Wild Card on the Loose as Upper Deck Goes Political

Move over Obama.

As the candidates battle it out for delegate share, the Carlsbad-based Upper Deck Co. accidentally released a Hillary Clinton parody baseball card that has become a financial home run for some lucky collectors.

All of the Clinton cards — a characterization that matched her with Morganna the Kissing Bandit, a very buxom woman notorious for charging onto baseball fields and planting kisses on players — were supposed to have been manually pulled from the “Presidential Predictor” set, says Upper Deck’s director of sports marketing, Kerri Stockholm.

Realizing at the last minute that it could be perceived as offensive, executives of the sports and entertainment company decided to pull it. But that meant manually removing the cards from machines and loaded packs as they were being prepared for shipment, Stockholm says.

The candidate cards were inserted at a rate of one in every eight packs, so the task of finding all of the Hillary Clinton cards was virtually impossible. Some slipped through and were selling on eBay with bids in the $209 to $1,800 range at midday on Feb. 22.

The cards, including parodies of Al Gore, Fred Thompson, Mitt Romney, Barack Obama, John McCain, John Edwards and Rudy Giuliani, were produced as part of Upper Deck’s 2008 Series One Baseball release to boost sales. They went on the market on Super Tuesday, Feb. 5.

Upper Deck does not reveal sales or production numbers.

“This set was developed as a way to make the product relevant to a wider audience,” Stockholm added.

The Clinton card could likely become very relevant to a small audience.
Stockholm says Upper Deck plans to issue another Hillary Clinton card at the end of May. The company has not yet settled on the final design.

— Connie Lewis

Source: San Diego Business Journal