1995 Upper Deck Rules - A Case Study

1995 Upper Deck is one of my favorite baseball sets of the '90s.  Recently I opened up a retail pack that was so packed with star power and great photography that I just had to share it here.  12 glorious, full-bleed photos, let's see who's inside...

My one-per-pack Electric Diamond parallel is ESPN analyst John Kruk.  As this set goes, not the most interesting photograph, but a recognizable name nonetheless.

Even the portrait cards are very well done.

A nice Crime Dog/Lemke high-five captured on McGriff's card.  I wish Topps would use more out-of-the-ordinary photographs like this in their flagship set instead of saving them for photo variation SPs and sets like Stadium Club.

This might be my favorite card from this pack, as it caused me to stop and say "Wait, Darryl Strawberry played for the Giants?!?!".  Turns out that he did, for just 29 total games, in 1994.  This would have been right at the height of my childhood baseball fandom, yet somehow I never knew (or totally forgot).

Five recognizable names right out of the gate, finishing off with HOFer Greg Maddux.  I like this classic, well-framed shot of Greg's delivery.

Well, I never promised that they'd all be great cards.

No, you're not seeing double.  That's just mid-'90s collation for you, same exact card back-to-back (stuck together slightly in fact!).  Of course it had to be the least interesting card in the pack that I received two of...

A nice horizontal Expos card.  We're right back to some more recognizable names now; I remember when Cliff Floyd was kind of a big deal in my circle of childhood collecting friends.

Here's another nice portrait shot, of Red Sox fan favorite Ellis Burks from his time with the Rockies.

File this one under "so bad it's good".  That jersey doesn't look right at all, I'm thinking this is an (incomplete) airbrush job?  Also, what the hell is that on Jose's right hand?

Jeff Montgomery is the second high-five card in just this pack!

Even though I think the Star Rookie subset is one of the few missteps in an otherwise beautiful set, Jeter is probably the best one that you could land.

There you have it, a very solid pack of 1995 Upper Deck baseball!