1996 Part 12 - SP to SPx

When I started this series back in January, I had said that there were 306 different cards (base sets and insert sets) issued in 1996 and that I owned 167 of them. My goal was to get to 200 by the end of the year. As of this post I am about 3/4 through the 1996 cards I own. As I've been going along I've been buying the cards I'm missing on eBay. I've had a lot of success and am happy to report that I'm only one card short of my goal.


1996 SPUpper Deck introduced SP in 1993 and produced the set through 1997. In 1998, SP was replaced with SP Authentic. The '96 and '94 sets featured Dufex printing while the odd years featured holographic foil. I am not a big fan of Dufex and don't like these cards very much. I only own a handful which suggests I bought a couple of loose packs. 8-card packs were about $4. The set had 188 cards.

1996 SP Checklist
This is the only subset card I own. I do like checklists which are part of the set and it they feature a player, so much the better. I actually like the design of the checklist card more than the base card with the wood grain border going all the way around the card.

1996 SP Marquee Matchups
This was a 20-card insert set. The cards were inserted at a ratio of 1:5, so they were not hard to get. It features gold foil lettering and a silver foil background. You would think that a card called "Matchups" might feature 2 players. I only own three of these and hadn't noticed before that some of the cards say "Marquee" across the top (like the card below) and some say "Matchups" across the top. Maybe you were supposed to pair cards together. In 2008, Upper Deck brought back this insert set in SP Authentic but the cards features 2 players.

1996 SP Marquee Matchups Die Cuts
Although I only bought a few packs of this product I did manage to pull this Derek Jeter die cut parallel. The die cuts were inserted 1:61.

There were two other insert sets, SP Special FX (48 cards, inserted 1:5) and a SP Special FX die cut parallel inserted 1:75. Looking at a few of these on eBay they feature a large player hologram on the front.

1996 Sportflix
This brand first appeared in 1988 under the name of Sportflics. The spelling was changed to Sportflix in 1995. The brand had been acquired by Score sometime in the early 1990s and by 1996 was part of the Pinnacle Brands. This would be the last year for this brand as Pinnacle was failing big time. These cards have a plastic coating on them which through a process called rectilinear printing cause the picture to appear in motion. I explain how this works here. The base cards simply switch from a head shot of the player to an action shot. There were 144 cards in the set and a 5-card pack cost $1.99. I'm not a big fan of these type of cards and only bought a few packs.

1996 Sportflix UC3
UC3 was a subset. The front of the card featured a full motion action shot of the player. I never did figure out whan UC3 was supposed to mean.

1996 Sportflix Rookie
The rookie subset featured an entirely different design with a full motion picture on the front. There may have been other subsets but these are all I have.

1996 Sportflix Hit Parade
This was a 16-card insert (1:35). I think I got this in a repack. The front features a static head shot with a full motion image in the background.

The other inserts are: Sportflix Artist's Proofs (1:48), Sportflix Double Take (1:22), Sportflix Power Surge (1:35) and Sportflix ProMotion (1:17).

1996 SPx
This was the first year for Upper Deck's SPx. While the 2009 version of this set seems to be a disappointment, it was a pretty exciting card in 1996. The front of the card features a full motion hologram of the player in an action shot, a static photo and a holographic head shot which turns to face you as you move the card (this is actually a bit creepy). The cards were also die-cut and featured silver foil on the back. These cards were pretty expensive, a 1-card pack cost $3.49. I only own this one and I don't know how I got it. I believe this is the largest full motion hologram to be featured on a regular issue baseball card.

1996 SPx Gold
The gold version was seeded 1 in 7 packs. They have the same basic design as the base cards but with gold foil on the back. I bought 5 of these on eBay in September 2004 for $5.00.

1996 SPx Bound For Glory
The only real insert set, Bound For Glory was seeded 1 in 25 packs. The design is pretty much the same as the base set. I paid $5.01 for this in Spetember 2004.