2008 MLB A Piece of History

On the box it says "2008 Artifacts A Piece of History". Upper Deck's web site calls the set "MLB A Piece of History". The cards are nice looking although I think I like last year's Artifacts set better. According to Upper Deck's web site there are 100 player cards.

There are several different colored parallel sets. I got 1 silver parallel in each pack (I bought two blaster boxes with 7 packs each). The silver cards and the regular cards are different only in a slight color difference in the background color. I also got the Manny silver card and they are hard to tell apart. They both have the same the exact same game code on the back which seems a bit fishy to me.

Not mentioned on the web site is that there are Historical Moments cards which appear to be cards 101-200 of the set. These are, as you might expect, illustrations of historical moments. These sort of history cards have been showing up in sets for a few years now. Did someone's marketing research indicate that baseball card collectors like to have a bunch of non-baseball cards in their packs? The cards I got range from Juan Ponce De Leon, to the Alamo, to the Human Genome Project.

The two boxes I bought have 49 player cards, 16 Historical Moments cards, three Yankee Stadium Legacy cards, and two memorabilia cards. The box promised ONE MEMORABILIA CARD IN EVERY BOX ON AVERAGE.

I got a Manny Ramirez "Stadium Scenes" jersey card in one box, and this below in the other.


A Piece of Hollywood Memorabilia card. It's a shirt from the 1991 movie JFK. More non-baseball. The card is a bit vague on the back. It promises it was worn by "Kevin" in the movie. The problem is, according to IMBD, there were three people named Kevin in the movie, Kevin Costner, Kevin Bacon and Kevin Beard. Beard was a stunt man so it's probably not his shirt. On the back of the card is a photo of the shirt showing the collar tag. On the tag is KC, so I'll assume it's Costner's shirt (for all the difference it makes to me).