Cubs Breakdown - 2011 Upper Deck World of Sports

2011 Upper Deck World of Sports
Upper Deck's World of Sports issue is back for a second go round, and I think it is better than last year. But, BARELY! After last year's crappy issue, my personal worst issue of the year, you figured they had to make it better. And they did, at least a little bit. But it still stinks, and is an early candidate for worst of the year this year.

The main thing I can point to as being better this year is that I like the base set design a little better. But it is still a mediocre design at best and the photos are still fairly sucky as a whole. We do get a relatively decent looking Ryne Sandberg card, though. The flip side is that Upper Deck brought back the Athletes of the World set in a basically unchanged format. Why would they choose to continue producing sticker auto cards that don't picture the players? Who knows! But I'm going out on a limb and calling the Athletes of the World cards as the yearly winner of the worst insert set of the year for the second year in a row. If they produce this insert set again next year in the same format, I'll be renaming the award in their honor!

As for the selection of Cubs in this issue, there are only a few. Matt Szczur is nice to see, he hasn't had many cards to date. And Reggie Golden is also on surprisingly few cards. And then there is a Sandberg short print. So not too bad from a player standpoint. There is also a triple auto card featuring Sandberg, Santo, and Banks on the checklist. But it's one of those cards that just has sticker autos and doesn't picture the players. And I'm not totally sure it even exists, none have popped up for sale so far.

The breakdown is below.

Base Set - 2 Versions - Base & Auto (Partial Parallel)
#3 Matt Szczur
#18 Reggie Golden
#303 Ryne Sandberg
All three Cubs have auto parallels

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All-Sport Apparel Memorabilia - 2 Versions - Base & Auto
No Cubs Included

Athletes of the World Autos
No Cubs Included

Evolution Video Cards
No Cubs Included

SPx Shadow Box
No Cubs Included

Sports Nation Dual Autos
No Cubs Included

Sports Nation Triple Autos
#CHC Ron Santo, Ryne Sandberg, and Ernie Banks (#'d ???)

Sports Nation Quad Autos
No Cubs Included

World of Politics
No Cubs Included