Upper Deck Company facts for kids

Quick facts for kids
The Upper Deck Company, LLC

Type	Private LLC
Industry	Lithography, collectibles
Founded	1988; 37 years ago (1988) in Yorba Linda, California, US
Founder	Boris Korbel Paul Sumner Richard McWilliam
Headquarters	Carlsbad, California , United States
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Jason Masherah (President)
Products	Trading cards, Card games
Brands	O-Pee-Chee
Number of employees	250

The Upper Deck Company, LLC (often called Upper Deck) is a private company famous for making trading cards. It started in 1988 and its main office is in Carlsbad, California, United States.

Upper Deck also creates sports items like small figures and toy cars. They have special deals to make signed items, called "Upper Deck Authenticated," with famous athletes. These athletes include Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, LeBron James, Wayne Gretzky, Serena Williams, Connor McDavid, and Ben Simmons.

Under the name Upper Deck Entertainment, the company has also made card games like World of Warcraft and Vs. System. Since 2007, Upper Deck has also been in charge of the O-Pee-Chee brand, releasing many baseball and ice hockey card collections.

The Story of Upper Deck

Starting with Baseball Cards

On December 23, 1988, Upper Deck got permission from Major League Baseball to make baseball cards. Just two months later, on February 23, 1989, they sent their first cards to a store in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Their first 1989 card set was special. The cards had shiny fronts and were made of thick cardboard. They also had an extra color photo on the back and a tiny hologram to prevent fakes.

Upper Deck sold all its baseball cards that first year. They even sold all their 1990 baseball cards before the year began!

New Ideas for Cards

The 1990 set was the first to include autographed cards of sports stars placed randomly in packs. These cards were also numbered. All Upper Deck cards have a special hologram. Upper Deck was named "Card Set of the Year" every year from 1989 to 2004.

Paul Sumner came up with the idea for Upper Deck in 1987. He worked in printing and wanted to make high-quality cards. He learned about fake cards and knew how to protect them using holograms. He hired Robert Young Pelton to help design the first cards.

Growing into More Sports

On March 20, 1990, Upper Deck got permission from the National Hockey League to make hockey cards. The company also got licenses from the National Football League and the National Basketball Association in 1990. This made Upper Deck the first card company in 10 years to have licenses from all four major sports leagues.

Upper Deck quickly became a strong competitor to companies like Topps, which was once the main card maker. By 1991, the company built a large factory near San Diego.

The Card Market Boom

After Upper Deck introduced its special baseball cards, other companies also started making better cards. The sports card market grew a lot, from $50 million in 1980 to $1.5 billion in 1992. Famous baseball player Reggie Jackson was an adviser in the early 1990s. He also inspired the first certified autograph card, which was a huge success for Upper Deck.

Game-Used Items in Cards

Upper Deck was also the first company to put small pieces of game-used items into cards. In 1997, they made "Game Jersey" cards for basketball. The next year, they did the same for baseball, cutting up jerseys worn by players like Ken Griffey Jr. and Tony Gwynn.

In 1999, Upper Deck bought many old baseball items at an auction. One item was a Ty Cobb jersey, which they bought for a lot of money. They gave this jersey to a 14-year-old boy as a prize.

Previous Upper Deck logo used until early 2008

In May 2005, Richard McWilliam, one of Upper Deck's founders, was named the "most influential" person in the sports collectible world. Upper Deck was also praised for its first 1989 baseball card set, which included a card of a young Ken Griffey Jr.

In July 2005, Upper Deck bought the brand name and assets of a former competitor, Fleer. In March 2007, Upper Deck even tried to buy Topps, another big card company.

Upper Deck used to put the year on its logo, but they stopped this in 1994. In 2008, they changed their green diamond logo to a new design to help market all their products better.

Diamond Club for Collectors

In 2009, Upper Deck started the Diamond Club. This club is for the best collectors of Upper Deck and Fleer cards in the US, Canada, and Japan. Members get special items, invitations to events, and can share ideas with Upper Deck staff. Fewer than 125 members are chosen each year.

Changes in Sports Licenses

On August 6, 2009, Major League Baseball made a deal with Topps, giving Topps the only right to make MLB trading cards. Upper Deck could still make cards with player pictures, but they could not use team logos or names.

In February 2010, Blizzard Entertainment ended its deal with Upper Deck for the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game. On April 7, 2010, Upper Deck also announced they would no longer make NFL trading cards.

In January 2015, another company, Panini America, took over the college sports card agreement that Upper Deck used to have.

The Famous Ken Griffey Jr. Card

In the 1989 Upper Deck baseball set, Ken Griffey Jr. was chosen to be on card number one. This decision was made in late 1988. A teenage employee named Tom Geideman suggested using Griffey. He thought a top new player should be honored with the first card in the set.

