A couple months ago, I busted open a box of 2013-14 Upper Deck Trilogy, and one of my autographs was an Ice Scripts plexiglass card of Hockey Hall of Fame Bill Barber, which was pretty cool. I know that as a Penguins fan, I am supposed to hate the Flyers, but it's a hall-of-famer! Anyway, the only problem with the card was that the autograph was SEVERELY faded. I'm not sure if it was the nature of the card surface or if Barber just didn't press down very hard with the pen, but either way, the card really didn't look very good.
I decided to request a replacement for the damaged hit. My experience with Upper Deck's customer service was, at this point, zero, so I wasn't sure what to expect. One month later, I get an envelope back from them with this card: a triple jersey card of Jonathan Quick, Ryan Miller, and Tim Thomas from 2013-14 Trilogy
Like I said, I'm not sure how I feel about this, but here are some thoughts:
Negative:
-I sent in an autograph, and got back a non-autograph. At the end of the day, for me, an auto always trumps a non-auto. Of course, there are exceptions, such as, a Sidney Crosby patch card is BY FAR better than a Bill Barber auto, but that's not what we're dealing with here. I sent in a card autographed by a Hockey Hall-of-Famer and got back a card that does not have those qualifications.
-It may be nit-picky, and verging on whiny, but it changes the content of the box. Each box is guaranteed to contain one Ice Scripts auto, and now I am Ice Scripts auto-less. I'll admit it's kind of a ridiculous argument, though, as I've sold two of the rookie autos on Ebay, so already, I don't still have the equivalent to the contents of a box.
Positive
-I'm a big fan of USA Hockey, so this is definitely a cool card for my collecting interests. Plus, all three of these goaltenders were the goaltenders for the Silver Medal-winning 2010 Olympic Hockey Team. I'm not sure if this was intentionally done by Upper Deck or not, but the fact that these are the three American goaltenders featured is super-cool, in my opinion.
-I genuinely like all three of these guys, and due to Miller's performance during the 2010 Olympics, I am an especially big fan of his. The make-up of the 2014 squad may be different, but I'm not sure if I'll end up being as big a fan of those three, individually, as I am of these three.
I need to be sure to say, though, that Upper Deck did live up to their end of the deal. When submitting a replacement request, all that you are promised is a card of "equal book value,"and when looking at items sold on Ebay (NOT Beckett "book value") the cards really are pretty close in terms of what they sell for. Even though I would hope for an auto for an auto, there was no guarantee at that.
At the end of the day, I like the card I got, and that's all that matters, right? I'm not going to argue about losing out on an autographed card, especially considering how reasonably priced other Barbers are. I'm also not saying it was a horrible experience either. It was just a bit unexpected.
What do you all think?
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