Upper Deck Memorabilia at the National – Upper Deck‘s Brand Manager, Daniel Gay, gave closer look at their memorabilia display at the National. Check out several new items alongside historic, iconic pieces.
Hobby Musings: Upper Deck Memorabilia at the National – Interview
Hobby Musings: Upper Deck Memorabilia at the National – Interview Transcript
Editor’s note: Some text has been changed from original audio for grammar and clarity.
KS: Upper Deck has a lot of cool memorabilia here on display at the National. What more can you tell me about it?
DG: Yeah, so, this year, we’re presenting, Wayne Gretzky with this 40th anniversary of his first Stanley Cup in 1984. We’ve been so lucky and fortunate enough to work with Wayne exclusively and to have such an athlete with, so much history and, you know, his career path. And it’s been an incredible experience for, for us to work with him and to be able to showcase his memorabilia. So, we’ve got a collection of prints here. Every single one of these are commemorative to his first Stanley Cup.
We have some show pieces, some lithographs and some larger prints, as well as some jersey pieces that aren’t currently on display here, but you can find on our store. And it’s been incredible, to see kind of the reaction from the hobby, of what we brought to, the National this year for Wayne. We’re excited to see that grow. And, you know, obviously, next year is his 40th anniversary of his second Stanley Cup. So, we’ll see what happens. We’re excited for the first one here.
And then on to this wall. Yeah, it’s of lot global sports that we recognize in some entertainment aspects, in the UDA. Gallery. So, Kerri Walsh Jennings is a new, spokeswoman for us, multi-time gold medalist in the Olympics. We’re incredibly excited to have Kerri Walsh Jennings and Misty May with their cool signed elements as well. It’s such a dynamic duo as the piece says.
We also have our Space Jam launch that we launched this week here at the National. We’ve got some LeBron shows and his Tegata, which is our most premium offering across the board of legendary athletes and/or personalities. It’s going to be his actual handprint sign, and it’s going to be limited to six for his, Space Jam Tegata. We also have some AEW with Toni Storm. And the show piece is really special to us because it’s the largest signed piece that we provide here at Upper Deck, and it’s going to be, very large signature. So, if you’re looking for your favorite athlete or personality, this show might be the best option there. If you want a really large signature.
And then moving into the next round, we have Mr. McDavid here in our pillar and some hockey memorabilia. So, Connor, this year had an incredible run. We’ve been fortunate enough to work with Connor exclusively. And some of our other athletes, like Alexi Lafreniere, who also had an incredible run this season. Nick Suzuki, who has been a multi-time All-Star and the likes of Bobby Orr and Patrick Roy, is an incredible showcase of greats and current active athletes that are doing an incredible job for us.
We’re very fortunate enough to work with NHL and some of the best athletes in the NHL and past and present. So, we’re showcasing some of our, shows and some of our breaking through pieces. As you can see, the Bobby Orr and the Patrick Roy. With the pucks coming out of the acrylic here. Again, these pieces are, you can find them on our website. But injustice. Seeing them in person is something that is incredible
So, moving on to our golf wall, Tiger Woods himself. We’ve been again, very lucky to have Tiger as an exclusive athlete for a number of years now. And we’re growing our golf portfolio. So, we’ve got a really core selection of very talented young golfers. Like Mr. Collin Morikawa, who one of our exclusive signers as well, and, with Justin Thomas and Gary Player and Jack Nicklaus and Viktor Hovland. So, we’ve got a very core selection of very impressive athletes in the golf portfolio, and we’re really excited to continue to grow that, memorabilia side.
Then moving into Mr. Jordan. You know. What needs to be said here about Mr. Michael Jordan? Not much, but we are, again, incredibly lucky to, to have Michael as, one of our longest standing, exclusive spokesmen, to our brand. And we’ve also been very fortunate to partner here with some of the Nike brand, original Jordan posters from his rookie days. We’ve been able to get these signed and showcase these here at the National. I’m very, very happy with how they turned out. I think the people that are coming to view them this weekend are, very excited to see something like that. So, we’re showcasing some of his new prints. We have the new Dennis Rodman show. Anthony Davis, who is another one of our exclusive spokesmen right now, currently over in the Olympics. So, go team USA! Let’s see what happens there.
And then moving into our lockers, we want to showcase some of our spokesmen, with their basketballs and their jerseys and obviously some shoes. We’ll get down the line here, but Anthony Davis has his Lakers jersey. Darius Garland, we are in the land of “The Land” Cleveland. He has been an incredible athlete to work with. We’re again very fortunate to work with such an incredible athlete like Darius. He’s just incredibly humble, human and an incredible athlete. So very, lucky to have him.
And moving into, again, some Space Jam options, we also are creating some game used flooring that was actually used on the set of Space Jam: A New Legacy. We have some of the voice actors, that signed these pieces. And I think it’s a really cool offering, a little bit different than what some other collectors would be used to. But to have a piece of the set is great. We’re really happy with how those turned out. And then we get into some of our basketballs, some of our newer signings this past year from Dominique Wilkins and Jalen Rose inscribed “Fab Five” on the Michigan basketball, which is, which is awesome to see. The “Fab Five” is an iconic time frame in the college basketball limelight.
So, we’re really happy to have Jalen Rose and the great Dominique Wilkins. Getting into our bottom shelf here with some jerseys we’ve got, Gary Payton. Again, Gary Payton I think he was here this this week at the National. He’s such a great guy, an incredible athlete. And then getting into Jalen Rose’s Michigan jersey and to be able to showcase that is great. Then again, moving into kind of more of our shoe realm. We’ve done a lot of shoes in the past and mainly, kind of a Michael Jordan theme of shoes. And we’ve been able to now offer the original pumps with Dominique Wilkins to sign, and then getting into some of the more exclusive Jordan Brand shoes. With the partnership of Travis Scott, we have Michael here signing those shoes.
And that down below we have Darius Garland. Again, his show piece is quite a statement, and, we’re really happy with how that turned out with the team colors and everything there for Darius. And then really not much needs to be said here. This is the great Michael Jordan, his jersey, his basketball, and some really iconic, off-white Air Jordan 1s that have been signed and also limited to a 23 as well. His jersey is quite iconic with the “Six Time Champ” inscription. So, we’re very excited to be able to offer things like that with Michael. Yeah, we’re very happy with how everything turned out there in the lockers.
Hobby Musings: Upper Deck Memorabilia at the National
Kelsey’s ability to bring hobby coverage to the mainstream sports fan has been a true asset. GTS is happy to feature his thoughts on collecting in Hobby Musings. The opinions expressed are his and do not necessarily reflect those of GTS Distribution.
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