Updated throughout the day with quick takes from staff.
At one point in your life, the Upper Deck Company probably meant something to you. Back in 1989, they released the first-ever set of baseball cards that didn't look like they were made with the same stock of cardboard they made cereal boxes out of. They brilliantly opted to make Ken Griffey, Jr. their #1 card of their first set. They printed holograms on the back. They could do no wrong.
All of a sudden, though, our old friend is slipping down the drain at an alarming rate. A little over a year ago, they had licenses with all major American sports leagues. But the trend of exclusive licensing has spilled over from the sports video game industry. Upper Deck lost its NBA license. Then it lost its MLB license, and last week it waved goodbye to its NFL license. Now they're down to selling NHL and Major League Soccer cards.
Sure. In the 1990s, the sports card hobby morphed into a weird stock-market-for-kids industry. Kids stopped trying to complete sets of their favorite teams, opting instead to observe market trends of a freaking 1993 Mo Vaughn card and invest accordingly. The industry as a whole sort of duped us by assigning artificial values to the cards, so mourning Upper Deck is sort of like an ex-smoker mourning, I don't know, Camel.
Still, it's sort of sad. At its birth, Upper Deck staked its future in Griffey, and as it turns out, they might end up retiring from the business when he does.
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