2009 Upper Deck 1989 20th Anniversary Buyback #102

   

Card Review: 9.2  I'm grading this card slightly lower than I graded the 1989 Upper Deck base card due to the foil (hologram) stamping on the front.  I understand the "20th Anniversary" stamp on the front is what makes this a different card, but from a design perspective, it's not an improvement.  At least it covers up the catcher a little (I think it's Joe Girardi, could also be Damon Berryhill or maybe Jody Davis?), and I've always felt this card could have been cropped a little better.  Either show more of the catcher, or none at all UD.  I guess I'm the only person in the hobby who complains about the photography on '89 UD.

That last sentence sort of sums up why I'm not a huge fan of "buybacks" and don't really view them as "new" or "unique" cards.  This is an 1989 Upper Deck.  That's objectively true.  It's just been altered.  All the online data bases catalog it as a "unique" card from 2019, so I will too, but it doesn't feel honest.  To me it's just a gimmick.  But I'm a slave to my collection, so if it's listed as a "unique" card, I'm going to pick them up when they become available at a reasonable price.

Speaking of adding "new" cards, this is the first new Wallach card post since 2019, when Topps included something like 20 different versions of the same Wallach card as an insert in their Archives set.  The "Green" non-autographed version was the last one I picked up and posted.  The last time I added a Wallach card after the year it was issued, was way back in in July of 2017 when I picked up my first copy of the 1991 Panini French sticker.  For the first few years of this blog, it was almost entirely post like this, now they're few and far between.

I'll be reluctantly counting this as my first copy of this card, rather than my 301st copy of 1989 Upper Deck (which if you were to carbon date it, I'm confident you'd find it is).  As for this buyback "set," I couldn't find much on it.  They were inserted in packs back in 2009.  I don't what packs.  I don't really care.  I don't know how many there are, if they were done for every card in the '89 UD set, just the '89 UD set minus the high numbers, or just for the superstars.  The most informative information I could find on these was from a Rickey Henderson blog, and they didn't seem to know much about them either.  I don't see too many of these pop up on eBay, and when they do, they're usually what I deem to be wildly overpriced.  When this one appeared recently at on only a slightly grossly overpriced "buy it now" option, I went ahead and added it. Feel free to provide any additional information you may have on them in the comments.

Number of this card in my collection: 1