From the Pedro Binder

2000 Upper Deck Checklist

I’ve said it before. Card companies aren’t completely stupid. They know that stars drive the product. Even a product like the 2000 base set. While they know they’re supposed to have cards of every reasonable player in the league, they know that’s not what gets people to buy the packs. They need cards of the superstars. At some point, they realized that checklist cards are a great way to do that.

I have to admit, the old style checklists cards confuse me. Who thought it was a good idea to commit a card from the regular set just to be a checklist? Do other things do that? If you’re collecting bobbleheads, they don’t make one that just has a checklist of all the other bobbleheads. Why do it for card sets? What a waste? I’m glad that they now have moved to just having the checklists being “inserts” in packs, like junk mail. If you want a checklist, here it is. But, you’re not missing out on a card of a back-up catcher because of it.

This is another way to go. Make it an opportunity to get another Pedro card into the set. Even better. It probably means that there are more checklist cards than there would have been, since you can only use one side of the card. But, it makes the cards worth getting. I’m sure that there are some player collectors who would balk at having to collect a Pedro card that wasn’t really a Pedro card. But, I’m not one of them.

This is a simple card, naturally following the base Upper Deck design. It has everything I’d want to see on a card. Name, team, position. It even tucks the Upper Deck logo off in the corner. All of that leaves plenty of room for a nice big picture. All that adds up to a great card.

Especially when it’s an “extra” Pedro in the set.