2011 Upper Deck World of Sports

I saw a blaster box of Upper Deck World of Sports, marked down from $19.99 to $12.99 back in April. I probably wouldn't have bought it at full price but hey, for $7 off, why not.  Then I promptly forgot I bought it.

There are 400 cards in this set. All the inserts are relic, autos or both. I didn't get any hits in the box, just 66 base cards. Sports represented were: minor league/college baseball; college football (all players who are now pros), college basketball (again, all players who are currently pros and college coaches); pro hockey; soccer; golf; college and professional lacrosse (professional lacrosse?); jockeys and a single race car driver.

The cards are glossy, full-bleed and no foil.  Here are some of the more interesting cards.

 One of only 4 cards in the box I even remotely care about since DeShields is in the Astros minor league system. Here he is in his Woodward Academy uniform.

Gary Brown was the Giants #1 pick in 2010 but hasn't made it to the majors as yet. Here he is playing for Fullerton State. What's interesting about this card is that Brown also appeared in Upper Deck's Goodwin Champions 2011 set using the same photo with one difference - no uniform logo .

I'm not a big basketball fan but a card featuring Hall of Famer Michael Jordan is always interesting. He looks impossibly young here.

Bo Jackson cards are also interesting to me. I only have one other card featuring him playing football, his 1988 Topps rookie card.

There were 7 hockey cards in the box. All are pro players and 6 of them are in Team Canada uniforms. This is one of the few cards in the box which features a player in his pro uniform and it's in black and white for some reason. I thought that maybe there was a b/w parallel set but apparently not.

One thing I learned from this set is that there is such a thing as professional lacrosse. In fact there are two profession leagues in the US, Major League Lacross and The National Lacrosse League, which is apparently an indoor league. Some players play for both leagues.  Greg Bice above is shown in his college days with Rochester. He is currently a long pole defenseman with the Ohio Machine in Major League Lacrosse.

This is Marvell Wynne, Jr. with the Colorado Rapids in Major League Soccer. If his name sounds familiar, it's because is father played major league baseball, mostly with the Pirates and Padres in the 1980s.  According to his Wikipedia page he wanted to play another sport than his father's. He played football in high school and later soccer at UCLA.

There is also a woman's professional soccer league in the US called the National Women's Soccer League. Mitts currently plays for the Boston Breakers. She is also a 3-time Olympic Gold medalist in soccer and appeared on a Topps Allen and Ginter card in 2011.

And I guess I can be interested in a very young Tiger Woods card.

And finally we have Amber Cope. She and her sister Angela, are the only twin sister act in NASCAR.