Remember When These Mattered?

I picked up one of those two pocket rack packs of 2006 Upper Deck series 2 recently at the local Kmart.

It cost about $1.50. Pretty good deal, actually. Wish I had grabbed more.

The promotional hook was getting two of these in every pack:

Two great players out of the all Time Legends insert set. Can't go wrong there.

I also got a nice card of a future HOF'er:

#779

And I got a card of an at the time dominant(and less wealthy, unfortunately for the Cubs) player:

#857

Then I got perhaps the best composed card in the set:

#723

That's a great looking shot.

And I also got a card of a player fulfilling the other 50% of his contract:

#686

All those cards are nice and all, but there were even better cards in this pack.

Rookie cards. These are what we were looking to find 20+ years ago in our packs.
Not inserts or parallels. Rookie cards.

If RC's held more weight today these first three guys would make this a white whale of a pack:

#984

                                                  An awesome shot and no beard! Plus he is a champion.

#960

         A five tool beast making up the power half of the best up the middle duo along with Andrus.

#925

                    This generation's premier power second sacker. Just not it's finest fielding one.

And to a little lesser extent, a couple of other rookies:

#936

                 Another world champion in the pack. And off to a nice start for the Carmines.

#966

                Not off to a nice start with the Halos. Pujols is holding him back, I just know it.


Remember these being the reason we all opened 250 cases each of 1987 Topps?

Finding the Bo ,the Barrys, the Palmeiro(yeah.....), the Thrill, Big Mac, JAMIE MOYER!, and of course the one, the only,

#429

                                                                                Still one of my faves.


While you can ponder if the above cards are indeed RC's, that's the way they are presented as being in today's hobby.


Just recalling the days of when finding your team's stud to be in your pack was the best thrill to get before the days of pulling a card with a piece of jockstrap of your team's stud to be replaced it.



Thanks for reading!