At the time, Griffey had not yet played in a major league game, so Upper Deck used a picture of him in his minor league uniform. Other card companies like Score and Topps did not include a Griffey card in their main 1989 sets. Upper Deck's special Griffey card became very popular because Griffey became a big star in the 1989 MLB season.

Even though the Griffey card was popular, it was not rare. Many of these cards were returned because they were cut poorly or had damaged corners. Upper Deck printed many sheets of just the Griffey card to replace them. This card has been graded by many companies, showing how popular it is with collectors.

Special Sports Cards and Sets

Memorabilia Cards

Upper Deck was one of the first companies to put pieces of game-used items into their cards. These are called "memorabilia" or "relic" cards. The cards state that the items are known to Upper Deck to have been used or worn by the player. Sometimes, for new players or retired players, uniforms are worn during photo shoots to create material for these cards.

NBA Exquisite Collection

Upper Deck launched its NBA Exquisite Collection in the 2003–2004 season. These were very expensive cards, with each pack costing $500 at the time. Each pack had five basketball cards, including a base card, an autographed rookie card with a piece of a player's jersey, a game-worn jersey card, and other special cards. Some of the most wanted cards from this collection feature players like LeBron James and Dwyane Wade.

Other Exquisite Collections

Because the NBA Exquisite series was so successful, Upper Deck also released similar sets for basketball in later years, a football line in 2005, and a hockey line called The Cup in 2005–06. The football cards, which include autographed rookie cards with jersey patches, are very popular.

Yankee Stadium Legacy Set

The Yankee Stadium Legacy set is a huge collection of 6,742 cards. It tells the story of every single game ever played at Yankee Stadium. These cards were placed randomly in packs of Upper Deck's 2008 Series 1 Baseball cards.

Other cards in the set celebrate famous sports events that happened at Yankee Stadium. These include Lou Gehrig's famous speech and Muhammad Ali's boxing matches. Guinness World Records planned to call the Yankee Stadium Legacy the largest baseball card set ever made once all the cards were released.

Upper Deck also created a website where collectors could enter codes from the cards to manage their collections and see how they compared to other collectors.

NHL Biography of a Season

The NHL Biography of a Season cards were a 30-card set that showed the best moments of the 2008-09 NHL Season. Collectors could get these cards by trading in wrappers from Upper Deck hockey cards at special stores. A new card was available every week during the NHL season.

20th Anniversary Program

To celebrate its 20th anniversary in 2009, Upper Deck released a special set of 2,500 cards. These cards looked back at the last 20 years in sports, pop culture, politics, world history, and technology. The first cards from this set were found in 2009 Upper Deck Series One Baseball.

NBA Michael Jordan Legacy

In April 2009, Upper Deck announced a huge tribute to Michael Jordan, who was a longtime spokesperson for the company. This set has 1,170 cards and tells the story of every single Chicago Bulls game Jordan played in. It starts with his first NBA game in 1984 and goes up to his last Bulls game in the NBA Finals in 1998.

These cards were included in four different Upper Deck basketball products in 2009. Each card shows Jordan's stats from that specific game. The set also includes 100 different game-used memorabilia cards, each with a piece of Jordan's game-worn jerseys.

Other Brands and Divisions

Upper Deck Entertainment

Upper Deck Entertainment (UDE) used to make the English, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Italian, and French versions of the Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game. They also made the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game and card games based on Marvel Comics and DC Comics characters.

After a break, the Entertainment Department started making board games again. They released Legendary: A Marvel Deck Building Game, which won awards. Later, they also entered the mobile game market with Legendary: DXP.

Upper Deck Digital

Upper Deck Digital uses technology to make collecting more fun. This includes the PenCam, which helps prove if an item is real, and the e-Card, which is a trading card that also has a digital version online. They also let fans create their own personalized Upper Deck trading cards. WebPass is a technology that uses an invisible mark on a card to give collectors access to secret websites.

Upper Deck International

In 1991, Upper Deck started selling its products around the world with Upper Deck Europe, based in the Netherlands. This office helped sell card games, toys, and collectibles in Europe, Asia, and India. They focused more on toys and games than sports items in these regions.

The organization changed its name to Upper Deck International in 2008 to show it was looking beyond just Europe. They had offices in cities like Berlin, Paris, London, Tokyo, and Sydney. However, Upper Deck International declared bankruptcy on February 14, 2012.

Upper Deck Kids

In April 2006, Upper Deck created Upper Deck Kids with the slogan "Get More Than Lucky." Kids could enter codes from the back of cards on a website to earn points. These points could be used to get prizes like autographed items, sports card boxes, video games, and more. The website also had message boards where kids could talk about sports and trade codes.

Trading Cards Overview

Upper Deck has made trading cards for many different sports and non-sports topics.

Sports Cards

Upper Deck has covered many sports in its card collections. Here are some of the sports and the licenses they have had:

Non-Sports Cards

Upper Deck has also made trading cards based on many non-sports topics, including:

See also

• Razor Entertainment
• Topps
• Topps baseball card products