Just as quickly as the announcements were made surrounding the vice-presidential selections in this year’s race to the White House, Upper Deck was fast at work producing short-printed trading cards of candidates Joe Biden and Sarah Palin.

Our goal is always to be timely and topical,” said Kerri Stockholm, Upper Deck’s director of Sports Marketing. “And with so much at stake in this year’s election, we thought it was only fitting that we produce a pair of cards chronicling the vice-presidential candidates to go along with our earlier cards of the presidential candidates.”

The new pair of illustrated cards – numbered PP-15 (Palin) and PP-16 (Biden) – brings to a close Upper Deck’s extremely popular 2008 “Presidential Predictors” series of insert cards. The cards will be sprinkled into random packs (SRP: $4.99) of Upper Deck’s SP Authentic Baseball release next week.

Biden is depicted as longtime Washington Senator’s pitcher Walter Johnson. Palin, meanwhile, is shown rounding the bases near the White House – atop a dogsled and sporting a tiara.

“The caricatures are great,” added Stockholm. “We’ve taken some liberties with both of the VP candidates, but we believe collectors will see the cards as entertaining as well as informative.”

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