1994 Upper Deck Electric Silver Backs

[dmonttopps]

Anyone know the background on the 1994 Upper Deck Silver Backs. I was going through my set to make sure it was complete and noticed some of the backs were silver instead of bronze. There is on mention of this variation in Beckett. Also noticed that the silver backs were only from Series I and none from Series II. Just curious since I have both variations of the same card.

[DaClyde]

CheckOutMyCards recently added recognition of the Silver backs for both the base and Electric Diamond sets. There was a long discussion about these on Freedom Cardboard, but no one seemed to have an explanation as to where they came from. The silver are quite a bit more rare than the standard gold-backed cards. The Standard Catalog says 45 cards exist with the silver backs. Over on FCB, they came up this this as the checklist for them:

58 Kevin Mitchell
59 Raul Mondesi
60 Rickey Henderson
68 John Roper
71 Mo Vaughn
73 Dave Magadan
75 Archi Cianfracco
81 Dave Winfield
83 Andy Van Slyke
84 Kevin Stocker
86 Bernie Williams
89 Dave Stewart
92 Ryne Sandberg
93 Chris Gomez
97 Wil Cordero
99 John Olerud
100 Kirt Manwaring
102 Mike Mussina
103 Nigel Wilson
105 Roberto Mejia
113 Tripp Cromer
120 Bobby Witt
123 Danny Darwin
124 Eduardo Perez
137 Devon White
141 Rick Aguilera
151 Bret Barberie
157 Jim Eisenreich
160 Ryan Thompson
166 Kevin Gross
171 Kirk Rueter
174 Mike Bordick
184 Milt Thompson
187 Mike Greenwell
195 Todd Van Poppel
224 Ken Griffey
225 Fred McGriff
237 Rondell White
238 Jeff King
239 Luis Alicea
246 Dave Fleming
250 Curtis Pride
259 Jimy Key
261 Eric Davis
266 Cory Snyder

I went ahead and added them to the Inventory Manager as a separate set, rather than variations within the main 1994 sets. That may change in the future.

[dmonttopps]

Great detailed info and answered all of the questions I had about these cards. Wonder why there wasn't a silver back for all the cards and none is Series 2. I checked through my set and didn't come across any not listed above.

Thanks for the information!

[DaClyde]

My guess would be that all of these cards shared a sheet in the production process. Unfortunately, Upper Deck uncut sheets are fairly rare and it would basically take finding one to confirm that. Because it is only these particular cards, and these are all normal base cards, no subsets have this variation.

One theory is that the Upper Deck Minor league set was run first (all of those have the silver backs), and that someone just forgot to make the color change until the main base set printing run had already started. I'm not sure what Upper Deck's employee turnover is like, but it would be nice to find someone that worked for them back then to see if they have any information.

Back in the 80s and early 90s, when the hobby still had a thriving publication sector, we probably would have had a detailed story written up on this in one of the monthly issues. Now it's just us collectors and bloggers doing all the work since all the hobby publications are either gone or little more than ads and press releases very thinly disguised as articles.

[propete23]

2 boxes, and I didnt get one silverback!

On another note, do the electric diamonds have a card for each one in series 1? I want to make sure I dont mix up the 2 different series in the set I am making...

[dmonttopps]

I checked my base set and didn't have any silver backs in it or in any of my dups. My silver backs are in my electric diamond set.

Not sure about the second statement. I have just recently completed my electric diamond set for series 1 and 2. Got an electric diamond for every card. I have a few silver backs in my set of electric diamonds and will probably be looking to replace them with the bronze backs and put the silver backs in a seperate set.

[Shoremuad]

I never noticed this. I'm gonna check my cards and see if i got any of the silver backs.

[DaClyde]

2 boxes, and I didnt get one silverback!

On another note, do the electric diamonds have a card for each one in series 1? I want to make sure I dont mix up the 2 different series in the set I am making...

I'm not exactly sure what you're asking, but the silver back checklist is the same for base and Electric Diamond.

[Rufmeister]

Hi, does anyone have any of these 1994 Upper Deck baseball cards with silver backs from the main set and from the Electric Diamond set available? I am in need of some plus have extras available for trade. mcady68677 at aol dot com
thanks,
mike