Upper Deck Future Stars Hobby Box: Seeing Double and Triple

I'm sitting here watching the NFL exhibition game Pro Bowl and I'm pretty impressed with what's going on. More scoring! More long balls! The people want scoring!  The Pro Bowl hats are really ugly.

It is 80 degrees there on Oahu...I fell in love with Hawaii when I went there two winters ago, and seeing it again makes me want to go back.

I figured it is about time to post the results of the 2006 Upper Deck Future Stars hobby box I bought from Blowout Cards.  On average, there are 5 autos in the hobby boxes...would I pull five?  That was the hope.  The autos that you try to score are Justin Verlander, and Ryan Zimmerman.  Mixed in there are a few other good players too, but those two are the ones I was looking for.

The configuration was 4 cards per pack, with 24 packs in the box.  Each pack had some sort of insert card, which was cool.  One major feature of the set are the "World Future Stars" inserts, which are cards that feature (you guessed it) stars from all over the world. The cards you are looking for here are players from Japan--especially serial numbered ones.  Out of the 24 packs, I pulled 12 serial numbered cards--the shortest print being /50.  The base cards are shiny and sort of 3-D, although the circle of stars around the players are sort of corny.

As I was opening the packs, something strange was happening.  Two times I got two of the same base card in a pack (out of 4 cards).  I thought it had to be a fluke, until it happened again. And again. And again. And again. And again.  Two Johan Santanas, two Rickie Weeks, two Torrii Hunters, two Carlos Beltrans, two Derek Jeters, two David Wrights, and two A-rods.  There might have been more but those are the ones that stand out.  These were duplicates IN THE SAME PACK of 4 cards, remember.  I say it again because it was just so shocking to me.  This was just the beginning of what turned out to be the WORST collation of any box I have ever opened.  In terms of base cards, this is what I got (24 packs):

Lance Berkman x2
Johnny Damon x3
Pedro Martinez x3

Rickie Weeks x3
Carlos Beltran x3
Johan Santana x3
Eric Gagne x3
Chone Figgins x2

Reggie Sanders x2
A-Rod x3
David Wright x3

Vladimir Guerrero x2
Derek Jeter x3
Torrii Hunter x3
Hideki Matsui x3
Randy Johnson x3

Carlos Lee x3
Jeff Kent x2
Roy Oswalt x2

In addition to the above, there were only EIGHT other base cards that did not have a duplicate.  Hell, why not tell you what they were?  Bobby Abreu, Dontrelle Willis (a Phillie now!), Eric Chavez, Rich Harden, Chase Utley, Ryan Howard, Jason Bay, and Huston Street.

Tell me, when was the last time you were able to blog about every single one of the base cards you got in a hobby box?  I can pretty much assure you that this will be the last time you will see it here, I hope.  I cannot figure out if I just got a bad box, or if this is something standard for this set.  I can't imagine it is standard.

Tomorrow I will feature the World Future Stars inserts.  The collation of these cards was much, much better.  Has anyone else ever experienced something like this?  What do you make of it? It was so bad I thought about emailing Upper Deck, but I'm not sure that would make much of a difference.