Pack Sampling: 1995 Skybox Impact

I think it was just last month that I mentioned my finally getting around to opening all of my [unintentional] stash of loose packs, which, while not the most impressive stash of packs out there, was still about 20 deep, and was still pretty fun to open. I still have a few unopened boxes to get to, but I'd like to get few more things picked up before I start tearing into those.

Today's four packs of 1995 Skybox Impact - which were new to me at the time of their purchase - were gotten a little over two years ago (I think), during my first visit to the copy/print/card shop that's down in town. I bought quite a few packs that day, and thought that I may have gone overboard, although in retrospect, I probably should've bought even more, because as I'd find out later, some other guy who also didn't know it was there, came in and bought out all of the good stuff (late 90's basketball packs), none of which has ever been restocked. Of course if I had known that the copy shop that I had been driving by for almost three years, sold cards, I would've went in much sooner... like right after I moved here!

The card section of this shop has dwindled down considerably over the last two years, and I suspect that it'll disappear entirely sooner than later, the card section that is, not the copy shop. The selection was really quite impressive back when I got these packs though, lots of open boxes (all hobby) with packs on display, and two Rubbermaid bins of $0.25 packs, which is where these four packs came from. There were only four packs in the bin at the time, so even if I wasn't familiar with the set, I figured at that price I really couldn't go wrong with buying all of them.

In case you didn't notice, there were 18 cards in each one of these packs, which I wouldn't have scanned four packs of even in the best of times, so given all that's currently going on, and me being very busy cleaning up the damage from last weekend's storm, I just went ahead and did the highlights.

Every pack comes with a game card, and what a game card it is, this folds out into four pages! Given who's on the cover, I set two aside for my Packers friends (Chris and Trevor), provided they want one of course, but there's still two more available if anyone else collects Favre or the Packers.

To save on time, I ended up just scanning everything in groups, but you should still be able to get a good feel for the set. I really like base design on these, and really dig all of the in-game photos. It's hard to tell from the scans, but the cards themselves are really crisp, which is another thing that I really like. If I hadn't moved away from set collecting, I'd seriously consider working on this one, especially since it looks like boxes can be had for around $25 shipped on eBay.

Pretty cool trio of horizontal cards here, all fit into player collection's as well.

It was kind of neat to get two cards whose photos came from the same game. Looks like the Chargers defense was really making Elway earn his keep on that particular day.

There seems to be at least one rookie card in every pack, which I suppose is a good thing for those who like rookies, which I don't, but I do like the look of these, and I did get a Derrick Brooks, so that was something. Oh, and Dino Philyaw... I haven't thought about him in forever!

I miss the days of expansion teams getting their own design, and these aren't bad, although it would have been nice to see the player's donning the threads of their respective new teams.

Here's some hot subset action for you!

And finally, a couple of guys that I'm thinking about starting collections of. Seeing Henry Ellard as a Redskin is really weird too BTW.

These packs were fun, the design is attractive, and it's always nice to be able to open something and recognize the majority of the names. I don't think I ended up getting any inserts, but I did end up with 16 keepers, which doesn't seem too bad for $1, I mean I don't know where else I could've gotten those cards for just a buck, certainly not anywhere online.

As most of you probably know by now, I'm all about sharing the wealth (or at least my "wealth"), but don't want to have to look through a bunch of want lists, so if there's anything from this set that you're looking for, here's a numerical list of the non-keepers for anyone who wants them: 6,17,18,19,21,27,33,34,39,40(x2),43,51,60,63,66,67,69,71,76,78,79,81,84,86,87(x2),95,97,
102,106,110,115,116,121,122,125,129,140,147,148,151,153,156,165,167,170,173,174,175,
180,183,184,188,194,195


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