1996-97 SP was similar in many ways to the SP cards of the previous two seasons. Slightly higher price at $3.99 for eight cards. Still a compact set, with only 146 cards meaning a higher percentage of stars. Cards were still organized alphabetically by team with about five players per team. And after the base cards, like the previous year, there were twenty rookies grouped into their own subset called Premier Prospects. The SP logo became even simpler with just the main components outlined in foil. So many things remained the same…but the main difference in 1996-97 was the removal of the SP Championship set. The previous two years had two sets, SP and SP Championship. SP was hobby-only and SP Championship was retail-only and meant to focus on the playoffs. But in 1995-96, SPx, a smaller die-cut set was introduced. Upper Deck must’ve felt this was enough of a supplement, so in 1996-97, they chose to cut SP Championship, leaving only regular SP and the die-cut SPx.
A bit more about the Premier Prospects cards… They are interesting in that the action photo is actually on the back of the card. The front of the card is a studio shot of the player (except Allen Iverson, but even his is a casual non-action photo). Another interesting fact is that there is a postcard-sized version of these cards. It was a separate boxed set of just the Premier Prospects cards from ’96-97 SP.
Individual Cards:
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