Sportflics gets an X

Sportflics got updated in the mid-90s to Sportflix. The cards continued using the same lenticular finish though, making them difficult to capture properly for blogging purposes. I've had a go...

Card Number 1016: Sportflics 2000, 1994; #25

(They added '2000' to the set name because back in 1994, "2000" was really futuristic. The Millennium was coming!)

The way Tony's name moves when this card is tilted is quite nifty.

I hope that silhouette on the back is actually Tony's silhouette, but I suspect it isn't. The photo looks familiar, but I've gone through my Pinnacle Brands binder and I can't see this particular photo used on any other cards. Pinnacle used a lot of photos that look like this in their various sets - they often used head and shoulders candid non-game shots on their cardbacks. So it's more the type of photo that's triggering my deja vu rather than the actual photo. 

It's a mid-90s colour scheme as well. Double gradated colour like that was novel at the time. It looks well dated now. 

Card Number 1017: Sportflix, 1995: #HT10

This card was in the Hammer Team insert set for successful batters. (The base card is blogged here!) Tony is dodging a rain of sledgehammers on the front.

It is all a bit reminiscent of those brothers with hammers in a certain cartridge-based video game manufactured by a Japanese company starring an Italian plumber.

A hammer is falling towards Tony on the back as well!

Even though he 'topped the majors' (what a quaint phrase), Tony only had the tenth card in this insert series. He should have been #1, surely. 

1995 was the peak year for Sportflix as, in addition to the lenticular set, there was also a 3D set called UC3. (Yesterday I was blogging about UD3. Today it's UC3! Tomorrow it's... no, I don't have a set called UB3.)

Card Number 1018: Sportflix UC3, 1995; #133

This is the second 'base' card in the set with Tony on. I blogged the other one previously here. 

3D cards don't scan well, but they're better than lenticular cards. On the back we go "In-Depth" which is hyphenated for some strange reason. That's a very short summary considering. It doesn't feel like it is in any depth. 

And do you see my point about head and shoulders candid non-game photos on the cardback? Because here's another one. 

Tony had a third UC3 card. It's another quirky insert.

Card Number 1019: Sportflix UC£, 1995; #CS13

Tony is a member of the Cyclone Squad! It sounds pretty cool even if it doesn't really mean anything.

The effect on the back is meant to be cyclone-related but it just reminds me of the Rebel Alliance tactics room at the end of Star Wars: A New Hope, as Princess Leia waits to hear if Luke Skywalker has blown up the Death Star.

Does anyone else see that, or is it just me?

Card Number 1020: Sportflics, 1996; #9

And back to the lenticular cards. As this card is tilted it flicks (or flix) between Tony's name...

... and his batting average

The back is probably the best-designed Sportflix cardback, listing the previous season's stats and Tony's career stats. Tony has an odd expression in the photo, though, even if it is the tried and tested candid non-game style photo!

That's it for my collection of Sportflix cards. 1996 was the final year they were produced, and I think overall I have now blogged the complete run. 

I hope so, because I really don't like scanning lenticular cards!

Total: 1020 cards

1990 randomness

Today's post features three cards from 1990 that are completely unrelated to each other. Just for fun, like. 

Card Number 1003: Topps Batting Leaders, 1990; #2

These cards were inserted into blister packs of 100 cards from Topps flagship set that were exclusive to K-Mart. 

The cartooney drawn baseball bat makes this look quaint, even considering it's from way back in 1990.

The politest way to describe the cardback is that it doesn't look like the designer made too much of an effort but did just enough to earn their paycheck.

Tony's final career batting average went up from this point. In terms of hitting baseballs, he was an absolute monster in the decade after this card was released.

Card Number 1004: Sport's Collector Digest, 1990; #37

This isn't a baseball card, it's a pocket price guide! (Oh, okay, sure thing, Sport's Collector Digest.)

This is the second 'pocket price guide' to feature on this blog (here's the other one). It's fair to say that if more price guides looked as good as the front of this card, more people would collect price guides!

These guides provide an insight into the expansion of the collecting bubble in the early 1990s. Comparing these prices to the valuations SCD put on cards in 1993, shows how much a collector could have made by investing in rookie cards in 1990.

SCD reckoned that mint Topps rookie cards had doubled in price from $20 in 1990 to $40 in 1993, while the five hundred per cent growth in value for a mint 1984 Fleer card (from $2 to $12) was a huge jump for a second year card.

All this is a casual reminder that card values are always inflated by the companies doing the valuations. The real value of a card is not what a company claims it to be - the real value is the price it actually sells for. This is true regardless of whether the price is listed on a magazine or on a nice baseball-card sized 'pocket price guide'. 

Card Number 1005: Sportflics, 1990; #98

Sportflics are lenticular cards that show player in three different poses. I am not keen on them for a number of reasons. They don't scan well. They are thick plastic and the plastic yellows with age. And they warp because of the plastic coating. 

