Apparently there have been widespread issues with damaged Young Guns being pulled out of 2009/10 Upper Deck Series One boxes, and thats not good since the Young Guns are the main hits from this product. The dealer manning the Atlanta Sports Cards table at the Sun-Times show in Chicago, this weekend claimed it wasn’t true, and didn’t know anything about it.
But apparently, Upper Deck noticed there was a problem, and during the Spring Expo in Toronto they took steps to attempt to correct it. The following was posted at quincy at Hobby Insider:
On Thursday when the issue first came to light, they had an urgent high-level meeting. By Friday, sleeves of fresh, unblemished YG replacements were being packaged up from the printers to be sent to Expo and overseen by no less a person than UD’s CFO (according Karvin). They were overnighted, expedited through customs and actively being put into use by Saturday afternoon.
Apparently, YG replacements are being given to distributors after the close of Expo with instructions to spread the word and expedite card replacement as best they can. Not an ideal solution, but a pretty good one. So, now it appears that the Tavares Young Gun that I was so excited to pull has been reprinted by Upper Deck. Fine, if they were going to oversee a one-to-one exchange. Not so good if they are pounding these out to their distributors. There are shady characters in this hobby, and UD is relinquishing control of the major hits out of their flagship brand.
UD made things right with collectors at the Expo. My main issue is that UD seems to have dealt with this problem in a panic, rather than giving this some deliberate thought, probably because they were faced with a number of angry people at their tables at the biggest show of the year for hockey. That’s all well and good, but while those collectors were angry, and in person – they are by no means a majority. These collectors were compensated (as everyone should be), and then some received a few extras as well.
So, for the guy in Vancouver who pulled these damaged Young Guns, here’s the situation. He either has to send them back to UD (at his cost, probably tracked to make sure they don’t go missing, and in the interim they are probably going to lose 50 % of their value), or attempt to track down a distributor and try that route.
So, after listening to me rant, you are probably wondering if I have a better solution. I do, but UD has already had many chances to implement it – fix their QC/QA department. Or even better – actually a hire a QC/QA department. Barring that? Eat the criticism you get in person at the Expo, and ensure all collectors have equal access to these cards – and keep them all in your hands. There might be one backdoor at UD, but that’s better than having Tavares Young Guns trickling out all over the continent.
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