2009 Upper Deck Philadelphia Football Released

The Upper Deck Company is blending old-time design with current-day players in its latest trading card product: 2009 Philadelphia Football. Featuring the retrospective card design from the 1964 classic Philadelphia football card set, Upper Deck has worked in special themes and top-name players in an effort to give something old a fresh new face.

“We thought it would be cool to go back in time and allow collectors to revisit a historical card design from yesteryear, but still have today’s players prominently featured,” said Brandon Miller, Upper Deck’s Football brand manager. “Retrospective sets are very popular nowadays and since there were so many newsworthy events happening in the 1960s, we were also able to include some very timely insert collections featuring the Vietnam War and Woodstock!”

The product boasts one oversized (5”-by-7”) 1935 National Chicle R311 card featuring current NFL rookies and stars in every hobby box as well as one hard-signed autographed card, on average. The company promises that boxes will yield "upwards of two" Philadelphia Fabrics memorabilia cards as well as randomly inserted original Philadelphia football buyback cards from the 1960s. In fact, many of the original buyback cards are autographed including the 1966 Philadelphia rookie cards of Hall-of-Famer Gale Sayers.

It's not all football, though. Some of the historical inserts within this set are modeled after the original Philadelphia’s football release including “The Story of Barack Obama” (25 cards), which follows the earlier depiction of “The Story of Robert F. Kennedy” as well as “The Vietnam War” (10 cards), which is patterned after the original set’s “World War II” trading card essay. Other inserts include “Woodstock’s 40th Anniversary” (five cards), “The Election Years” (11) and “NFL Stars in Action” (49), the latter collection showing unobstructed, in-game action images of current NFL standouts.

Upper Deck’s 2009 Philadelphia Football set (eight cards per pack, 20 packs per box) is being released this week. Boxes have been selling in the $55-70 range. Over 850 cards, sets, boxes and cases are currently available on eBay.