Purple and Charcoal - will all be randomly inserted and will drive player and team collector bananas. It is interesting to note that Upper Deck has introduced some unique colors like Sea Green and Charcoal to the ever growing parallel rainbow that exists throughout the card market.

However, collectors will be happy to hear that there are three relics and one autograph on average per box, but at the same time, is this really enough to make the $100 price tag (24 packs, eight cards per pack) worthwhile? The autographs feature many of the more common stars that are in the base set so the chances of getting an autograph with good secondary market value is pretty unlikely, but possible. The relics will be the same way.

Baseball Heroes started out a basic insert set in Upper Deck way back in the early 1990s. Since then, it moved to a full fledged insert with autographs and all that jazz. Now, it is a full sized base set and may be the next original idea to be ruined.