There has always been an audience for art-based baseball cards, whether they are inserts like Donruss' Diamond Kings or full sets like Topps Gallery. Currently filling that niche is Upper Deck Masterpieces Baseball, which does so admirably with 120 paintings of current and former MLB players on simulated canvas stock.
Hobby boxes of 2008 UD Masterpieces Baseball contain 12 six-card packs. On average, expect to find one autographed card and one memorabilia card in each box.
Base Cards and Parallels
Upper Deck commissioned a total of 120 paintings of MLB players for the Masterpieces base set, and they are put to good use on cards that simply add a gold frame and gold lettering for the team and player names. The card stock is textured to feel like canvas, adding to the effect.
The first 90 players are a mix of veterans and MLB Rookie Cards, while the final 30 are retired stars that are short-printed relative to the other base cards. I opened a random hobby box for this review and found myself just past halfway to the base set, pulling 61 base cards and one duplicate.
Parallels have actual three-dimensional frames that make the cards seem even more like artwork. They differ based on frame color and print run and carry ambitious-sounding names like Urban Gray and Persian Blue Linen. The rarest level, Pinot Red, is limited to one copy each.
I found six framed parallels in my sample box, or one every other pack. My rarest was a Bronze Ore Yogi Berra numbered to 125.
Memorabilia Cards
Because it's virtually expected that modern baseball card sets will have a memorabilia element of some kind, Masterpieces serves up one game-used card per box (down from three per box last season). It accomplishes this through one large set called Captured on Canvas - a fitting name since the swatches are placed in the middle of mostly canvas cards.
The 89 subjects in the set run the gamut from young stars like Ryan Braun to All-Stars like Derek Jeter to legends like Nolan Ryan. There are patch parallels numbered to 50 for all of the cards plus autographed and autographed patch versions of selected cards.
I found the expected single memorabilia card in the About.com sample box: a Prince Fielder jersey with a fairly nondescript white swatch.
Autographed Cards
Keeping the theme consistent all the way through, the Stroke of Genius signatures found one per box are also on canvas. A total of 68 players signed for the set, and though the checklist is generally a tad weaker than the game-used one, there are big names like Jeter, Ken Griffey Jr. and Ozzie Smith mixed in, as well as intriguing youngsters like Evan Longoria and Luke Hochevar.
Apparently some of the autographs are redemptions though, as I pulled an exchange card for a Max Scherzer autograph.
The Last Word
While it's always nice to see baseball card manufacturers try to aim for wide audiences, it's equally satisfying to see them make solid products for a specific group of collectors. UD Masterpieces is definitely among the latter, filling a mostly unoccupied niche for art-based cards.
The memorabilia and autographs are primarily a bonus in a set like this, or at least that seems to be the thinking as Upper Deck reduced those aspects of the product and expanded the base set from the 2007 edition. Time will tell which way most collectors prefer it, but in any case this looks like a very enjoyable set to put together and show off to like-minded fans.