Tigers Gallery Checklist: 2009 UD Signature Stars

This is part two of the double headed lawsuit monster that also features 2009 Ultimate Collection. Please note the copious use of team logos in player photographs. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves on these sets. I'm generally underwhelmed by what I've seen--it can't hold a candle to Ultimate, nor should it, as the sets hit two different price points--but does have a larger checklist for Tigers fans. Take a look and see if anything floats your boat. The full checklist can be found here.

Base Set This base set carries on in the tradition of perfectly nice but wholly unmemorable Upper Deck mid-level releases. There is nothing about this that is particularly special. Mehs all around. That said, there are on-card autographs of Fu-Te Ni and Rick Porcello as part of the base set, which are two nice offerings. Also of note, in addition to the base set and a blue parallel (#/170) there are also Gold Autographs of each player in the set, either numbered to 25 or to 15, making them particularly nice pulls and a welcome bit of spice to a release that appears to otherwise be lacking.

#32 Curtis Granderson	#39 Dontrelle Willis	#57 Jeremy Bonderman
#60 Joel Zumaya	#67 Justin Verlander	#79 Miguel Cabrera
#111 Alex Avila RC	#114 Ryan Perry RC	#196 Fu-Te Ni RC Auto
#200 Rick Porcello RC Auto

Inserts Only two of these. One is a rather bland Cabrera offering and the other is a...Cabrera offering, although that one is numbered to only 10 copies and will be very hard to come by.

#SP5 Miguel Cabrera "Superstar Portraits" (Auto)	#TW8 Miguel Cabrera "Trophy Winners"

Autographs Ok. First of all, there were two autographs in the base set that I'm not including here. Next, there appear to be autographs distributed across three different subsets. The first of these are "Impressions" which feature youngsters Clete Thomas and Jeff Larish. The second are either Signature Quads or Trios and either showcase young Tigers or just budding young stars. They're rare. The last subset is the most interesting--it appears to be a re-hash of the "Pride of the Nation" subset that was featured in 2007 UD Black. In fact, it even bears the "UD Black" logo. Most shocking is this, the Fu-Te Ni card, numbered to 99 just sold for $355.67, which...wow. I mean I really like the look of that cards, and think that the Taiwanese gold signature over a matte black background is one of the coolest things you'll ever see. BUT, this is Fu-Te Ni on a card numbered to 99. I can't even begin to wrap my head around the thought that this card is worth over $350. I can think of an infinite number of things that I'd rather buy for that amount. God help us all once a Rick Porcello surfaces.

To spare you the indignity of a bunch of "Grand Cards" logos, I'm just going to show what has surfaced to this point. These autographs appear fiendishly hard to come by, so I'll just add them as I see them. If you're curious what's out there, I suggest you check out the master checklist.

#26 Rick Porcello	#32 Fu-Te Ni Pride of a Nation (#/99)	#IMP-CT Clete Thomas