Classic card of the week

1987 SportsFlics John Kruk

There may be no greater evidence of the excesses of the late 80’s than the introduction of the hologram baseball card. At the time, these cards cost baseball card companies approximately $12,000 each to print (hologram technology involved expensive lasers), even though the retail value of the most exclusive hologram card ever made (the 1989 Steve Sax, which showed him partially naked when you turned it 85 degrees to the southeast) never exceeded $1.25. Not a good profit margin. Nevertheless, the hologram card remains close to my heart. Where else could you find a card that combined upwards of THREE indistinct images into one, even blurrier image? Nowhere. That’s where. I chose this John Kruk hologram because it’s the only one I could find (my other holograms are in a fireproof box at an undisclosed location in my house, along with my passport, several Hypercolor t-shirts, and other valuables). This particular card shows three Kruk images – one of him swinging, one of him staring back at me (or you, depending on who is looking at the card), and one of him eating a chocolate-glazed donut. Besides their ability to violently redirect sunlight, another great advantage of the hologram card was its extreme thickness. And while the thickness felt good to the touch, one had to be careful. Young people everywhere had to stop sticking baseball cards in their bicycle spokes shortly thereafter, because a kid from Kentucky tried to do just that with a hologram card in 1988, and he flipped over his handlebars. That is why you should always wear a helmet.

Did you know?
SportsFlics sucked?