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Upper Deck brings back popular Skybox E-X 2000 set for hockey cards
It’s a hockey card set 27 years in the making.
This fall Upper Deck is slated to release a hockey version of the iconic Fleer Skybox E-X 2000 set that was produced for basketball, football and baseball during the late 1990s.
And yes, one of the biggest chases in this new set will be Connor Bedard rookie cards and autographs.
Fleer originally introduced the Skybox E-X 2000 brand for basketball during the 1996-97 season, followed by football and baseball in 1997.
But one for hockey was never made—until now.
“We have the opportunity to close the loop and make the hockey product that never came to light,” said Michael Phillips, Upper Deck’s Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing.
During the late ’90s, Phillips oversaw Fleer’s product development unit when Jean MacLeod headed the design team. Together, they put together Skybox E-X 2000 for basketball, football and baseball, but a hockey version had always alluded them.
“Here we are over two decades later working together again on a product and a brand that we worked on back in 1996,” Phillips said.
The hockey set at the time—which would have featured Philadelphia Flyers left winger John LeClair on the box—had been designed and a checklist put together. In those days, LeClair became the first American-born player to score 50 goals in three consecutive NHL seasons while playing on the “Legion of Doom” line with Eric Lindros and Mikael Renberg.
“Jean was well into designing the product,” Phillips added. “Then it was in ’97 and it came to a point when we no longer had the hockey license and were no longer able to put the set out. It never saw the light of day.”
Fast forward more than two decades. Phillips and MacLeod have been reunited at Upper Deck and nostalgia-inducing products like Metal Universe and now Skybox E-X 2000 are being created for collectors who remember them and younger ones who revere their legendary status.
The new Skybox E-X 2000 features a base set of 150 cards—100 veterans and 50 rookies—with seven different levels of Credentials parallels. Those include parallels numbered to 499 to the 1/1 VIP Credentials.
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The release also includes classic inserts such as Net Assets, Hall or Nothing and E-Xceptional. There will also be new inserts such as Index Movers and Reverberation.
Overall, each box features 24 packs with two cards in each pack. Although not found in every box, autographs run approximately four per case—about every third Hobby box. One subset featuring signatures is Autographics, a name synonymous with both SkyBox and early autograph cards from the ’90s. Rookie on-card autos, like one featuring Bedard, are 1:140 packs while veterans are 1:280.
Few card sets typify the mid-90s better than Skybox E-X 2000. Featuring futuristic base cards, limited parallels, inserts and autographed cards, the set become famous over the years. In 1995, Fleer acquired the trading card company SkyBox International. It wasn’t until 2005 that Upper Deck acquired Fleer.
As for the legendary Skybox E-X 2000 design featuring a cloudy backdrop, MacLeod said she wanted the hockey set to resemble those ’90s designs.
“For hockey, I wanted it to be more like the basketball set so it’s based on that,” she added. “I’m really proud that we could get as close as we could to the original. I love that.”
Like most Upper Deck products released this season, Bedard remains the big chase. Phillips said the Chicago Blackhawks rookie was even a major motivator to make the set.
“This year, we have a generational player like Connor Bedard,” he said, “so it made a lot of sense.”
It isn’t the first time Upper Deck has released a new set to coincide with a star rookie. The high-end The Cup was released for the very first time during the 2005-06 season, which marked Sidney Crosby’s rookie season.
Upper Deck has yet to release the checklist, a release date or price per box.
“Hopefully, people will collect the base set, which doesn’t happen enough these days,” Phillips said.
MacLeod added, “It’s really cool that we can complete the set for all four sports.”
Clemente Lisi
