Beyond Shinders and 2008 Upper Deck Spectrum

Shinders was an iconic newsstand in downtown Minneapolis, that dated back to the early 1900's. It had evolved from a newsstand, into a franchise that sold thousands of different magazine titles, new and vintage sports cards and memorabilia, collectable toys, books and other weird stuff, into the early 2000's.

I spent hundred of hours and thousands of dollars at Shinders during my lifetime. The store above was located in Roseville, MN, and was still open in June, 2007, when this photo was taken. Shortly after this, a scandal of guns, theft and crystal meth, caused Shinders to close all 13 stores for good by August 2007.

But I'm not telling that story today!

We're going Beyond Shinders...

After the initial chain closed up shop, two former Shinders employees decided to resurrect the name and open a new store, focused on selling the same merchandise, filling the gap that Shinders closure brought on. And this new store would be caled... Beyond Shinders!

(Not going to make a lame ass electric boogaloo joke...)

Taking over existing Shinders leases in Maplewood and Minnetonka, the two opened up shop in early 2008. They were attempting to recreate the franchise as it should have been run at it's end. Before opening, they consulted with the previous owner to the guy who killed it, Joel Shinder, to help get the stores started. Business exceeded their initial predictions, and they opened a third location in downtown Minneapolis later that year.

I visited the Maplewood location of Beyond Shinders a few times while in Minnesota, between 2008 and 2009. That was housed in the run down dirt mall across the street from the much larger and enclosed Maplewood Mall.

In May 2008, when I first checked the place out, the dirt mall had Beyond Shinders (which was previously just Shiders), a karate dojo, hardware store and used movie-music-game store with a ridiculously expensive Atari 5200 on display. The structure was enclosed in-line retail, with worn-out maroon carpet inside a glass hallway facing the parking lot. The stores had individual entrances inside, but the mall itself had only several access points. In the southeast corner, were some very gross and tiny public restrooms.

They did feature some great 1970's era wood panelling on the walls.

And a drinking fountain that had surprisingly good water...

My impressions of the store was that it was trying really hard to be Shinders. Which was the point. But if Shinders were a feature film, that was mildly profitable and critically accepted... Beyond Shinders was it's direct-to-video sequel.

And I don't know if there was any way around that... My visit came during the first month or so after it opened, but the atmosphere of Shinders just wasn't there and the inventory was sorely lacking. The glory days of Shinders days were reduced to about a tenth of what I once enjoyed.

Well, they tried...

Not a knock on them, there is no way they could take on that kind of overhead right away...

My hopes were to find boxes of single cards to look through, and pick out new additions to my collection that had eluded me over the years... There were no loose singles...

I'd hoped to see a wide variety of unopened wax packs and boxes... They had flagship 2008 Topps and a scarce inventory of a couple newer 2008 releases...

I really wanted to flip through random fringe magazines, covering a variety of subjects that you don't see at most places... But the selection was pretty mainstream... Even the adult room was lacking the variety and pizzaz of Shinders Classic...

Uh... According to what I've been told...

Had I been around, I would have likely supported them with more business. But the economic retail climate of today makes it nearly impossible for this kind of business to properly start-up. As sad as that is to us collector dorks...

(Around this point in my story, I'm really wishing I had some pictures to include... Reading all this text has to be really boring. Don't worry, cards are coming... And it'll be worth it!)

The downtown Minneapolis Beyond Shinders location closed in May 2010. I'm not sure when the Minnetonka location closed, and the Maplewood location closed at some point in early 2013. (The first point in time that I found a reference to it being closed).

Beyond Shinders died a very peaceful and quiet death, after it's predecessor went out in a loud fit...

The dirt mall has been completely redone since my last visit in 2009. The glass hallway is gone and the south side, which once included both incarnations of Shinders, now provides a home to Aldi, Golden Corral and Hobby Lobby...

So what did Beyond Shinders give to me, during it's brief stay in the Minneapolis hobby market?

2008 Upper Deck Spectrum!

I only picked up 12 packs of this card line, and was rewarded with the largest swath of hits over the smallest amount of product bought, in my collecting experience. Those 12 packs were purchased from a two box inventory, during two separate May 2008 visits to Beyond Shinders, in Maplewood, MN.

As I'd mentioned, their in-store card inventory was non-existant, so I opted for three packs of 2008 Upper Deck Spectrum. The fact that they had only 5 cards in each pack, and they were $5 a pack, cut me off at only three. (I do remember a ton of low-end Joe Mauer rookie cards, priced between $5-$10 each in their display cases.)

The base set is only 100 cards. That averages out to each team getting 3 and 1/3 cards for their team set. I'm sure the Yankees and Red Sox got more than 3 cards each, and some teams got a whole lot less... That's collecting these days... The base cards looked nice, but 100 cards isn't a decent enough representation of the game, for me to collect as a set.

