The following guide is what many golf card aficionados, including myself, consider to be some of the most elusive, hardest to pull, desired and simply impossible to find golf cards that Upper Deck has ever put out!  Most of these pictures are cards that I have actually pulled or over the years have gotten off of eBay.  I also want to thank several people namely BULLROCK and the crew at BULLROCK7.COM Golf Card Discussion whom have sent me these pictures from personal collections over the years because we’re all in the same gang. And last but not least, of course….I thank my Vegas and sea otter friends at Upper Deck for their input right from the source!

#10    

 Jack Nicklaus 2004 SP Signature 8×10 Signs of a Champion SP/25 redemption

The first on the list says it all in the title. Any time you have the words Jack Nicklaus auto and redemption /25 in the same sentence you are talking about one heck of a card!  First off, if you do not know the history of the 2004 SP Signature line please see my guide that goes into depth about it before continuing so you can grasp the difficulty of how hard it actually is to pull a star card, let alone this bad boy. By 2004 Upper Deck began to see golf card sales wane slightly so they introduced new product into the market place to spike interest with the 8×10 cards and it worked. Problem is that most of the highly collectable golfers were so short printed that only a select few collectors had the honor of finishing sets. Check out the picture & you will see what I mean by lucky! It is an unparalled classic shot of the Bear!

#9    

Chi Chi Rodriguez 2001 Upper Deck Premier Edition Player’s Ink SP /43

It is hard enough to pull a Player’s Ink autograph, one in 3000 to be exact, but to actually pull a “Chi Chi Ink” short printed to only 43 copies is almost impossible. With the sheer mass amount of product released by Upper Deck in 2001, the chances were like a needle in a hay stack.  This card has reached legendary status among guru’s as the toughest mainstream pull in the premier edition.  It’s crazy black thick sharpie signature and the fact that there is only one gem mint specimen in the world has recruited some faithful cult followers! 

#8    

Payne Stewart 2002 Upper Deck America’s Best Shirt SP/25

In October 1999 at the age of 42 Payne Stewart’s life came abruptly to an end in a tragic plane crash. He was one of the most loved and charismatic golfers ever to embrace the game and it is only natural that collectors embrace his cards. Although there are no official autos of Payne released under the moniker Upper Deck, they did release some legendary authentic thread cards. One of the hardest to find is the America’s Best!  It is rumored that there was only a little bit of fabric left from all of the 2001 shirt cards made so UD used that to release in 2002 & only had 25 to release! Since this is a set collected by many, it is a hunted card for sure, and sold at a premium. It was his last shirt card ever produced by UD and the end of an era…

#7    

     Jack Nicklaus 2001 SP Authentic Sign of the Times SP

It seems like every 30 years or so a new standard to live up to presents itself on the PGA tour just in time to take the game to new heights and create more exposure for the best sport.  Well, before Tiger Woods was Jack Nicklaus.  Jack defines legend and knowing this, Upper Deck took one of its best cards, in its inaugural “premium” golf set, and made it a short printed release.  Sounds good in theory but what happens when golf takes off and everyone wants it to complete their 85 card Sign of the Times autograph set?  They find out that there are only a few dozen to go around and the price goes up….way up.  This is undeniably one quinicential golf card from one of the baddest auto sets of all time…if you can find it. 

#6    

Tiger Woods 2001 SP Preview Authentic Threads

Next time you walk into your garden variety superstore, walk over to the aisle between cash register #1 and the tobacco products checkout line and chances are you will see a 2001 Upper Deck Premier edition “rack pack” still hanging out from when they were shipped there many years ago.  Inside each rack pack are three 2001 Upper Deck Premier Edition golf packs and a measly 3 card SP Preview pack.  Well every 40-50 packs or so contain an “Authentic Thread” and trust me they do not come around too often.  Mostly created, in theory, to rid the UD warehouses of all the excess production from 2001 the SP Preview line, it seemed like a genius solution!  Only problem is that the one Tiger jersey card in the set is nearly impossible to find!  Many speculate as to what has happened i.e. they were damaged in production and only a few were released (there are no gem mint versions) and that there are only 25 made but all I know is that you rarely see it and when you do it goes for BIG BUCKS!  Accompany that with it being condition sensitive and it becomes quite a legendary piece.

