Sweet Spot Turns Sour

Just a quick little story today... 

I'm in the middle of putting together my big X-Mess Epic that will drop at some point in the next day or two, but I wanted to show off the most tragic baseball card I've had the opportunity to purchase...

But first, a brief summary...


Sweet Spot was a high-end baseball release from Upper Deck. You would only get 4 cards in a pack, with a retail price hovering around $10. Yeah, these are lottery tickets, simple as that...

Of course the draw was plenty of inserts! Game used jersey chunks a-plenty! Upper Deck would also get creative, gluing wood chunks to cardboard and calling them bat cards! But the signature gimmick (pun kinda intended) were the autographed "sweet spot" baseball cards...

Intended to mimmic a baseball signed across the sweet spot, the cards would house the removed autographed piece of leather. In most cases there never was a ball. Players just signed pieces of -maybe- leather, which were affixed to a very thick card. In very rare cases, Upper Deck destroyed an authentic autographed baseball, by cutting the autograph off of the ball, to then glue it to a very modern looking piece of cardboard.

Wouldn't it have been better to maybe have an instant win type promotion where you could redeem a card you pulled out of a pack, to then have Upper Deck send you the actual autographed baseball, instead of destroying a historical artifact of the game?

I don't know... If given a choice between owning a Babe Ruth autographed baseball, or a card with an actual Babe Ruth autograph ripped off a 1920's era baseball... I'm choosing the actual baseball...

But I guess I'm just stupid like that...

At Twins Fest 2004, I bought the remainder of a wax box of 2003 Upper Deck Sweet Spot Baseball from Ron of Coach's Corner Sports Card's booth on the Metrodome floor. I think there was about 5 packs left in the box, and he gave me a good deal on them.


Here is Ron at Twins Fest 2001. This was back when dealers made a ridiculous amount of money off selling Beanie Babies to middle aged housewives... Who were at Twins Fest while their husbands did baseball stuff. He said he made a killing with Beanie Babies during these years at Twins Fest...

Ron closed Coach's Corner in 2004. But that's another story for another day...


The reason I spent way too much on very little for cards was I really wanted an autograph from the Sweet Spot brand. Luckily, those five packs yielded this bat card of Adam Dunn. I really wanted the baseball chunk autographed, but this is still pretty damn cool.

I didn't buy any more Sweet Spot until late 2005, when I bought a few packs after moving to Colorado. My streak of Sweet (Spot) Luck continued with this...


Rockies star first baseman Todd Helton's jersey chunk, with barely visible purple pinstripe! As one of the rare Rockies collectors, I was very happy with this...

And then I pulled this from the next pack...


Still not a torn baseball, but a wedge of wood autographed by a (then) hot prospect, numbered 20 of 50 was something to really get excited by...

12 years later, it looks like Verlander is well on his way to a Hall of Fame career, and I have one of his higher end rookie cards.

So those packs were worth it!

Still, Sweet Spot was a pool that I rarely dabbled my toes in. If you didn't pull a decent card from a pack, you spent around $10 to get a dollar's worth of cards. Usually 4 from teams I don't collect....

When the 2006 cards came out, I set aside a little bit more of the card budget for Sweet Spot. Mike ordered a case for the shop, and I took a box from it for for the bargain price of ten $10 lottery tickets, with two extra thrown in for free!

I purchased a fake baseball piece autographed card (of Scott Kazmir) in 2005, just because I wanted one, and only seemed to pull wood out of packs.

Heheheheh... You said pull wood... 

I finally pulled my first autographed fake baseball piece from a pack with this box...


Hmmmm... Looking at Paul Maholm with today's eyes makes this card kind of a snoozer... 

Maholm did pitch in the major leagues for 10 seasons. They weren't particularly great, he went 77-100 in those ten seasons.... But he was a quality major leaguer with Pittsburgh, the Braves, Cubs and Dodgers.

But when I opened the pack that contained this, Maholm was a 23 year old rookie and former first round (8th overall) draft pick. He put up some decent numbers in a 6 start cameo to close out the 2005 season. He was a decent prospect, and despite playing for a team I didn't collect, this card had potential.

So why don't I try a box of Sweet Spot Series 2? 

Or Sweet Spot Update? 

Or whatever Upper Deck called their second Sweet Spot set of 2016, when it came out...

And what did that get me?


Steve Stemle...

Really?

No offense to Mr. Stemle, I'm sure he's a great guy.... But if I'm buying twelve $10 lottery tickets (for the price of 10!), I expect the top card drawn to not be of a 28 year old middle relief pitcher with control issues and a lack of strikeout pitches.

Again, no slight... But Steve Stemle's Major League Baseball career lasted a grand total of 11 games. 16 2/3 innings, with an 0-1 record and an 8.64 ERA...

This is not a player that should get a card in any high end set... 

Let alone a box hit from a very expensive box...

Nothing personal!

I was so disappointed by the Steve Stemle that I never bought another Sweet Spot pack or card again... 

Until last Tuesday night....

A few years ago, I read the final edition of Upper Deck Sweet Spot Baseball, that came out in 2008, had some of the higher end autographed cards go through some very unfortunate adverse chemical reactions...

The autographs faded or completely disappeared from the cards! 

The story I read featured an autographed baseball slice of Derek Jeter, that was serial numbered out of 4. The purchaser paid $400 for it (or something like that), and a year later, Jeter's autograph had completely vanished.

Upper Deck said there was a problem with the ink in some of the pens the players used, and how it reacted with the (fake) leather of the baseball swatches. Many autographs in the 2008 set have faded significantly, or simply no longer exist...

Way to go cheap Mr. McWilliam! 

I remember thinking after reading the story, that I wanted one of these self-destructive autographed cards... It would really suck to pull one from a pack and have it happen -or worse, like the guy who bought the Jeter- but I'd put down a couple of bucks for one if I ever found one for the right price...

Recently, I discussed my visit to Unfriendly's Dickish for penny sleeves. It was there and then that I first laid my eyes on this tragic beauty:


Tony Gwynn was one of the greatest hitters of all time, .338 lifetime in 20 years with the San Diego Padres. Gwynn was also another of my favorite players. One of many that don't have a featured place in my collection, but that I tried to keep their cards when I found them.

I'd also long desired to own a Tony Gwynn autograph.

Tony Gwynn died of cancer in 2014, so the amount of Gwynn autographs are going to be more limited than Hall of Famers that live into their 70's and 80's.

Which makes this card all the more tragic...


Unfriendly's Dickish had this card in the $3 box. I picked it up and looked at it that day, but for whatever reason I didn't buy it among the 10 for $20.

However, I did go home and regret not buying it... 


After a few days, I decided that for only $3, 
the ghost autograph of Tony Gwynn NEEDED to be in my collection!


So while I was out running Aaron's, I stopped by Unfriendly's Dickish, dropped the $3 and change and I finally have my Tony Gwynn autograph...

Kinda....

And none of this story ended up being brief or quick...

Sorry about that...


Back to working my Supa Awesome Exciting Epic X-Mess Story!

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