90's Rip Party: 1995 Skybox Premium Football Box Part 1/3

Recently I busted a box of 1995 Skybox Premium Football 1995. I did this for many reasons. One, I wanted the nostalgia. Two, I wanted to have a fun bust where I wasn't worried about value because that's the 90's way of collecting and I like it! Three, I liked the design of the overall product from base cards to inserts.

Back when I first bought some of the product in 1995 pack prices were about $2.99. I remember going into our local gas station (my second hobby shop option at that time) and picking up a few packs at a time counting down the seconds I got to open the beautiful product in the car. Flash-forward 19 years later,  I got this box for $18 and it came with 36 packs, 10 cards per pack and a whole lot of fun. That moment of running back to my car to bust the packs came back as well, except this time I opened the box that UPS came with and ran to my couch. I savored every minute of opening every pack. The only issue I had with this box was the cards sticking to one another in the packs. I guess it's something you have got to think about when buying older product and something I never thought of when I bought it. Lesson learned. 

As you notice by the title, I am breaking down this 90's Rip Party version of 1995 Skybox Premium into 3 sections. One, is today's, most of the base card set. The second will be the rest of the base card set which is possibly the best done subset cards of all-time. Thirdly, I will finish off with some sweet looking inserts while giving my thoughts on each section along the way.

I think a lot of collectors seem to forget about a lot of the great designed base card products of the 90's as most products now-a-days pushes their base cards aside (most poorly or effortlessly designed) for "big hits" also driving away set collectors. Skybox did a great job building this 200 card set by laying out a nice base and adding in some colorful and fun subsets as you will see below.

There is something to be said about the elegant design of the base cards in this product. First, as a collector, I am immediately drawn in by the focus on the player who is featured on the card. You can feel the action or movement of the player jump right off the cardboard at you. The second thing I then notice is the "stonewall" design off to the left or right (depending on the player) that captures the team name, team color and position of the player. There is just something about it that blends well with the rest of the card.

I then take a glance at the Skybox box and player name. I like the gold being done here and the placement of the player's name.

The rookie cards look great with players either in their NFL uniforms at training camp or still in their NCAA gear with the background faded and the word rookie written in many different angles as wallpaper.  The only issue I ever had with the design was the name placement and color. It seems to get lost with the rookie wallpaper writing. I think they should have done the same kind of name placement as the base cards.

Another thing that happened in 1995 other than this product release, was two new franchises were added to the NFL in the Jacksonville Jaguars and Carolina Panthers. Skybox captured both of these teams in a subset by showing off their Expansion Draft players in a newspaper design setup that I found very well unique.

Style Points was a cool brightly colored subset featuring star players on the front with notes from other star players on the back discussing the player on the front.

Overall, Part 1 of this Skybox Premium break did exactly what I hoped it would. It made me want to open more, brought back many memories and most of all and importantly, was fun. Isn't that why we collect in the first place, for fun?

As always, comments are welcomed. Would enjoy to hear if you were as big of fans of Skybox Premium football 1995 as I was and what your favorite part of today's post was.