The 1995 Upper Deck Predictor set is one of the more perplexing baseball card insert sets, but understanding its intricacies could be your ticket to a valuable find—potentially worth $100 or more.
Here’s a breakdown of what makes this set unique and how you can identify its hidden gems.
My Personal Experience with a Hidden Gem
A while back, I purchased what I thought was a basic 1995 Upper Deck Predictor Ken Griffey Jr. card for about $3-4. It’s pretty much a personal rule of mine that if I see a Griffey for a few bucks and there aren’t any others currently for sale on COMC, I’m going to take a chance on it.
Well, to my surprise (or not really, because this is why I buy things like this) I found it was worth a bit more, and later sold it for $45. Why? it turned out to be a league leader card “prizes” card, a significantly more valuable variant than the typical Predictor.
Core Confusion: Hobby vs. Retail and Exchange Cards
The core issue arises because there are both hobby and retail sets that look nearly identical. Additionally, there are exchange cards – and prizes for those exchange cards – and only half of the retail checklist holds substantial value.
Here is a Hobby Award Winner, Charles Johnson #H18 on the left, and a Retail League Leader, Frank Thomas #R5 on the right.
Diving in, first, the Award Winner derivative is found in hobby boxes, and the easiest way to identify these cards is through the numbering on the back, which start with an “H” for “Hobby.: For example:
- H3: Ken Griffey Jr.
- H14: Derek Jeter
- H30: Jose Canseco
With that in mind, the League Leader set – while again, have the same design as the Award Winners – are numbered with “R” for “Retail.”
Here are the backs of those same cards:
Now, a quick plug for BaseballcardPedia.com because this is where things get nice and muddy, and BCP is my go-to source for the details.
To break this down—Series 1 Retail had cards #R1-#R30, of which #R1, #R10, #R11, #R20, #R27, and #R30 could call be exchanged for prize cards #R1-#R30. However, Series 2 only had card #R49 that was good for prize cards #R31-#R60, meaning there were far fewer to see the light of day.
How to Identify Valuable Cards
Here is what we know at this point: there are hobby “Award Winner” Predictors and there are retail “League Leader” Predictors. Of the the retail “League Leader” cards, #R31-#R60 are considered to be most scarce.
Here’s how you can spot a potential gem:
Flip the Card Over: Check whether the card is from the hobby set (H) or the retail set (R).
Look for R31-R60: If it’s (R) retail, note if the number falls between R31 and R60.
Check the Foil Color: Gold means “standard”/common; Silver indicates a prize card, which could be more valuable.
Here is the redemption “gold” front and the prize card “silver”:
It should also be noted that beyond the foil color, prize and redemptions cards have different backs.
Value Examples
In terms of values, let’s look at some examples to illustrate the differences between cards.
Here you can see two Will Clark prize cards (#R43) selling for around $125, while a redemption sold for $20:
And here is a Griffey #R45 prize card (PSA 8) selling for over $100, while its redemption counterpart sold for $4 shipped.
Resources
Again, for those of you diving into this hobby, BaseballCardpedia.com is an invaluable resource for identifying and learning about baseball card sets, parallels, and inserts. Another excellent reference is the Trading Card Database (TCDB).
Join My Community for More Tips
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