But apart from that, they're OK.

Sporflics are reasonably important in the history of baseball cards because they were the entry product for the Pinnacle company who then produced Score cards before releasing sets under the Pinnacle brand name. The back of this card shares a lot of design aesthetics with contemporary Score cards, particularly the use of a colour photo, the lettering and presentation.

On top of all the other issues with Sportflics cards, I'm going to ding this a point for having Tony's squad number more obvious than the card set number, and ding it another point for having a set number that looks like a different number. It's not #88, it's #98! However, I will give it a point back for the quirky photo showing Tony with his glove half-on, half-off. 

Total: 1005 cards

Return to 80s Week - Sportflics Big 6

After yesterday's splurge on Fleer cards, there's just one card in today's post. It features six players, although you can't see them all at the same time. 

Card Number 891: Sportflics, 1986; #181

Sportflics cards were lenticular. That makes them horrible to scan.

There are three players stacked lenticularly on the top and bottom halves of the card. If you tilt the card, each player comes into focus. Here's Tony!

Catch it wrong and you can make a mash up of various players. Tilt this card back and forward just a fraction and Tony's gains, then loses, then gains, a magnificent moustache.

On the back, we find a reason these six players are grouped on one card - they are the six players posting active career batting averages over .300. Of the six, Tony is posting the highest average by some margin.

I have often pointed out how Tony's batting average improved towards the end of his career. He retired on a career average of .338. One day I will look through all his career averages and see if at any point he wasn't the player with the highest active batting average. I suspect he would have been.

But in the meantime, I have plenty of cards to blog about before embarking on a research project like that!

Total: 891 cards

Lenticular fun with more Sportflics

I am blogging through a small parcel of cards I bought off eBay. Said parcel spent its time winging its way to me, and in the meantime I received an envelope of cards from Tim, which included two Sportflics cards. I knew one of the cards in the eBay purchase was a Sportflics card so I mentally added it to the pile of dupes in the lot, thinking it was bound to be one of the ones I received from Tim. But when it arrived, it was from a different series of Sportflics cards released the year after the ones Tim sent to me.

Card Number 629: Sportflics, 1987; #31

Lenticular cards don't like scanners. And scanners don't like lenticular cards.

There are three pictures in the lenticular array. Tony swinging...

... Tony in his batting stance ...

...and a portrait.

This time around, Sportflics added in a little portrait photo on the back of the card. 

There are apparently two versions of this card - one with a copyright notice saying 1986, and the other version saying copyright 1987. This is the 1986 version. It's not the sort of variation that makes much difference in terms of monetary value of the card.

Sportflics carried on producing these lenticular cards until 1990, so there are a few more featuring Tony from later series. Maybe one day I'll master the art of photographing them.

Total: 629 cards

Lots of pics of Sportflics

In a previous post, I outlined the history of Sportflics, which became the Score and Pinnacle conglomerate. About 10 years after the first lenticular Sportflics cards were released, the brand was updated for the 90s as Sportflix, with an X. 

In the PWE from Tim, there were two of the original Sportflics cards from 1986. These do not scan very well, so I have tried to take some photos of them to capture the full Sportflics experience.

I'm also going to be a bit weird and show the cardbacks first.

Card Number 616: Sportflics, 1986; #13

At first I thought this was card #19 in the set, which would have earned it 10 bonus points. But it isn't They've just put '19' in a baseball to look like the card number. Bad Sportflics! No bonus points for you! Harrumph!

Here's the scan of the front.

There are three pictures revealed by moving the card. (Or holding the card still and moving your head!)

Tony at bat...

...Tony swinging...

...and a portrait photo.

Tony appeared on another card in the set.

Card Number 617: Sportflics, 1986; #140

The "Tri-Stars" had pictures of three different players. This leads to odd pictures of all three. Tony was on a card featuring players with high batting averages.

Notably, Al Oliver wore 0 (zero) on his uniform. 

The scan offers a bizarre mash up of all 3 faces.

Tony is youthful, with a shadow of Bill Buckner's eyebrows on his forehead.

On Bill's card you can really see his caterpillar eyebrows in all their glory. That's some 'tache too.

Al also has a 'tache, and escapes Bill's ghostly brows by virtue of having a cap on. You can just see Tony's cap logo behind the jay, like a bad airbrushing job on an old baseball card.

These are fun cards to hold and fiddle with to try and get photos of the images. 

Although these cards say 'First Series' on the back, no second series was issued that year. The company who developed them, Major League Marketing, launched the Score range in 1988. That first Score range included 'magic motion' trivia cards, which were lenticular. (According to BaseballCardPedia, these were included because at the time Topps had exclusive rights to sell packs of just baseball cards - this explains why Fleer included a logo sticker, and DonRuss included puzzle pieces in with their baseball cards!)

Thanks again to Tim for sending me these!

Total: 617 cards