Wow! Ud actually emailed back!

[Raptor]

do you see ITG with redemptions NO YOU DON"T. that is why ITG rules. i was at the halifax card yesterday and a friend of mine just told this story:
in 06/07 he bought quite a bit of the parkhurst and he pulled 2 redemptions of the dual autos that book at $175 each. one was going to be a pc card. he mailed the redemptions of right away and 3 days ago he recieves something in the mail. that is 3 years later and heres what he got. a dual auto/jersey of nik lidstrom and salming bv $75. he lost $275 in bv. that is UD and they suck. the only way to fix this is to not buy there product and only buy ITG and then they might change there ways. if ITG ever gets the NHL liscense look out UD.

[pencapchew]

do you see ITG with redemptions NO YOU DON"T. that is why ITG rules. i was at the halifax card yesterday and a friend of mine just told this story:
in 06/07 he bought quite a bit of the parkhurst and he pulled 2 redemptions of the dual autos that book at $175 each. one was going to be a pc card. he mailed the redemptions of right away and 3 days ago he recieves something in the mail. that is 3 years later and heres what he got. a dual auto/jersey of nik lidstrom and salming bv $75. he lost $275 in bv. that is UD and they suck. the only way to fix this is to not buy there product and only buy ITG and then they might change there ways. if ITG ever gets the NHL liscense look out UD.

I too like ITG but most of there stuff is stickers and not hard signed, big difference there. Easier to have a player sign a thousand stickers and have them in stock then it is to send a card to get signed and shipped back befor the product release.

[Raptor]

then why doesn't upper deck think ahead, maybe have players sign now for a fall release. then there would be no redemptions

[devilshockey1967]

If you are guaranteed an Autographed card in a box, you should get one. Thats why I bought the box. There is no expiration date on the box so they screw you AFTER you already purchase their product.

And dont all boxes say the stated odds are across the ENTIRE PRINT RUN, not a guarantee per box, I opened 3 boxes of 07/08 Hot Prospects that didnt have a single auto in them, and 3 SPA from the same year, and yep no autos. so thats 6 boxes with NADA, I called Barry at UD of course to see if there was anything they could do, well guess what I received a COMMON SP sign of the times..........YEAH.........but I took it, wasnt pleased but hey,there was nothing I could do. on the other hand, I was shorted an auto out of a box of 07 SPA football, and they sent me a SWEET SPOT LaRon Landry AUTO RC/5, so I won on that one...........it all comes out in the wash, look at it this way, if the box says 3 autos per box on Average, you are expecting 3 correct, and lets say the box has 5, are you going to say, WHAT A MINUTE, UD SCREWED UP, and send 2 autos back, of course not........you won...........it works both ways

[Inferno]

I too like ITG but most of there stuff is stickers and not hard signed, big difference there. Easier to have a player sign a thousand stickers and have them in stock then it is to send a card to get signed and shipped back befor the product release.

The majority of ITG stuff is stickers, but not all. The higher end Superlative products are all hard-signed:

[Element78914]

Actually to be honest haha, 06/07 Hot Prospects says this exactly on the box "Guaranteed ONE Autographed card Per Box!"

[RGM81]

then why doesn't upper deck think ahead, maybe have players sign now for a fall release. then there would be no redemptions

This would require them to have cards for, say, 2009-10 printed in the spring. Say Tim Thomas wins the Conn Smythe and then signs in Edmonton on July 1st. The bit about noting that Thomas won the Conn Smythe Trophy might be something they'd want to note on the back in the little bio blurb they write, to say nothing of having completed season/post-season stats on the cards. And now they'd be stuck with dozens/hundreds of autographs of an Edmonton Oiler depicted in a Boston Bruins jersey, which would only serve to infuriate people as it so often does with mis-coloured GUs and photos of players with their old teams on cards released in January. Nice idea in theory, but falls apart in practice for hard-signed autos. Stickers is a different story, of course, but a lot of players don't want to spend their summers in a room signing stickers. That says more about them and their level of care for the fans than UD.

[Nashrules]

Actually to be honest haha, 06/07 Hot Prospects says this exactly on the box "Guaranteed ONE Autographed card Per Box!"

That's correct. 05/06 and 06/07 were guaranteed 1 per box. I actually hit 3 boxes in 05/06 (out of several cases) that did not have them, and received replacements for all.

[Raptor]

then why doesn't ITG have redemptions, because they think ahead and have there hard-signed autos ready for the product release. if you can't get them ready for realease don't even put redemptions in. done deal. and if they didn't add the resemptions you or i or anybody else wouldn't know the difference.

[RGM81]

The drawback to that: what if some combination of one, some, or all of: Sidney Crosby, Alex Ovechkin, Carey Price, Wayne Gretzky, Bobby Orr, Gordie Howe, have too much going on at the time they're sent their Sign of the Times cards to get them back before they need to be packed out? What if Patrick Roy is on a two-week road trip with the Remparts and can't sign his part of the Brodeur/Price/Roy Triple Auto? What if they get lost or delayed in shipping? Would UD really want to put out $100+ boxes of cards with an auto checklist featuring no A talent?

As much maligned as redemptions cards are, they exist for a reason. For every argument against them, there is a counter as to why they're necessary in UD's products. No, ITG doesn't use them, and a major kudos to them for it. But if the sole licensee stopped having redemptions for hard-signed autos on their premium products, the quality of their releases would drop significantly.

Note: in no way does this diminish how brutal the Artifacts rookie redemptions situation has been. I'm talking solely about the hard-signed auto cards.