I acquired a personal grail of mine recently when I added this card to my collection: a 1999-2000 Upper Deck Century Legends Ken Dryden. It’s a card that technically does not exist, and yet I have one.
You may recall that I wrote about this back in 2012. The short story is that Dryden did not agree to be a part of the Century Legends trading card set, which ranked the top 50 players according to The Sporting News.
Upper Deck still printed a card — they probably already completed the layout on the sheet to be printed — but replaced Dryden’s photo with the color test pattern (cyan, magenta, yellow and black). They also embossed an image of NASCAR superstar Jeff Gordon on it, further making the card easy to find (by sight or by touch) and pull before putting into packs.
Of course, a few got out. A few ALWAYS get out. After wanting one of these for years, I finally got one.
If you take a look at the card sideways, you can better see the Jeff Gordon image that was embossed into it.
The Jeff Gordon card is from the 1999 Wheels High Gear Top Tier insert set.
The back of the card is just plain white with the Upper Deck anti-counterfeiting hologram at the bottom.
It would be nice if Upper Deck and Ken Dryden could one day come to an agreement that would allow the card company to produce a card of him for this set. Then again, it’s been 15 years, so I don’t think Dryden would change his mind anytime soon.
For more about this card, as well as what a potential replacement could look like, check out the Lost Cards article about this card.
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Man, that is an awesome card to own! I’ve been looking for a copy of that sucker for almost 15 years now. Where, when and (if I may ask) how much?
Eh, I got to keep a few secrets š
Thanks for reading!
I actually pulled this card when the set was first released. It took me awhile to find out what it exactly what I had. Unfortunately, I sold it on EBay for $500. I loved the card and wish I never sold it.
Wow, $500. That’s really a lot of $ for a card that isn’t really a card.
I placed it on EBay starting at $500 and got 1 bid for it. Someone really wanted the card….Still, do to the player and the rarity, Iād ask a lot more for it today if I owned it.
Hopefully this post still has a little life on it. I need some advice for my brother…
He has a card exacly like this, but is a 1999 Upper Deck MVP Michael Jordan #220 Silver Script Checklist with the 1999 Wheels High Gear Top Tier Bobby Labonte #6 embossed on it. It has no “silver script” stamp on the back like all other cards do, and the silver script foil is not done right (maybe end of roll or something)… so essentially all kinds of errors on a Michael Jordan Card. My question is, is if anyone knows what kind of value this kind of error is worth on such a high profile player card, and also the card is pristine aside from the errors, so is it worth grading also?