Product Review- 2009 Upper Deck Signature Stars Baseball

If you like Team USA Baseball, 2009 Upper Deck Signature Stars is an affordable product you’ll love. If you don’t, don’t buy it, plain and simple. Knowing what has transpired over the last several weeks with MLB properties and Upper Deck with regards to UD losing their baseball licensing, coupled with Topps landing the exclusive for Team USA, I’m pretty sure Signature Stars was intended to be a well crafted raw material dump in the form of USA Baseball player autographs and memorabilia.

You might be mistaken to think that a product titled Signature Stars, would be loaded with content that would include just that; star players, and autographs. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Promising to deliver (4) memorabilia or autographs per box, you are almost assured of the majority of those hits being non-MLB players. For prospectors who believe that regardless of the current rules defining a rookie card, this is definitely in your wheelhouse. For a current retail price of about $60 per box, it’s a relatively inexpensive gamble to chase autos from the likes of Bryce Harper, Michael Saunders, Chris Tillman, Josh Reddick, Mat Latos, Sean O'Sullivan and Chinese pitcher Fu-Te-Ni! Also find signed cards of Rick Porcello, Matt Laporta, and Matt Wieters. Adding a further element of chase, collectors should look for 2008 USA Baseball Buybacks including signed on memorabilia cards of Andy Laroche, Evan Longoria and Colby Rasmus.

With a pack-out configuration of 20 packs per box and only 5 cards per pack assembling the 100-card base set can be completed with a 2-box purchase as my box yielded 80% of the set. The base set breaks down as such:

Base Set 100 Cards
- Top Prospects-20 Cards
- Base Card High Series Signatures- 65 Cards
- Rookie Signatures- 25 Cards

While inserts and parallels exist in the product make-up they are too lacking to provide any additional element of fun to the pack-ripping experience.

- Base Set Blue Platinum parallel- numbered to 170
- Signature Skills-1:25
- Signed Sealed and Delivered-1:25
- Trophy Winners-1:50

With only one pack remaining in the break, I had already pulled the promised (4) hits. All of which were players from USA Baseball. I got lucky in the last pack with an extra hit. Lo and behold it was an autograph of an actual MLB player- Ramon Hernandez of the Cincinnati Reds. So while being grateful for the extra hit, I still wouldn’t say it made up for the other ‘hits”. So the box contents all told, revealed 92 cards। 80 of the 100-card base set, including 3 RC’s, 7 inserts, and the 5 hits with 0 doubles.

Rookies-
Gerardo Parra, Gordon Beckham, Brad Bergesen

Inserts-
Trophy Winners- Chipper Jones
Signed Sealed & Delivered- Cliff Lee
USA Star Prospects- AJ Vanegas, Christain Colon, Manny Machado, Tony Walters, Yasmani Grandal

Autograph- Ramon Hernandez (Reds)

Auto/Memorabilia- USA Future Watch Kolten Wong #772/799

Memorabilia- USA Star Prospects- Ladson Montgomery, Casey McGrew

Premier Materials- Gerrit Cole Cap Flag Patch #1/4