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Do printing plates exist for 2006 Upper Deck Artifacts Awesome Artifacts?

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LWMM

Well-known member
Feb 21, 2009
1,062
46
Does anyone know if Upper Deck released printing plates for the 2006 Upper Deck Artifacts Awesome Artifacts set? They're included on my checklist, but I can't seem to find evidence of them. Indeed, they don't seem to be listed on other online checklists, such as Beckett, Baseballcardpedia, TCDB, or COMC.

The tl;dr of what follows is that there are a lot of other plates from 2006 Artifacts out there, but no evidence of Awesome Artifacts plates. But if anyone has any, it would be great to see them.

The base set from Artifacts, and the other three insert sets, all had printing plates released. I'm a little unclear on whether these were released with Artifacts, or with 2006 Ultimate Collection, which, as I recall (and as suggested by Baseballcardpedia), included printing plates from other sets as box toppers. Baseballcardpedia states that Artifacts issued plates for the base set, and the AL/NL Artifacts and MLB Apparel inserts. It's thus possible that the Auto-Facts plates were the only ones issued in 2006 Ultimate Collection.

For Gomes (who's not in the base set), I have all four AL Artifacts plates, 3 of the 4 MLB Apparel plates (and know where the fourth is), and 1 of 4 Auto-Facts plates. Meanwhile, COMC lists (active/sold) 8 MLB plates, 8 AL/NL plates, 4 Auto-Facts plates, and 7 base plates. eBay lists 9 MLB plates, 5 AL/NL plates, 2 Auto-Facts plates, and 5 base plates. And Beckett lists one AL/NL plate. All told, that's 21 MLB plates, 17 AL/NL plates, 7 Auto-Facts plates, and 12 base plates.

Per TCDB, each of these four base/insert sets had 89 to 100 cards, which is close enough that it doesn't explain the discrepancy between the number of MLB/AL/NL/base plates vs. the number of Auto-Facts plates. The discrepancy could instead suggest that Auto-Facts plates were indeed issued separately from the others. And Awesome Artifacts plates, if they were also issued, would likely have also come from 2006 Ultimate Collection. With that said, if they were issued, there would presumably have been some 400 of them; if they exist, it's surprising that there appears to be no evidence of them.

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Dilferules

Well-known member
Aug 10, 2012
1,958
1,765
Auburn, WA
Not that I've been specifically looking, but there are some A's in the set and I can't recall ever seeing a plate over the years.
 

smapdi

Well-known member
Aug 7, 2008
4,397
221
I don't recall seeing a plate for that particular set, but I would've likely only come across one while looking for Grady Sizemore, who has an Awesome Artifact card, or maybe Frank Thomas. I don't know if he's in there or not, but it was around that time that I was breaking my Frank addiction. I agree about the possibility of some slipping out in Ultimate Collection, as there was a Sizemore plate in there from a set that was never even issued. But that's a real needle in a worldwide haystack.
 

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