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Imagine the Upper Deck base brand on steroids. That's what UD Reserve is like. They took the UD set and enhanced it with a metallic rainbow reflective surface and different card stock. It may be hard to appreciate the cards with the scans above, but you will when you see these refract the light when they're in your hands..

I'm not too fond of creating an entire set based off one that was already released. It just seems like a really big parallel set. But if you liked the Upper Deck set, you'll love the Reserve set.

The Star Rookies have also been redone in UD Reserve. They feature the metallic rainbow effect as well. Some have been shorprinted more than others. Out of the 39 Star Rookies in the set, 10 are shortprinted according to the UD website. .

Although we didn't get the stated 3 per box odds that UD suggests, we did manage to get the Morrison shortprinted rookie. I'd much rather pull that than two regular ones. .

It's a good thing UD lets you know you get at least an insert, parallel, or rookie card in each pack. Otherwise we may have passed over this card. The Gold Parallels in UD reserve have gold foil in the small name on the front of the card instead of the normal silver. However, with the foil board card stock, you really have to take a second look to be sure.

Another way to tell the difference is on the back of the card. The silver bar that usually appears below the player's birthday is in gold on the gold parallels.

Just like the base set and rookie subset, these cards are revamped inserts from the Upper Deck Basketball base brand. They feature the same photos and sets. The only difference is the foil board card stock and reflective coating. .

The good thing is you get one insert per pack. The bad thing is you've already seen most of them before. However, the Lebrons set should still be popular even if you aren't a big fan of the Nike commercials.

Comments:

Jersey cards fall at a one per box rate. We were lucky enough to beat those odds. Not only did we come away with a regular jersey card featuring the popular Chris Paul, we also pulled a gorgeous three color patch of the Bobcats' Emeka Okafor.

Falling at the same rate as the jerseys, UD Reserve offers up one autograph card per box. Once again we smashed the odds. Not only did we get the regular UD Reserve Signature card, we killed the odds with a wonderfully done triple autograph card featuring Portland's finest and numbered to just 25 copies.

Along with the triple autograph, UD offers duals and quad autograph versions as well. While I'm not the biggest fan of sticker autos, the Reserve autographs actually look pretty good. It's also understandable why they went with stickers. The card stock from the set makes them extremely condition sensitive, and if they were hard signed they would go through a lot more handling from players and sorting by UD. Besides, when you pull a triple like we did, it tends to make you forget about the stickers....well, almost anyways.