All Them Astros: 2007 Upper Deck Holiday Inn

Hey, look! All Them Astros is back! You know, that post series I started way back when to highlight Astros team sets that I completed and to date contains exactly one solitary post. Well, today it becomes two, suckers! It’s all thanks to some latent boredom and a TCDB trade from Chris (cdorso), which brought me this complete set a few weeks ago. So, let’s have a look at some oddballs from the aughts that I wasn’t even aware of until they were brought to my attention in a trade proposal.

Here’s the first of the Astros cards in the 60 card set, slugger Carlos Lee. The design is somewhat reminiscent of the 1999 Starquest design, what with the border and burst of rays. I can really get behind this, and I think it would probably work for a full-sized set if you used the border to align with the team colors or complement them well.

According to BaseballCardPedia, “members of the Holiday Inn Priority Club who stayed at a participating Holiday Inn hotel between May 31, 2007 and July 30, 2007, would receive one four-card pack for each night’s stay. Each pack contained three base cards and one of five Cal Ripken, Jr. inserts.” Hmm, I wonder if they left them on your pillow next to the Andes mints? The greens would look good together.

Here’s the other of the two Astros in the set, our ace pitcher Roy Oswalt. One might think that 60 cards would mean two cards per team, and you’d be wrong. Most teams have two cards, and three of them got three cards: the Twins, Braves, and Mets. Let’s talk back design here: I dig it! A nice, clean brick of stats (although quite small), and a quick blurb. A team logo. A XX of 60 card number. It works. Sure, the blurb could be larger and maybe this really deserves a Holiday Inn logo on it somewhere, but given that this is an oddball set obtained through giveaway packs, I think Upper Deck did a fine job.

And we’re done! Many thanks to Chris for the offer, which brought another team set to completion and thus this post to your eyeballs. For the record, I’ve already closed out 21 team sets this year, even with my limited trading. That includes treating inserts as team sets, and a handful of those are one- or two-card “team sets,” but still – that’s good progress!

2007 Upper Deck Holiday Inn
Total Astros Cards: 2
Last Card Acquired: 04/01/20
How Acquired: Trade
Related Sets
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