1986 Sportflics

At the 1986 All-Star game, Dick Howser dubiously had Kirby Puckett batting lead off ahead of Rickey Henderson! Facing the best pitcher on the planet at the time, Dwight Gooden, Kirby singled. A Star Was Born. This was the first of Kirby’s 10 consecutive all-star appearances.


About the Card

In 1986, Sportflics became the fourth fully licensed card producer. They released a TRIPLE ACTION motion card.

The set was basically ignored. Intended as innovation - it appeared to be gimmicky. Three cards to a pack weren’t helping matters either. Neither was the fact the set only had 200 cards. What’s worse is that it seemed as though 50 of them had Pete Rose on it.

They came in tamper proof foils packs and in 1986 that just wasn’t cool.

The front design is based on the 1953 Bowman set. Whether that is intentional or not I don’t know. It’s the same printing technology as the 1984 Seven-Eleven Coin set.

The photos consisted of one headshot and two action shots.

One upside to the card stock is that it’s fairly easy to grade gem. The two issues you run into constantly is centering and edges. Whatever press they were using left tiny punch holes in the middle edges.