Upper Deck Lack of Quality Control "I'm Done"

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dahabs26

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So, so tired of supporting a company that doesn't care about its customers. I recently bought 3 cases of Upper Deck Series 1 20-21 with the hopes of pulling a few nice Caufields (he's on fire as most of you know) and Zegras cards...and perhaps, if I'm lucky, a few nice case hits. Instead, and I guess I should have expected this, I received absolute "garbage"....sorry for the term but I don't know what else to call it. Two Zegras young guns lucky to grade 7's and three Caufields...MAYBE one will be sent in for grading (possible 9 I"M HOPING). One of the Caufield Young Guns looked like it had been kicked in the corner with a pair of steel toe boots (right out of the pack). IF UPPER DECK KNOWS AFTER TWO YEARS THAT THEY MADE A MISTAKE WITH QUALITY CONTROL WITH THEIR PRODUCT, WHY NOT TAKE A LOSS AND OFFER CASES AT LOWER PRICES. Three cases = $5000!!! These boxes, with such LOW quality, should be worth a fraction of what is being charged. REWIND to SP authentic and did two master cases a few months ago (didn't share then but figured it would come up at some point, or maybe I did share??) and at least 2-3 boxes per master had NO AUTOS AT ALL!!! Not only has Upper Deck watered down their product (one exclusives card per case = MASS QUANTITY AVAILABLE) they also produce cards whose lack of quality is laughable!

All this to say is that I've made the decision to NO LONGER SUPPORT Upper Deck. I will surely buy singles on the secondary market but will not spend another cent with them until their monopoly in the hockey card industry is over (I believe they just re-signed agreement with NHL??). I know I'll have to pay more for my cases in other sports but I just can't support a company like this anymore. It's too bad though, I've been a consistent supporter of their products for the past 20 years or so and have spent A LOT of money with them. NOT ONE MORE PENNY!

If any of you have suggestions of what products to buy in other sports, please PM. Would love to get your opinions and suggestions.

Sorry for the rant,

Steve
 
The quality of the cards in the retail tins has been outstanding. All of the YGs I sent in have been 10s the last couple years!
 
I broke 2 boxes of hobby, most of the inserts were fine, the YGs were decent in one box, and not so good in the other box, the usual rough cut on the top edge on a Zegras, many cards had a rough right edge on the back. I sent them to UD, the ones I got in return weren't perfect, but better.

So far, I opened one retail box, the YGs weren't perfect, but better than in hobby. I have 2 more retail boxes on my shelf, and 6 other incoming, hopefully some of them will be decent. At least, the retail boxes are much cheaper than hobby, it's almost a 2:1 ratio. What I hear is that later produced wax has YGs in better shape.

SPA was an easy pass for me when I heard the 300+$ price. I'm mostly looking for sales and I avoid paying the big price for hyped up wax at the moment. At least, UD1 22-23 looks much better. Also, my OPC 21-22 hobby and SP retail 20-21 boxes weren't perfect, but pretty decent.
 
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That totally sucks but this has been common knowledge for a long time now. The product has been out a year. Why did you not look into it before jumping into 3 cases? Especially if you are looking to grade. All companies quality control is really bad right now. DO NOT BUY anything Panini...it is way worse than UD.

This year I waited to buy S1 at the Expo. The last two years have been brutal. 2020 rounded corners...2021 looks like it was cut with a butter knife. Glad I did as quality control is not great either. Will just buy singles.

On the other hand 2021-22 S2 quality control was really good.
 
I am used to getting some cards with roller marks but this year there were a lot of damaged corners.
 
Bought two boxes of 20-21 Extended retail at the Expo from two different dealers. Both boxes every single base card’s top left corner was trashed.
 
It turns into a joke. After a jigsaw cutted Zegras YG in UD1 hobby last year, I pulled an Owen Power YG out of a mega with a long line in the glossy coating on the back. Not sure how I'll claim it to UD, it doesn't show on a hi-res scan, but you can't miss it looking at the reflection of the card under a good light.

My kids will get Pokemon cards for Christmas.
 
odjickfan said:
It turns into a joke. After a jigsaw cutted Zegras YG in UD1 hobby last year, I pulled an Owen Power YG out of a mega with a long line in the glossy coating on the back. Not sure how I'll claim it to UD, it doesn't show on a hi-res scan, but you can't miss it looking at the reflection of the card under a good light.

