March Pickup Thread

[abothebear]

I love Sportsflics. The backs have full-color glossy photos. I believe they were the first to do that.

[saucywombat]

Put together the complete set of the 1994 Sportflics 2000 Rookie/Traded Artist's Proof.

I was also 11 in 1987. You really could not buy anything in Charleston other than Topps in 1987. At that time time no card shops and the drugstores/candy places/7-11 would only have Topps. I think you could get Fleer when it first came out each year from Kaybee Toys at the mall but good luck with that. I remember seeing Sportflics when I was in the 4th or 5th grade - but who knows where they came from.

Sportflics get lumped in to other exciting things to 4th and 5th graders at the time: M.U.S.C.L.E. men, battle beasts and GI Joe.

Maybe because they were more plastic than paper and had the lenticular action - parents found them more as toys than cards. And parents were already letting you spend TOO MUCH on cards! Might have been their downfall.

[ParisianJohn]

My first exposure to Sportflics was to the 1987 set (which may have happened in late 1986 as the cards are marked with that year, and in the blurb on the back of Schmidt's card it says "had an MVP-like season" - not acknowledging yet that he had indeed won the award). I remember when I later saw the 1986 cards I was unimpressed in comparison.

The 1986 edition was a 200 card set, yet only about 140 cards were of single players as they had a slew of "Tri-Star" cards that would feature a single image of three players who were categorized as something like "The Three Best Shortstops". These cards aren't as interesting for many as single player cards, and I seem to recall in the 1986 set that you received one Tri-Star and two single cards.

The bigger issue for me was that on the single cards that one image would be a headshot of the player while the other two provided the "motion". The 1987 set moved away from this and now you'd get three consecutive images of Kirby Puckett swinging at the plate or Nolan Ryan throwing heat. That third image made for a huge difference in the simulated action on the card, and in my enjoyment.

Maybe a good number of people were first exposed to the 1986 set and gave us on subsequent editions?? Had I seen the 1986 cards before the 1987 ones, I may have stopped there.

In the end though, that price to card ratio was probably just too high. And yes, they were the first cards with a color photo of the player on the back.