Thanks to Mario and Chris for the info.
I was reading Mario’s preview and got kind of excited by the cards he posted and tempered that with my experience with 08/09 OPC hockey. Then I saw Chris linked the sellsheet, and looking that over, I think Mario’s posted only the images of the one a pack parallels.
Wanna see some ugly, then? Here’s your 2009 OPC base card (ppt):
Upper Deck has taken the two things that I think they do wrong with OPC hockey and transferred it to baseball with this one: 1) Ugly base cards and 2) too few of them a pack. Add to this a 08/09 OPC retro hockey update card per box and another New York worship set (titled on the sell sheet New York, New York), and I’m really hating Upper Deck for this one.
What makes it even worse is the 1 per pack parallel set looks so nice:
and there will be mini variations, too, which should look even sweeter.
So Upper Deck has made a set that will be primarily driven by a card a pack parallel. FFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!!! (Did I spell that right, dayf?)
Here’s the sell sheet exclamations, with extra notes in parenthesis:
- Thirty six (36) shortprinted subset cards per box, on average! (The last 100 cards are short-printed and seeded 1 per pack)
- Thirty-six (36) 1971 OPC Retro parallels per box, on average! (These look really nice and should be sought after everywhere)
- Nine (9) 1971 OPC Mini variations per box, on average! (These, too, will probably look uber awesome)
- One (1) 1979/80 OPC Retro hockey update card per box, on average! (You got hockey in my baseball release! And what the heck is a baseball collector going to do with one hockey card a box?!?)
- One (1) New York, New York card per box, on average! (I have no idea. But I’m not thinking it’s going to be pretty)
Each 12 box case will hold 4 Triple relics and 2 signature cards, on average, plus a 20th anniversary memorabilia card and one 1971 OPC buyback.
I’ll have my hockey review up later tonight or early tomorrow, by the way. I imagine I could call it the 2009 OPC baseball box break preview, from what I read here.
Hand Collated 
I don’t think the base card looks half bad, but a New York subset has me running for the hills, talk about a downer.
You left out an F.
The base cards look just like what they were doing with Fleer. Decent, clean design that wouldn’t look too out of place in the ’80s. Why didn’t they just keep Fleer? I don’t know, this looks ok and one short print and one parallel per pack is all right I guess. At least it’s not one short print OR parallel like in the hockey set. I don’t mind the one hockey card a box because I liked that set. I don’t know if this is really going to pull me away from the late summer products like A&G though.
Wait, what the hell are mini variations?? What is this, Bazooka now?
Great. First they ruin Masterpieces by stuffing it with SPs, and then proceed to kill it. Now, they rip off a classic Topps design, use it as the carrot on the stick, and create a new set with even more of those stupid parallels and short prints we all love. Oh, and taking a cue from the successful Topps move of adding a nearly completely superfluous pair of Update cards in Heritage packs, they choose to add hockey cards into the mix?
I absolutely do not get how on earth anyone can say what Upper Deck does makes sense. Really!
*sigh* Another year where I only get attached to the base sets. Unless there’s a McClung in there. Which there won’t be, now that he’s been booted back to the ‘pen. *sigh, even more so*
(Thanks for scanning those Brewers BTW. Ugh, that Counsell card was awful, but it is a Counsell card…)
Thanks for the clarification. I actually like the look of the OPC hockey very much, but am not building the set as of now because at $50-60 a box, with only 6 cards a pack I’d need at least $200 to build a *base* set, not to mention the short-prints. On the other hand, the baseball just looks plain jane, looks cheap without actually being that inexpensive. It’s pretty much the same cost as flagship UD, without the glossy paper or great photography.