Beckett Magazine – Reviews

Generally speaking, I do like reviews of products. Since getting back into the hobby and starting to look at all the designs. I have found lots of cool designs and quite a few failed ones. This season’s Topps design is very cool. I like the subway station marquee of the team names. There is also a classic feel to the card as well. An example of a product this year I didn’t like was Upper Deck 08. Mainly because the names were tough to see, and there really isn’t any design to the card. It’s a photo with the name of the player on the card.

The idea of designing a card to me, is that just by once glance at the card, you can tell right away what year it was from. For example let’s take the following cards:

If you have been collecting cards for the past few years and know any of the history of Baseball cards, you should know it’s 1979, 1986, and 2005 Topps.  Very distinct designs, you’d never have to guess from what year it’s from.  Now let’s look at three Upper Deck Designs and you tell me what year it’s from.

I freely admit, it just might be me, but there is no definitive look to any Upper Deck card.  Now I don’t deny that the pictures are outstanding, but there isn’t any immediate feature that grabs my attention to let me know what year it’s from.

The reason I went this route is to compare it to the current reviews at Beckett.  First off, I don’t think you can be objective, when the card companies are sending you the product to review.  To copare to another review guide, do you think Consumer’s Report gets freebies?  Of course not!  They buy the product and review it.  That is how Beckett should be doing this.  Let’s face it the UD product may contain better photography and more memorabilia and autographs, but overall, it’s the same crap being issued year after year.  Beckett, too afraid to bite the hand that feeds them will never ever admit to that.  I have seen on many blogs, the hits Beckett gets are nothing like the ones you’ll get from a typical box.  There are tales of conspiracy between Beckett and Upper Deck, which might very well be true, but I think what Beckett should do is go out and buy a few boxes from some of the dealers that advertise with them and let’s see what they get. Or better yet, get it off eBay.

I read one review of late that gives the product high marks for it’s parallels.  Are you kidding me?  I don’t know about you, but when I get parallels, they make me sick to my stomach.  I don’t care if it is a 1/1, it’s the same damn card as the base only it’s shiney (oooooooo).  Give me a break. Let’s start with 5 stars for a set, if they have more than one parallel, minus 1 star, more than 5 parallels, minus 2 stars.  Then we get to the whole SP rookie card idea.  In my mind, that alone is minus a star and a half.  Why SP rookie cards?  Does that even make sense.  Suppose years from now you have to finish a set who SP rookie cards.  Only the guy you need never made it to the majors and your forced to fork over big bucks for a scrub.

Get the parallels out of the sets, get more game used and autographs into the sets, and stop giving us tons and tons of rookie autos.  I think if a reviewer gets any of that in the box they should immediately pan the set.  Of the 30 reviews I’ve seen in the past months, There wasn’t a single one that didn’t like the product and none with an overall of less than 3 stars.  Come on Beckett, rip UD a new one every once in a while.  It’s not even fun to read the reviews anymore.  I’m curious about how you feel about this.