Here's another mid-90s set that I totally missed out on during the dozen or so years that I wasn't collecting at all, 1996 Upper Deck Collector's Choice. I believe these cards were released to appeal to kids and were a much cheaper alternative to some of the high end products at the time. This 12 card hobby pack cost me $.99.
#192 - Steve Sparks - Milwaukee Brewers - Silver Signature - Silver signature parallels fall one per pack. Exactly like the base cards but with a silver border and...a silver signature...
You Make the Play - Joe Carter - Also inserted one per pack are these You Make the Play game cards. The idea is very simple. You and a friend buy hundreds of packs of 1996 Upper Deck Collector's choice. You take all the You Make the Play cards and put them face down on a table. Then you basically play a nine inning game where one person begins flipping over cards one at a time. Once you record three outs it's on to the bottom half of the inning and the next person's turn. Sounds simple enough, although you'd have to buy quite a bit of Collector's Choice to end up with a decent stack of these to play the game with.
#253 - Tyler Green - Philadelphia Phillies
#122 - Dennis Martinez - Cleveland Indians
#111 - Eddie Taubensee - Cincinnati Reds
#203 - Scott Klingenbeck - Minnesota Twins
#67 - Lee Tinsley - Boston Red Sox - The design on the base cards is pretty basic. I like this Lee Tinsley action photo with the dreaded Fenway right field corner in the background.
The photography reminds me of another Upper Deck card from a few years earlier...
#273 - Mo Vaughn - Boston Red Sox - Fantasy Team - Alright, two Red Sox in a row. Looks like Mo just whiffed pretty hard. This is a very feminine looking card.
#246 - Dave Stewart - Oakland Athletics - Tribute
#175 - Jon Nunnaly - Kansas City Royals
#40 - Greg Maddux - Atlanta Braves - All Star - A fitting card to pull this week. The layout of the All Star cards is slightly different as you can see.
#339 - Roberto Alomar - Toronto Blue Jays - International Flavor - A subset card celebrating the diversity of MLB players, in this case Roberto Alomar, who was born in Puerto Rico. Very similar to the Global Impact subset from 1997 Upper Deck, but with less foil.
All in all this was a pretty decent pack. The base cards actually look pretty nice. It was worth the $.99 for the Lee Tinsley card and the ugly looking Mo Vaughn alone.
When these cards first came out I had just gotten a new pair of glasses. The pictures on the fantasy team cards with the odd pink and yellow color scheme would just pop out of the card when I looked at them through my new glasses. I kept thinking, how do they do that? I showed my wife and she said do what? I was the only one who could see it! I went back to the eye doctor and he said it was something wrong with my glasses. I got a new pair and the cards looked normal. I was never sure that I did the right thing getting the glasses fixed because those cards sure looked cool.
ReplyDelete