The 1999-2000 Ultra set runs at a manageable 150 cards in a single series, a far cry from the 375 cards in the first Ultra set in ’92-93. The hobby continued to move away from the early ’90’s junk wax when sets would go on for hundreds and hundreds of cards. The set design is classy and simple; the Ultra logo, player’s name, team, and position are in foil along the bottom and this isn’t a bland silver foil. The light produces a lot of color here. If there’s one element of the design that is surprising in person versus the photographs, it’s the variety of light reflected off this silver foil. And we still have the full-bleed, borderless photo that we’ve come to associate with the Ultra brand. The lack of a border, combined with frequent rough cutting, makes wear on the edges and corners very visible! Part of the fun of collecting this set is that you can always strive to upgrade its condition, since flaws in these areas are so exposed. There are a variety of inserts and three parallel sets (Gold, Platinum, and 1/1 Masterpiece cards if you’re really lucky). But it was fun to try to find these, because packs stayed low-cost with ten cards for $2.69.
The final 25 cards in ’99-2000 Ultra are rookies and short prints. They were inserted at a rate of 1:4 packs. This was common for ’99-2000. Upper Deck placed rookies 1:4 packs this year too. Because of this, you’ll see a few more “base sets” of the first 125 cards for sale than full sets, although neither is particularly difficult to complete. Ultra chose staged photos against a colored background for their rookie cards. This makes the 25 rookies really stand out against the other cards in the set. There are a limited number of background colors, so certain rookie cards share backgrounds. Cards have used staged studio shots with the action photo on the reverse before, for example, most of the rookies from 1996-97 SP display this photo pattern.
With the eighth consecutive Ultra set, Fleer/Skybox International continued the tradition of attractive cards at a low cost… I think this is an often overlooked, fun-to-collect set!
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