1994 Skybox Blue Chips

With certain brands, you want to “mind the gaps” so you don’t miss out on any cards. Skybox is one of those brands. Between the large, well-known 1991-92 Skybox and ’92-93 Skybox, there was the 1992 Skybox USA set. And, often-forgotten, between ’93-94 and ’94-95 Skybox, you find the 1994 Skybox Blue Chips cards. Being based on a movie, you could argue that these are non-sports cards. But the set features Shaquille O’Neal and Anfernee Hardaway. Bob Cousy is even featured on some cards! So I’m comfortable calling them basketball cards. Matt Nover, an Indiana University player who went on to play internationally is also featured, but it’s O’Neal, Hardaway and Cousy that collectors should be aware of. Lots of Nick Nolte too, who actually played quite a bit of football in his young years.

Photographed is an unopened set. The cards look to be in great condition and I really believe this must be some kind of factory set of the base cards, although I have no information about them being sold that way. I know they were sold in eight-card packs. I’ve also seen factory sealed sets, but they have a blue Skybox stamp on them and a sticker on the back indicating that the foil-stamped insert cards are not included. We’ll discuss them more later. There were also three-card sample packs that were given out during the February 18-20 opening weekend of the movie to the first 1,000 people at 500 select locations. These sample packs contained an ad card that’s not part of the base 90.

There are 90 cards in the base set, and numbers 1 and 90 are visible in this unopened block. The cards are all similar in design to what you see in card #1, a full-bleed photograph, so very condition sensitive. There is a “Blue Chips” logo on the lower-left corner and a caption on the right describing what is happening in the movie. The backs, not visible, contain a more detailed description of the scene and the same photo is used, but they zoom in a bit. The “Blue Chips” logo remains on the left. The first card features Nick Nolte as coach Pete Bell giving a pep talk, “Pete Pep Talk #1” in fact. Yes, there is another “Pete Pep Talk” card in the set. He’s trying to motivate the Western University Dolphins. They could’ve did better with that name maybe? And is that Kevin Garnett back there in the corner?!? He was an uncredited Dolphins player in this movie. We also see card #90 which is the second checklist in the set, “Checklist B”. Here we see that there are subsets including “Character Cards,” “Action Cards,” and “Behind the Scenes” cards. But most importantly for collectors, there are inserts. Six “Foil Stamped Cards.” These were inserted about 1:20 packs.