2002 Victory

Set Type: Primary
Card dimensions: 2½” x 3½”
Parallel: Gold
Inserts: None
Additional Information/14,000 Phillies Commentary: The penultimate Victory issue, which in retrospect was really a continuation of the Collector’s Choice brand under a new name — I never did understand why Upper Deck engaged in this particular rebranding. It’s a nice, solid, unique low-end set (as opposed to the Topps Opening Day sets, which Topps puts almost no effort into really differentiating from the flagship brand), and it’s a shame we really don’t see sets like this anymore. The last 110 cards in the set (cards 551-660) were distributed in Upper Deck’s multi-brand 2002 Rookie Debut packs, which also included updates to Honor Roll and Ovation, as well as new inserts. However, there was no actual 2002 Rookie Debut set, so those inserts are associated with a set that doesn’t actually exist. Furthermore, the updates included updated cards for veterans/non-rookies, thus making the “Rookie Debut” name quite the head-scratcher.

431 432 433 434 435 436 437 438 439 440 441 442 443 444 445 509 515 589 590 591 641 642 643

Scott Rolen Marlon Anderson Bobby Abreu Jimmy Rollins Doug Glanville Travis Lee Brandon Duckworth Pat Burrell Kevin Jordan Robert Person Johnny Estrada Randy Wolf Jose Mesa Mike Lieberthal Bobby Abreu & Robert Person (Phillies team checklist) Doug Nickle (Rookie 2002 subset) Marlon Byrd (Rookie 2002 subset) Jeremy Giambi Vicente Padilla Brett Myers Jorge Padilla (Rookie 2002 subset) Anderson Machado (Rookie 2002 subset) Eric Junge (Rookie 2002 subset)

Not Living Up to Expectations

Featured Card: 2001 Topps Heritage #375, Travis Lee; 2002 Donruss Diamond Kings #101, Marlon Byrd

The end of my last post on December 14: “My 2011 Phillies Cards in Review will resume tomorrow. Really, it will. Don’t roll your eyes in disbelief. I mean it!”

The problem with ending that post in such a manner is that within a couple days I started feeling really sheepish about those words. Worse still, I found myself procrastinating because I felt like that once I finally did return, I had to acknowledge the ridiculousness of those words — which is something I didn’t actually want to do. So, having completely froze into inaction due to a semantic morass of my own making, I decided the time arrived for me to just resume.

On one level, I actually feel a little silly for admitting all this. After all, this isn’t a professional blog by any stretch of the imagination — though I do attempt a professional level of writing and research (when I engage in the latter). Nonetheless, I have expectations for myself that I want to maintain, and for the last 23 days, I did nothing of the sort. So, it’s a new year and I while I won’t promise to post more, I will certainly make a concerted effort to post more consistently. That doesn’t mean posting every day or even every other day — it just means that there won’t ever be another 23-day stretch between posts or posting anything like the sentence which closed my post on December 14.

Having said all that, my 2011 Phillies Cards in Review will resume with the next post, with the goal of completing the series before 2012 Topps arrives on store shelves.