Upper Deck Company
The Upper Deck Company, LLC is a private company primarily known for producing trading cards. It was founded in 1988. Its headquarters are in Carlsbad, California, United States.
The company also produces sports related items such as figurines and die-cast toys on top of having exclusive agreements to produce memorabilia, under the brand name "Upper Deck Authenticated", with athletes including Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, LeBron James, Wayne Gretzky, Serena Williams, Roberto Luongo, Connor McDavid, and Ben Simmons. Under the Upper Deck Entertainment name, the company also produced card games such as World of Warcraft and Vs. System.
Upper Deck is also the current licensor of the O-Pee-Chee brand since 2007, having released several baseball and ice hockey card collections.
Company history
On December 23, 1988, Upper Deck was granted a license by Major League Baseball to produce baseball cards, and just two months later, on February 23, 1989, delivered its first two cases of baseball cards to George Moore of Tulsa's Baseball Card Store in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Its inaugural 1989 set stood out from other trading cards with its glossy fronts on heavy-duty cardboard, with an additional color photo on the back of each card and a counterfeit-proof tiny hologram marking. Upper Deck sold out its baseball cards midway through this inaugural year, then pre-sold its entire 1990 baseball stock before the year began.The 1990 set included the industry's first randomly inserted personally autographed and numbered cards of sports stars. All Upper Deck brands bear an exclusive trademark hologram, and Upper Deck was named "Card Set of the Year" every year from 1989 to 2004.
Paul Sumner created the Upper Deck concept in 1987. He worked in printing sales and came up with the idea for a premium card. When he heard about card counterfeiting, he realized that he knew a way to protect cards. He had studied holograms in college and had used them in printing his company's brochures. He hired Robert Young Pelton to design and produce a prototype. Pelton designed and produced the cards for Upper Decks first three-year rise. Pelton's agencies, Pelton & Associates and Digital Artists, were replaced by Chiat/Day. Paul Sumner resigned with the understanding that he would be known as the "Co-Founder of Upper Deck," something that the company's owner and CEO, Richard McWilliam, recognized until McWilliam's death in 2013.
On March 20, 1990, Upper Deck received licenses from the National Hockey League and the National Hockey League Players' Association to produce hockey cards. The company also obtained licenses from the National Football League and the National Basketball Association in 1990, making Upper Deck the first trading card company in 10 years to be licensed by all four leagues. Upper Deck quickly rivaled Topps, which had been considered the standard, and other competitors, such as Fleer, Donruss, and Score. By 1991, the company built a plant of brown marble and black glass on a hilltop north of San Diego.
After Upper Deck introduced its premium baseball series, other companies followed with improved photography, better design, and higher-quality paper stock. The sports card market grew from $50 million in 1980 when Topps' monopoly was broken by Fleer, to a $1.5 billion industry in 1992. Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson served as an adviser in the early 1990s. Jackson would also serve as the inspiration for the first certified autograph card inserted into trading cards with the company's "Find the Reggie" campaign. A massively successful promotion for the Upper Deck brand, the triple portrait of Jackson, remains an iconic image among baseball card collectors.
At the beginning of the 1992–93 NHL season, Upper Deck made Patrick Roy a spokesperson. Roy was a hockey card collector, with more than 150,000 cards. An ad campaign was launched and it had an adverse effect on Patrick Roy's season. Upper Deck had a slogan called "Trade Roy", and it was posted on billboards throughout the city of Montreal. A Journal de Montreal poll, published on January 13, 1993, indicated that 57% of fans favoured trading Patrick Roy. Before the trade deadline, Canadiens general manager Serge Savard insisted that he would consider a trade for Roy. The Canadiens ended the season by winning only 8 of their last 19 games.
Upper Deck was also the first to insert swatches of game-used material into cards when it made jersey cards in 1997 UD Basketball. The insert set was called Game Jersey and a similar set followed in baseball the next year, where UD cut up game-used jerseys of Ken Griffey Jr., Tony Gwynn, and Rey Ordóñez.
In 1999, Upper Deck Company spent in excess of $1.1 million in acquiring vintage baseball memorabilia items at the Barry Halper Collection auction held at Sotheby's in New York City. One of the items was a Ty Cobb jersey that Upper Deck paid $332,500 for. As part of a sweepstakes prize, it gave the jersey to 14-year-old Robert Shell of Milwaukee. At the time, the estimated tax Robert was going to pay on the prize was $125,000. The amount, his mother said, would force the family to sell the jersey.
In May 2005, Richard McWilliam was named the sports collectible industry's "most influential" person of the past 20 years at an annual trade convention in Hawaii. In addition to McWilliam's award, Upper Deck was also recognized for the debut of its legendary 1989 baseball trading card set, which included the then 19-year-old centerfielder Ken Griffey Jr., as the "most influential" event of the past 20 years. The list of nominees was created and voted upon by the staff of conference organizers F+W Publications.