My kids will get Pokemon cards for Christmas.
Click to expand...

See if you can take a picture with your phone?
 
capsfan30 said:
See if you can take a picture with your phone?
Click to expand...

My phone is not very high-tech. On my next day off, I'll try to take pictures with an old-school digital camera.

Still, I would prefer to spend my time doing other things that writting emails and filling custom forms to correct the situation. From 1990 to 2020, the condition of the YGs wasn't an issue. I broke a **** load of Pacific, ITG and Topps products without issues, even cheap retail products like Topps Total.
I had the same thing happen with UD1 from the previous year. Most inserts were fine and the YGs were in a pretty bad condition. Not sure what happens with UD. I'm thinking of skipping UD2 and simply buy a Slafkovsky rookie.
 
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So I'll be the bad guy or whatever and say "the upside of crap quality control is high grades should demand higher prices"... maybe? Still doesn't help the hobby.
 
Hector4Hockey said:
So I'll be the bad guy or whatever and say "the upside of crap quality control is high grades should demand higher prices"... maybe? Still doesn't help the hobby.
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100%. If you can get 10s of these cards, it's a flippers paradise. I bought low pop Young Guns at Expo with the sole intent of getting them graded and selling them, and that was easy money.

Those who just want to make sets or collect their favourite players are the ones who get jammed, though.
 
Pop report for this years YG's are starting to confirm what we already know...quality is not good. Around 30% gem rate and way too many getting 8's. Brutal. I hope they fix some of this stuff by next year but don't have high hopes.
 
malsk said:
Pop report for this years YG's are starting to confirm what we already know...quality is not good. Around 30% gem rate and way too many getting 8's. Brutal. I hope they fix some of this stuff by next year but don't have high hopes.
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While I agree that no cards should be damaged when you open packs, if we are expecting 9s and 10s on everything then we better also expect values to plummet. I feel like the grading craze has hurt the hobby as much as it's helped it.
 
frankiefives said:
While I agree that no cards should be damaged when you open packs, if we are expecting 9s and 10s on everything then we better also expect values to plummet. I feel like the grading craze has hurt the hobby as much as it's helped it.
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Yes the expectation should be a 9 card meaning mint. Values would not plummet. Their quality control was good for years. McDavid year every card I got was either a 9 or 10 from PSA. Matthews years was even better...I would say 60-70% was PSA 10 (pop report confirms this).

I am surprised with the amount you open you are ok with UD's quality control lately. You know as well as anyone selling a raw card is tough when it has bad dings. Especially on ebay it is a nightmare.

If UD quality control keeps being low it is just helping people like me. I will just buy singles of the best cards and do very well. My whole point is it hurts the people opening boxes, which is who UD should be concerned about, and they are not.
 
malsk said:
Yes the expectation should be a 9 card meaning mint. Values would not plummet. Their quality control was good for years. McDavid year every card I got was either a 9 or 10 from PSA. Matthews years was even better...I would say 60-70% was PSA 10 (pop report confirms this).

I am surprised with the amount you open you are ok with UD's quality control lately. You know as well as anyone selling a raw card is tough when it has bad dings. Especially on ebay it is a nightmare.

If UD quality control keeps being low it is just helping people like me. I will just buy singles of the best cards and do very well. My whole point is it hurts the people opening boxes, which is who UD should be concerned about, and they are not.
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I didn't say damaged cards are ok. That's why UD will replace them. But today, people expect absolutely mint cards in every pack. It's not realistic.
 
malsk said:
Yes the expectation should be a 9 card meaning mint. Values would not plummet. Their quality control was good for years. McDavid year every card I got was either a 9 or 10 from PSA. Matthews years was even better...I would say 60-70% was PSA 10 (pop report confirms this).
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FYI - you can't apply what you see in a graded card population report across the entirety of the print run... to do that, you'd have to assume a true random sampling of sent in cards (ie, the people sending them in didn't bother to look at them ahead of sending them for grading). People inspect their cards before sending them in to specifically try and achieve 9s and 10s... so the majority of the sample have been filtered already. And given where PSA has gone with their pricing recently, and the softening in popularity of cards as investments recently, there's a whole lot of factors that could be contributing to population reports of 2021/22/ 23 Young Guns. Admittedly, quality control in manufacturing could be part of it... but I doubt it's the only thing.

Cory
 

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