why doesnt upper deck make a online catalog of all patch cards?

[nyjplaya]

just a thought ive had for years, i just read a post about a fake patch rpa patrick laine, and i was thinking to myself again. why dont they make an online catalog of all patch cards, scanned into a database.
This would prevent any incident with altered patches and be able to spot a fake in a heartbeat. I understand they make so many cards, but it should truly be for low numbered patches and all cup rpas/premier and etc.[
I dont think this would cost that much money to do?

Bad idea or good idea?

[creasecollector]

They've done it for a few high profile players in The Cup for their RPA's like McDavid. Not 100% sure if they did it for Matthews/Laine, but they really should have. The Cup and Premier are products that should have that kind of photo documentation. All products should, but those are the the 2 big ones to start with.

All it would take is for them to make a secondary site to host images for the various high-end products they release. In a perfect world it would be all the big patch sets, but lets start small with just their high-end stuff first. They could even use a interns with any type of cell phone camera to snap photos of the 99 or so patch cards, then publish them to the site. Sure, it may be time consuming, but it wouldn't be hard to do at all. They already publish some pack-out images on their Facebook Page before a product release, so all it would take it that team (or someone else) to kick that up a few notches.

There was a member on HI who actually went to Upper Deck (with their own camera) to document the original patches before they were all packed out. I forget which product(s) it was for, but it was a long time ago now. The person was ready to do it again, but once was enough for Upper Deck, apparently. There have been small attempts by UD in the past couple years, but nothing widespread that documents an entire products' original patches. It's sad because of how easy it would be to accomplish for a company like Upper Deck.

The worst part is that UD doesn't really care, and once their products have sold out, the job is done as far as they're concerned. What happens on the secondary market is not there concern. (I'm speaking big picture - Because I'm sure there are individuals employed by UD who DO care about patch faking in there own personal collecting lives).

I hope this changes though. It would be really easy to do every year and it would only take a team of 1 to do it once the site has been setup and running. And if they promote it correctly, collectors everywhere would have easy access to a site to see if the patch card they are looking at acquiring is legit or not. Huge props to Upper Deck if they get something like this going one of these days.

Here's what UD released ahead of 15-16 The Cup on their Twitter page:

All 99 Connor McDavid The Cup RPA's /99
mcdavid The Cup Rookie 99 rookies.jpg

Link the UD's original Tweet

[sparty07]

Agreed, it would be like the UD Authentic stickers. That process works.

[30ranfordfan]

The real answer is: Upper Deck is a business.

Doing something like that would take time, money, and effort..... and while I grant you that they could simply pay for that by charging more for their products - why bother? I agree 100% that patch faking is a problem, and card companies (not just Upper Deck) should be more concerned with it.

I have yet to see a shred of evidence that suggest patch faking is having any effect on sales. Until that happens, it's really not a problem they're going to deal with.

Where do you draw the line on a card that's good enough to scan into the database? Just rookies? Just SP'd rookies? Just Superstar Rookies? Is it just rookie cards? What about parallels ? What about other patch cards? UD can't get The Cup released before the following season starts. If they were to catalog everything before releasing it... it'd be 2019 before you saw a 2017-18 product.

They probably could cherry pick one or two really nice cards per year and do it (with minimal effort) but I'm not sure it would even have much of an effect if they did it for all Cup RPAs (for example). McDavid is a special case, and anyone plunking down that kind of money may look into verifying the patch ahead of time. If you're spending 5 digits on a hockey card - you're probably going to do your homework and make sure you know what you're getting.

The RPAs /249 (many of which sell for under $5) ?? Do you think many collectors would actually look at a gallery like that? I have a hard time believing that many people would take the time to go an look it up, to make sure the patch on the sweet looking Robbi Fabri RC they're about to buy is legit. Most people won't even know the archive exists.

I think that probably sounds overly cynical.... but I really don't see how something like this would ever be practical. Either UD does it for a very small number of "investment quality" cards each year, or its no longer feasible. I would be inclined to agree that making sure that it's impossible to fake a patch on 5 of the year's best cards is better than not doing it at all.... but then UD would be (publicly) admitting there is a problem that they do nothing (on a wide scale) about.


The only reasonable step, IMO, is to work on making tamper proof cards. I think Panini does something with watermarks / black lighting?? That would seem to make sense to me.

[cardscardscards]

I mentioned a long time ago that patch card should be covered with a layer of acetate - one that would damage the card if removed.

[30ranfordfan]

I mentioned a long time ago that patch card should be covered with a layer of acetate - one that would damage the card if removed.

No doubt they could do that with some of them.... but I would expect that using an acetate layer over the card would make it much more expensive to create. That piece of acetate would likely cost them more (per card) than the rest of the materials, including the small piece of jersey (especially when it's a piece of a rookie photoshoot one).

Acetate would also affect signed patch cards.... unless they're going to get the players to sign them, and then apply the acetate. If they did that, they'd need something that doesn't blur or smudge the auto.... perhaps the player could sign the acetate instead - but I can't be the only one that things the signatures on an SPA or Cup card look a million times better than on something from Ice.

[creasecollector]

Acetate over the patch could do the trick (come to think of it, I'm not sure I've seen a faked patch from Ice that has the acetate built into the card).

However, I'm not sure that is practical when producing cards. Also, every patch card having that "Acetate look" would make them stale after a while.

[Maggot]

Part of the appeal of GU cards is being able to touch/feel the actual jersey. Acetate would destroy that.

This is probably an unpopular opinion, but I really don't care about faked RPA's. The cloth in these rookie photo shoot cards has no more significance than the cloth that a faker puts in. Rookie MEM cards are essentially the same as the manufactured patch cards in Black Diamond, IMO. I just don't get the appeal.

[creasecollector]

The only reasonable step, IMO, is to work on making tamper proof cards. I think Panini does something with watermarks / black lighting?? That would seem to make sense to me.

Yes, tamper proof cards would be the best and would solve a lot of these problems.