Granted, there are a bunch of short print autographed rookies numbered past 100, so I guess those are considered a part of the set. (50 of them? Really?) Well, Mr. Broadway has a nice signature...

Lance Broadway was a legitimate prospect in 2008. A former first round pick in 2005, he posted decent numbers over the parts of the next four seasons in the major leagues, with the White Sox and Mets.

Thank you July 2010 issue of Beckett that I had laying around to show how the base set was constructed... And how little a point there would be in collecting it. But at only 100 cards for the base, this isn't a set for any purpose other than cramming a bunch of unnecessary inserts onto cardboard. (And in this case, I'm glad they did...)

If anyone is interested, I'd be down for selling some Ryan Howards and Daisuke Matsuzakas for $1.50 each...

Lincecum? I can let him go for a dollar...

I never entertained any thought any thoughts of attempting to complete the set. As it was, I kept the cards I liked and got rid of the rest...

So if I was this turned off by the set, why did I care instead of just stopping?

The very first pack of Spectrum I opened had this inside. 

I didn't often play in the card market that included redemption cards, so this was big news...

Hmmmmm.... A Celebrity Cut Card.... This is very intriguing.... 

Looking at the celebrities mentioned in Beckett, celebrities that autographed cards on stickers for pack insertion seemed to range from 1980's hair metal bands to stars from Happy Days.

Would my celebrity cut be from that genre? Was Axl Rose outside the realm of possibility? Richard Grieco?

Hell, I'd still love a Dee Snider autograph...

I really did like the cards. The scanner of course doesn't do them justice (and adds a ton of lint that it took me forever to clean up in Photoshop) but they all look really nice with the refractory foil treatment. Of course there were all different colored parallel sets, because... Duh...

I also pulled a blue tinted version of this Jeter, serial numbered out of 25. I just didn't want to dig it out in order to scan it, when this can suffice. So imagine that Jeter is bluer... And has a serial number in the corner...

And of course you have the obligatory jersey pieces. At least A.J. Burnett has a brief story to tell, even though it's really vague...

The third pack I opened that day had a thick card in a penny sleeve inside. That was something I'd never seen before. There were actually two cards in the sleeve... One was a certificate of authenticity, and the other was this sweet buyback Ken Griffey Jr. autograph!

The joy of seeing this made forget all about the redemption card from just a few minutes earlier...

It was almost as if Beyond Shinders was trying to make up for the past crimes of it's prequel, in three packs of cards... All the times I had to deal with arrogant, elitist, hobby dorks inside their walls, terrible parents allowing hyperactive miscreant children to run amok, or paid a smarmy unwashed dickface way too much money for something soon to be worth nothing.

Or the committing the worst crime of all... Having the nerve to ask a clerk to unlock the case, so I could purchase that $1.50 single card I needed for a set...

This was Shinders saying: "I'm sorry for the past, have something awesome!"

I went back to Maplewood a few days later and bought 9 more packs of Spectrum. They were now into the second box, so I had another shot at some hits after cleaning up on their first box...

I got Colorado Rockies star Todd Helton!

I got a nice jersey chunk of former Expo and current Angel, Vladimir Guerrero...

And future Minnesota Twin, Jim Thome...

I also got another Rookie Autograph. This time of Texas Ranger, Bill White. In the interest of full disclosure, I also pulled the previously shown Lance Broadway from these packs, and not the inital three. But that's where it fit in the story...

Bill White was a long time left-handed relief pitcher, that toiled in the minor league systems of the Rangers and Diamondback for seven seasons before making the majors. His career Major League numbers include and completely not stellar 15 hits and 18 walks in 13 1/3 total innings.

In 2008, Upper Deck went mad with love, full-on "stalker style" at the New York Yankees. (They actually issued a 6752 card set to highlight every game ever played at Yankee Stadium!) Derek Jeter in particular got the big Upper Deck rocket push. Which meant that everything they issued that year had to be chock-full-o-Jeter. Pointless and redundant insert were created from every set that hit the market, just to add more Jeter...

2008 had it's own with the "Spectrum Derek Jeter Retrospectrum" set... Well, at least they look nice...

*****

Overall I was pretty satisfied with 2008 Upper Deck Spectrum. Of course there is a massive bias given what I pulled from the few packs I bought, but they were nice cards. Not $1/each nice... The value in the set simply wasn't there, nor sustainable. And as mentioned, 100 cards of the top stars only, with a bunch of short printed common rookie autographs, is never worth my time. It's a throwaway set whose only purpose is to hype it's lottery inserts.

And yeah, the inserts were over the top...

*****

Back in 2008, once I got home from Minnesota, I registered the redemption card with Upper Deck and promptly forgot about it.

A few months later, a Fedex knock at my door delivered my redeemed card...

So which Celebrity Cut Signature did Upper Deck send me?

J.R. Ewing!!!