1989 Upper Deck

Folks, we have a winner. Finally. 1989 Upper Deck was the biggest thing to hit the pike in the history of cards at the time. Even though they were solely to blame for triple-digit card values right out of the pack, there's no denying the importance these had on the hobby.

Counterfeit-proof holograms, card backs that were better than most others fronts, and a stellar classic looking design right out of the box made these the Holy Grail of 80's cards, surpassing '84 Donruss without even breaking much of a sweat. It's not often something lives up to the hype, but these did and still do.

Unfortunately it was still the same collection of has beens and never will be's that made up the Tigers set (Ivan DeJesus? Torey Lovullo? Good god, what was I doing in 1989?) 

Anyway, the 1989 Upper Deck Tigers:

47 Paul Gibson

49 Larry Herndon

106 Tom Brookens

117 Gary Pettis

128 Chet Lemon

136 Luis Salazar

150 Matt Nokes

259 Ray Knight

266 Dave Bergman

279 Guillermo Hernandez

290 Alan Trammell

298 Doyle Alexander

352 Jack Morris

355 Ivan DeJesus

373 Mike Henneman

391 Frank Tanana

451 Lou Whitaker

454 Jim Walewander

472 Jeff Robinson

475 Walt Terrell

493 Eric King

652 Pat Sheridan

654 Mike Heath

690 Team Checklist/Alan Trammell

As I recall, Upper Deck got a little sneaky with their Update set. Instead of releasing them as a separate set, they just started issuing packs that included cards 701-800 along with the cards of the base 1-700 set. I have no confirmation as to how pissed Topps was for Upper Deck coming up with a diabolical ploy that Topps would've loved to spring on an unsuspecting public. After finishing a 700 card set, you had to then buy packs that only had 2-3 high number cards, so Upper Deck made sure you spent as much money getting the last 100 cards as you did getting the first 700.

The 1989 Upper Deck, uh, Update set:

714 Ken Williams

761 Fred Lynn

764 Steve Searcy

782 Torey Lovullo

784 Chris Brown

Then once it was all said and done, they issued a factory set of all 800 cards. For something like $70. 

Bastards.