As Upper Deck’s Customer Care Manager, it is my goal to help educate our collectors and fans so they can have a better experience with our collectible products. I’ll routinely post updates about what we hear on the phones and through e-mails from customers in segments called Ask UD. I hope you find this information relevant and interesting. If you have questions yourself, please feel free to leave a comment and “Ask UD!”

Here are some of the questions we’ve received recently in Customer Care:

Ask Upper Deck: I’ve been putting my set together of 2011 Upper Deck Football and I noticed that some of the photos are different on the rookie cards. I’ve got two Blaine Gabbert cards that look the same except for the photo. Did I get some type of error card?

Nick Leslie: It’s not an error actually. We have done these photo variation cards in the past and found them to be fun for collectors to discover. We like to put the product out there, let collectors come across them and then share what exactly they are. There are a total of 18 different Star Rookie photo variation cards distributed between hobby and retail. They are quite rare falling one per case on average. Below is a checklist of the players that have these variation cards along with some images:

This is the regular version of the Blaine Gabbert Star Rookie card that collectors are used to seeing.

This card however is the ultra-rare photo variation rookie that most collectors have not yet seen.

Here is another example of a photo variation Star Rookie card from 2011 Upper Deck Football

Ask Upper Deck: I called Upper Deck Customer Care and it said you were closed for a company event. What’s going on?

Nick Leslie: As we have shared before, we are in the process of moving to a new facility. With that move we have the opportunity to increase efficiencies in some departments. We spend a lot of money sending cards from our manufacturing facility in North Carolina to our headquarters in California for redemptions and replacements in particular. There is also time involved in that as well where if we just had everything fulfilled near our manufacturing facility we could get items to our customers quicker. Therefore, our Redemption and Replacement teams will be moving to North Carolina to be closer to our manufacturing facility over the next couple weeks.

Where once there were tens of thousands of football replacement cards in this room, the cupboards are now bare as staff have been busy packing them up to get to the new facility.

We will need to take time off the phones during that transition to assist with that move. We will still have representatives handling emails however and we will be back on the phones full time soon. Thanks for your patience while we work through this positive change that will help in getting cards to our collectors sooner.

Ask Upper Deck: I know you shared recently that 2010-11 NHL Ultimate Collection will be coming out on June 14, but when is 2010-11 NHL The Cup coming out???

Nick Leslie: The Cup is one of our most anticipated releases of the year and it finishes up the hockey season for UD. We don’t release much in terms of information on the product until it is a couple weeks from hitting store shelves. We are not sharing the release date for it yet, but I can share there will be a gap in the calendar between Ultimate Collection and The Cup. That being said, we’ve added some great elements to the set this season and we will be producing less compared to last year so it should be highly collectible and a great investment for NHL fans.

Hockey fans around the world wait excitedly for the release of Upper Deck's ultra-premium release, The Cup.

Ask Upper Deck: Any more news on the TBD Exquisite Football redemptions?

Nick Leslie: We talked a little bit about these cards in the last “Ask UD” segment, but collectors are still excited to know who they will receive. While you will not know until they arrive at your door, we will begin releasing some of the players that are included in the checklist later on next week. Hopefully that will give collectors a better feel for who they expect to receive. Thanks for your patience. The goal was not to frustrate collectors, but rather to allow us the freedom to cut ties with athletes who are not signing in a timely fashion. The TBD format allows us the opportunity to do that and ultimately get cards in your hands quicker.