Ask UD: SP Authentic Mystery Redemptions, ‘Last Call’ Redemptions, All-Time Greats Basketball and The Cup Release Date

My goal as Upper Deck’s Customer Care Supervisor is to help educate our collectors and fans so they can have a better experience with our collectible products. I’ve found that we get a lot of similar calls into our call center so it is beneficial to share what those questions are and provide answers in a public format here on the blog. You will find some really great information about our industry just by going through some of these “Ask UD” segments here on the blog. If you have questions yourself, please feel free to leave a comment and “Ask UD!”

Here are some of the questions we’ve received recently in Customer Care:

Ask Upper Deck: I’m a shop owner and it would be very helpful for me to know when redemption cards are about to expire in a product so I can encourage my customers to open them now. Can you provide me a list? OR I want to purchase some older Upper Deck product, but I don’t want to get an expired redemption since they cannot be honored. Do you have a list of which products have redemptions in them that are about to expire?

Gregg Cacioppo: This is a question we get fairly frequently and we want to help our Certified Diamond Dealers and collectors out by providing a “Last Call” list of products that contain redemptions that are about to expire. Remember, we do not have a program in place to exchange expired cards so this serves as the “Last Call” to open these products and get your redemption cards registered with us online before they are no longer valid.

The following products have time-sensitive redemption cards that are set to expire in the near future:

Ask Upper Deck: I see that my 2010-11 NHL SP Authentic Mystery redemptions are now shipping. Any idea on what I may be receiving?

Gregg Cacioppo: We certainly have been fielding a lot of calls on these cards and we can appreciate that customers have been eager to find out what they will be receiving. The main reason for us moving to a program where we do not reveal exactly which card fans may be receiving was to allow us to cut ties with problem signers sooner and get cards in the hands of our fans. This change helps to eliminate situations where we are trying to get cards completed for several years, improving the turnaround time and overall customer experience.

That being said, we are happy to report that we do in fact have enough autograph content in house to begin redeeming most of these cards. They will be shipped out randomly so if you are waiting on one of these cards, you will not know who you will receive until you open the package, much like opening a pack. It is possible we may receive a couple other cards in that will get integrated into the mix later, but we are content with going ahead with these cards at this time as we have enough inventory to handle the total redemption requests.

Ask Upper Deck: I am a huge basketball collector and I’m really excited about 2011 Upper Deck All-Time Greats Basketball, but most of the basketball products I’ve been buying lately have a lot of redemptions. Will there be tons of redemptions in 2011 Upper Deck All-Time Greats Basketball?

Gregg Cacioppo: We have talked about all the things we do to prevent redemptions in new products here before. With regard to the 2011 Upper Deck All-Time Greats product, we delayed the release several times in order to secure as many signing sessions as possible with athletes in the set. We did not want to release a high-end product like this with high rates of redemptions. Our efforts paid off and I am happy to share there are less than 100 total redemption cards in this entire product. This is a pretty amazing feat considering how much hard-signed content exists in this set and we hope it provides for a more thrilling pack opening experience for our fans. Check out some images of the cards!

Ask Upper Deck: When is 2010-11 NHL The Cup coming out? When is 2010-11 NHL The Cup coming out? WHEN is 2010-11NHL The Cup coming out???

Gregg Cacioppo: This is probably the most frequently asked question of the week. Yes, there certainly is a lot of excitement around the release of 2010-11 NHL The Cup and we are thrilled to be able to bring this product to our customers again for another season. The release date was highly contingent on the acquisition of autograph content and we now have enough autograph cards in house to proceed. Upper Deck will be releasing 2010-11 NHL The Cup on August 31, 2011.

There have been a few questions about when the checklist will be released as well. As we have shared before, one of the ways we can prevent redemptions is to remove them from a product when we are packing it out. As out staff heads out to North Carolina to begin the process of physically hand-packing out the product, they will make a decision on which redemption cards we will want to remove from the product. We try to pull lower value cards or cards that we think may be pending for awhile. This means we will ultimately make less product and less revenue for the release, but it is worth it to us to make sure our customers have an enjoyable pack opening experience with less redemptions. That being said, we will finalize the checklist when we return and hopefully have it to fans as the product releases.

By the way, make sure to “like” Upper Deck’s Facebook page as we will be previewing images of the cards during the pack out process. As we saw last year, fans really enjoyed getting a sneak peek at many of the great cards in the set.