Upper Deck Company

Upper Deck Company, LLC (colloquially as "Upper Deck," Upper Deck Authenticated, Ltd. in the UK), founded in 1988, is a company primarily known for producing trading cards. It is a private company. The company has exclusive agreements to produce memorabilia with such sports superstars as Michael Jordan (who is also on the board of directors), Kobe Bryant, Tiger Woods, and Ken Griffey Jr. Former Major League relief pitcher De Wayne Buice is a former managing partner, and was instrumental in negotiating Upper Deck's first license with Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association.

Company history
On December 23. 1988, Upper Deck was granted a license by Major League Baseball to produce baseball cards. The first case of Upper Deck Baseball Cards was delivered February 28, 1989, to George Moore of Tulsa's Baseball Card Store in Tulsa, OK. The Upper Deck Company sold out its baseball cards midway through this inaugural year, then pre-sold its entire [990 baseball stock before the year began. The 1990 set included the industry's first randomly inserted personally autographed and numbered cards of sports superstars.

On March 20, 1990, The Upper Deck Company was granted licenses by the National Hockey League and 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 the Upper Deck Company the first trading card company in 10 years to be licensed by all four leagues. In 1995, the company produced its first racing product. In 1996, it expanded its racing line when it absorbed Maxx. Upper Deck was also the first to insert swatches of Game-Used material into cards when it made jersey cards in 1996 UD Football. 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 Ordonez.

In July 2005 Upper Deck won the liquidation auction of former competitor Fleer-SkyBox International's brand name, assets and model business as well as the Fleer Collectibles die-cast business assets.

Since its earliest days, Upper Deck has gained a reputation for quality made trading cards and also as an innovator of security measures to prevent counterfeiting of its products. However, the company has also been accused of questionable business practices at various points, including the supposed reprinting of rare error cards from its 1989 baseball product and an entire early hockey product initially thought to be very limited.

Upper Deck originally included the year of the trading card set's release on it's logo, with the "19" above the "Upper" and the last two digits of the year under the "Deck" (but both inside the green diamond). This was dropped midway through the 1994 season.

NBA Exquisite Collection
Upper Deck premiered its NBA Exquisite Collection product in the 2003-2004 season. Each pack contained five basketball cards; one veteran base card numbered to 225, one autographed rookie card featuring a piece of patch worn by the player numbered to 99 or 225, one game worn jersey card, one autographed/patch insert card, and a fifth card that was either a low numbered parallel or an additional autographed patch card. Suggested retail price of the product was $500 US, making it the most expensive basketball card product ever produced at the time. (The few packs that remain unopened now sell for over $1000. Autograph cards included veterans such as Michael Jordan, Patrick Ewing, Kobe Bryant, and Kevin Garnett and rookies such as Lebron James, Dwyane Wade, and Carmelo Anthony. The most sought after cards from the product include the autographed/patch rookie cards numbered to 99 (Lebron James, Darko Milicic, Carmelo Anthony, Chris Bosh, Dwyane Wade, and Udonis Haslem), the Limited Logos inserts which feature an extra large jersey patch piece and autograph, and the autographed/patch rookie parallels serial numbered to the player's jersey number.

In view of the series' success, the company has released 2004-05 and 2005-06 basketball sets and a 2005 football product.

Other products
The company's division, Upper Deck Entertainment, produces cards from the English versions of the Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game|Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game licensed from Konami, the Winx Club Trading Card Game for girls, along with the Marvel Trading Card Game and the DC Comics Trading Card Game using their proprietary VS System. In October of 2005, UDE introduced a Trading Card Game based on Nickelodeon's new Avatar: The Last Airbender series and the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. It has also released many non-game oriented sports-based and multimedia companion trading card sets.

Upper Deck recently announced a World of Warcraft Trading Card Game, based on the popular MMORPG.