#5    

Tiger Woods 2001 SP Preview Red /50

Every so often you see a card selling for over $2,000 and you wonder why?  This is most positively an epic Tiger Woods rookie card with the awesome pose, the exotic red foil and the irregular machine stamp to /50, however, there is more to this card that one may think that contributes heavily to its desirability.  To actually pull a red parallel card means that you have opened over 500 packs of SP Preview as they fall 1 in roughly 1500 cards.  That is absolutely a lot of money spent on rack packs folks.  Those odds are not printed anywhere but from experience in an unbiased environment I was able to deduce that those were the odds.  Expounding on the word “unbiased,” imagine I asked you what you think would happen to the odds of pulling an SP Preview red parallel if I told you that the skilled eye can spot them very easily through the back of the packs?  You would say that everyone is going to pull the Tigers and keep the red parallels right?  Bingo!  Now there are a lot of awesome dealers out there that sell preview packs that do not peek. I have bought some from them and actually pulled the above card. However, SOME opportunists that have the time might peek.  So the chances of pulling that Tiger red /50?  Priceless…

#4    

Tiger Woods 2003 SP Game Used Dual Signature Shirts Auto /10

2003 was the middle of the 5 year legacy that Upper Deck golf left us and what is more fitting than to have the ONLY card by anyone, let alone Tiger Woods, that is autographed TWICE on purpose on the same card.  I can see the product development team around the table in 2002 wondering what they can do in 2003 to make sales increase and some intern that was probably hungover went “dude just have him sign it twice man.”  What a novel idea!  Although they did not really get the design right in 2003, you love it or you don’t, they sure hit a home run with this card.  The 2003 SP Game Used release is similar to 1987 Donruss Baseball, not in color but in the fact that the borders are extremely condition sensitive and in turn highly collectable in high grades.

#3    

 David Duval 2001 SP Authentic Sign of the Times

What? Did he say David Duval?  For the price that this card goes for David could pay off the demons that have haunted his golf game since 2002 and he would return to the worlds number one ranking (or at least make the Ryder cup team).  This epic card truly embraces the legacy that Mr. Duval left on the game as it is hands down THE hardest of the 85 Sign of the Times cards to obtain.  It is so rare that, of the thousands of people that will subsequentally read this article, I am most likely the only one that can say has pulled this card from an actual pack.  I might even bet the $2,000+ it would go for if I did not already sell it a week after I pulled it!  Some of the rumors going around were that they were damaged in shipment from Duval to Upper Deck (they all have a eerily similar dinged lower left corner) and that he kept all but around 12 of them to give out to his relatives & friends because it would save time signing.  They are out there somewhere I am sure, so double D, if you read this, help me complete my set brother! 

#2    

                             (picture courtesy of bullrock7.com)

Tiger Woods 2001 Upper Deck “Tiger Slam” 4 Employee patch card

We all know that Tiger held all four majors at once only he did not do it in a calendar year.  The guy is amazing but we have to get him on a technicality and call it the “Tiger Slam.”  Cool, no problem, now we have an entire line of cards commemorating this incredible feat.  To up the ante, and to reward certain Upper Deck employees, a Tiger Slam card was released ”4″ employees.  Ha Ha get it? There were only 325 cards produced and exactly 307 of them had black and red striped fabric from the shirt, exactly 12 of them were all black from the collar of the shirt and exactly 6 of them are “patch” cards that are cuts from the nike logos that were on the shirt.  Well there are many of the first type, and I have seen a few black ones in my day, but only once have I seen a patch card.  The word around the campfire is that Tiger himself kept all 6 of the patch cards so evidentally a few of them were given away at some point in time.  I imagine that if it were for sale it would go for many thousands of dollars….after all there are only 6!

#1    

                           (picture courtesy of bullrock7.com)

Tiger Woods 2001 SP Authentic Sign of the Times Red /4

When I think of an epic card or perhaps the old adage “if I could have any card in the world what would it be,”  it would be this one.  For the Tiger Woods enthusiast, golf card collector or whoever I imagine has $25,000+ there is no denying even for one second that this card is the sickest card of all time.  Simple, elegant in design, commerating 4 majors held at once, which is perhaps the greatest feat in sports ever, can be seen on the 3 1/2″ x 2 1/2″ golfgasmic rectangle.  After all there are only 4 made and hundreds trying to get all 6 of the red Sign of the Times for the complete set.  Upper Deck really made quite a card with this one and in the first year of production too!  I have actually seen a few different versions and had the luxury of holding all 6 of the red Sign of the Times at once just as Tiger did…but with all 4 majors. Happy card hunting!

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