In July 2005, Upper Deck won the liquidation auction of former competitor Fleer-SkyBox International's brand name, assets, and business model, as well as the Fleer collectibles die-cast business assets. In March 2007, Upper Deck made an offer to buy competitor Topps, competing with Madison Dearborn Partners and Tornante Company, the eventual buyer.
Upper Deck originally included the year of the trading card set's release on its logo, with the "19" above "Upper" and the last two digits of the year under "Deck". This practice was dropped midway through the 1994 season. In 2008, Upper Deck retired the green diamond logo and replaced it with a new design that it could better use to market all of its products.
In 2009, Upper Deck introduced the Diamond Club. Diamond Club members consist of the top individual purchasers and collectors of Upper Deck and Fleer brands throughout the United States, Canada and Japan. The criteria were that the members distinguished themselves not only by the amount of money they spent, but by how they helped to promote these products within the hobby and to other collectors. Diamond Club members receive special promotional items, receive invitations to special events and are invited to an annual summit where they can share ideas with members of Upper Deck while participating in a special reception with one of the company's spokesmen. Fewer than 125 members are chosen to be a part of the program each year.
On August 6, 2009, Major League Baseball announced it entered into a multi-year deal with Topps giving it exclusive rights to produce MLB trading cards. Upper Deck would retain its rights to produce cards bearing player likenesses via its contract with the MLBPA but will be unable to use team logos or other trademarked images. On February 1, 2010, Major League Baseball filed a federal lawsuit against Upper Deck for trademark infringement. A mutual settlement was announced on March 3, 2010, stating that Upper Deck could continue selling its three current baseball card series, although they were prohibited from using any MLB trademarks, including team logos and names, in any future baseball products. Despite this limitation, Upper Deck commented that they would still continue to produce baseball-related cards without using those trademarks.
On September 29, 2009, Upper Deck created the company's first-ever packs of Finnish- and Swedish-language Victory hockey cards.
In February 2010, Blizzard Entertainment ended its licensing deal with Upper Deck, which had previously produced the World of Warcraft trading card game.
On April 7, 2010, Upper Deck announced it would no longer be licensed to produce NFL trading cards. Upper Deck spokesperson Terry Melia noted on his Twitter account that, "UD was unable to come to terms with NFL Properties. No NFL Properties-licensed football cards from UD in 2010." Upper Deck owner Richard McWilliam said, "Over the past year, Upper Deck has attempted to negotiate a new licensing deal with NFL Properties. Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, we were not able to reach agreeable terms, and therefore will not be issuing any NFL Properties-licensed trading cards for the 2010 season. Upper Deck will continue to focus on its exclusive license agreement with the Collegiate Licensing Company and co-exclusive agreements with NHL Enterprises and the NHL Players Association, as well as its multiple entertainment licenses."
On January 8, 2015, Panini America acquired the Collegiate Licensing Company exclusive trading card agreement that Upper Deck formerly owned.
DeWayne Buice
, then a California Angels pitcher, would later become one of Upper Deck's founding partners. In November 1987, Buice walked into The Upper Deck, a trading card store. Store owner Bill Hemrick noticed Buice and the two struck up a friendship, one that led to Buice's hosting an autograph session at the store. Within weeks, Buice had become one of Hemrick's business partners.Hemrick and his partner Paul Sumner were in the process of starting Upper Deck. Unfortunately, the two lacked the business and personal connections to help land the necessary Major League Baseball Players Association license, which would allow Upper Deck to use players' names and likenesses on its cards. The only response they received was that the players' union was not accepting another card company for three more years. Buice was told that if he could help secure the license, he would receive a 12 percent stake in the card company. Buice would become a key figure in getting MLBPA officials to agree to a meeting. By the end of the 1988 season, Hemrick and Sumner received the license and by 1989, were making baseball cards.
By the time Buice retired from professional baseball at the end of the 1989 season, he had collected $2.8 million from Upper Deck. Believing the company owed him even more money, Buice sued Upper Deck executives. After the battle over Buice's stake in the company was settled in court, he became a millionaire who reportedly made $17 million on the deal, far more than he ever made as a baseball player. In two-and-a-half seasons with the Angels, Buice made $212,500.
Upper Deck was originally scheduled to pay Buice his millions over a four-year period, but due to the 1994 baseball strike, Upper Deck's business stalled. Buice then agreed to a six-year payment plan. Sales in 1995 and 1996 fell so far that for those two years, virtually all the company's profits went to Buice.
On the day in 1998 that Upper Deck cut Buice his final check, the company threw a party at its Carlsbad, California, headquarters. The top brass ordered employees to work just a half day. Later that year at the Christmas party, Upper Deck CEO Richard McWilliam told employees the company's deal with Buice was the worst deal it had ever done.