3/7/12: Sorry to break the news, but if you are owed a redemption or replacement from Upper Deck YOU LIKELY WILL NEVER GET IT!
I've been fighting hobby fraud, more specifiocally Cpor[porate Hobby Fraud every day since 1997. In 2004, I was diagnosed with a deadfly form of Muscular Dystrophy & already had several ruptured neck & low back disks since late 2001 so I had to stop much of my work then, but it never stopped. Keep in mind I nmever got paid a cent to do any of this, I never got free boxes every month, & never had advertisers. I never even used my skills as a Forensicv Document examiner to make money- only to bust forgers for free.
Upper Deck has had the exact same phone message on for over three months now. No other extensions work, they hang up if you press anything & when the message ends it also hangs up. THIS WAS A DELAY TACTIC BY UPPER DECK TO BUY TIME TO GET ALL THE MONEY & RUN!
All the private phone extensions I knew are all now DEAD & all the e-mails I knew (over ten of them) are also DEAD!
Upper Deck was sued by Major League Baseball & the MLBPA for making baseball cards even after they were court ordered not to. This should prove to collectors of those fake NSA game-used cards in BGS-like cases that YOU NEED A LICENSE TO MAKE CARDS OR USE PLAYER'S LIKENESS IN ANY WAY.
DO NOT SEND REDEMPTION CARDS IN TO UPPER DECK, OR CARDS FOR REPLACEMENTS.
James
2014 Update: I did write an e-mail to Upper Deck's new President a few months after Richard McWilliam died and explained how I got so screwed. They sent me over $150 worth of On Card autographs of players I requested. I really did appreciate that.
But in the end of November 2014 I found out that EVERY college jersey they put on any football card starting with SP Authentic Rookie/Patch Autographs that were some of the most expensive RC/Auto/Patch cards in the hobby from 2011-present ARE ALL FAKE MEMORABILIA CARDS!
I had no idea that this was going on because NO ONE else ever mentioned it anywhere! And I vowed to never buy any Upper Deck cards after this redemption Fiasco which I stuck to, so I never even saw one of these college jersey/patch cards until Nov. 2014 when I saw a 2013 Ultimate Patch card of a retired player which I needed for my collection. It was a seller with "BUY IT NOW" only but also had "MAKE AN OFFER". So I offered a low price that I thought he'd never accept, and he accepted my offer.
The moment I received my great looking patch card, I flipped it over and I read the back which stated (I'm paraphrasing here) "PLAYER WORN FOR UPPER DECK." You all need to realize that Upper Deck SCREWED every person who owns one of these COLLEGE REPLICA JERSEY/PATCH cards because none of these cards have any type of "MEMORABILIA" on them (what Upper Deck actually calls them). Then I find out from two different trusted sources that Upper Deck is in the middle of being sold. This means that Upper Deck will NEVER take responsibility for screwing literally tens of thousands of different collectors!!!
Now, how thousands of dealers and tens of thousands of collectors never caught this in almost FOUR YEARS is beyond my understanding when it took me all of 30-senonds to realize what Upper Deck did that screwed everyone that owns one of these WORTHLESS college replica jersey/patch cards that the players depicted may (or may not- YOU NEED TO SEE PROOF IN THE WAY OF LOA's THESE DAYS THAT CARD COMPANY JERSEYS WERE GAME-WORN BECAUSE THE FBI BUSTED GUYS SELLING FAKE JERSEYS TO CARD COMPANIES IN 2012 AND I HAVE ABSOLUTE PROOF THAT PLAYOFF BOUGHT THESE FAKE JERSEYS TOO) have thrown on for a few seconds then took right off and they magically became "memorabilia" cards according to Upper Deck WHICH COULDN'T BE MORE INACCURATE!
Now I understand that none of you investigated EVERY card company (big, small, new or old) for fraud at one time (or more) or another from 1992-present like I have, and I realize IN ADDITION TO THAT none of you worked as a Senior Manager for a big card company like I did for the sole purpose of: 1) learning every insider secret I could possibly learn in the time I was there. 2) Busted them for fraud as soon as I collected enough evidence to do so.
I DID THESE THINGS AT GREAT PERSONAL EXPENSE TO MYSELF AND GREAT PERSONAL LOSS TOO FOR THE FUTURE OF THIS HOBBY FOR ALL OF YOU: BUYERS AND SELLERS ALIKE! You need to understand this because none of what I did that truly saved this hobby and extended it's shelf life by at least a decade was ever publicized by anyone besides myself because as my former "friend" Mike Payne (former Beckett President: and ironically current Panini employee) stated to me in 2001 "You do the things we could never do and we could never tell the necessary truth like you do because we are afraid of losing advertising dollars." Again, I was paraphrasing because this is all off the top of my head, but the main message was the exact same.
Everyone that owns any Upper Deck "memorabilia" card that states "PLAYER WORN GFOR UPPER DECK" needs to call Upper Deck NOW (before they get sold) and ask to speak to a supervisor because you want to know why they marketed WORTHLESS jersey cards as "MEMORABILIA" which caused you to spend money on worthless junk that you no longer want!
I hate to say it like this, but there are IDIOTS paying $50.00 or MUCH MORE for these truly worthless- Dan Marino, John Elway, Jerome Bettis, Barry Sanders, etc. "memorabilia" patch cards and every star rookie you can name from 2011-present on Autograph/with worthless college Patch cards (because Upper Deck lost all their NFL football licensing in late 2010). So in the near future when everyone realizes that Upper Deck duped the entire hobby into believing these were game-used, or real memorabilia cards there will be PLENTY of extremely angry people and if Upper Deck is sold to new owners by this time: THERE WILL BE ABSOLUTELY NOTHING YOU CAN DO- unless the new owners out of the kindness of their hearts offer some kind of replacement policy (considering the sheer number of cards and money involved I doubt very strongly that the new owners could even afford to offer you ANYTHING!!!).
MARK MY WORDS HERE AND DON'T FORGET THAT I WAS THE FIRST AND ONLY PERSON IN THIS WHOLE HOBBY TO NOTICE THIS MAJOR FRAUD EVENT BY UPPER DECK AND PUBLICIZED IT AS SOON AS I KNEW!
YET I'M EXTREMTLY SICK EVERY DAY SINCE 2010 (I'm legally homebound/bed-ridden and have been on SSD since 2004) AND AM TERMINALLY ILL AT AGE 47!!! SO WHAT HAPPENED TO THE BRAINS OF EVERYONE ELSE IN THIS HOBBY? ESPECIALLY DEALERS WHO BOUGHT CASES OF THIS JUNK??? You can't tell me no one noticed what Upper Deck did, but they just wanted to make money so they stayed silent. Notice how almost NO ONE on eBay selling these cards state that they are "game-used"- especially if they use the words Game-Used for "REAL" game-used cards that state "game-used" on the card backs!!! Those sellers almost all know the facts about these worthless cards, so all they care about is taking collector's money regardless of repercussions. This is how bad the full time sellers left in this hobby are.
