Wednesday, Upper Deck revealed its Presidential Predictor baseball cards from its Series II set, with one showing a triumphant Barack Obama lifted into the air by Hillary Clinton, declaring him the winner of the Democratic race…

While each candidate is featured opposing Republican John McCain on several other cards in the set, the company announced that an alternate version of the above card - featuring HRC winning - was also produced, then pulled.

The company then yanked the card showing Hillary Clinton as the victor from its collating machines during packaging. However, a few did make it out into packs and (says conventional wisdom) are therefore more valuable…

“We had the version of Barack Obama lifting up Hillary Clinton pulled as it became clearer that Barack would be the victor,” said Jason Masherah, Baseball Brand manager for Upper Deck, told the Orlando Sentinel.

“Pulling these cards is a process done by hand so it is possible some of these cards made it into packs. Those are considered an error version.”

We enjoy how in each case, the runner-up is wearing catcher’s equipment, and hoisting up the victor as if he (or she) had just clinched the World Series with a final strikeout. It conjures up memories of last October here in Boston. *sniff*

You may remember that this is not the first time Upper Deck removed a Hillary Clinton baseball card from this collection - the first featured HRC as Morganna, a.k.a. the Kissing Bandit, which some felt was in poor taste.