1997 SPx Baseball Forum

What is the actual difference between these two parallels? I can't tell from the scans in the CL's b/c most of them look the same but scanned differently. Please help!

Based on the scans it looks like the Steel has a miror foil backdrop behind the player photo on the left half of the front, and the SIlver has etched foil, akin to Black Diamond cards. I've never seen any of these in person, so I may not be right. I am going off the scans of #11, Brady Anderson, both posted by the same person.

Thanks for the reply Billy. I also looked at several scans of each version of other cards submitted by the same members, but I'm just not sure.

Billy's pretty much right.  The right side of the silver parallel is also etched foil.  The right side of the steel parallel is also mirror foil.

COMC agrees. They also show the Silver having clearly defined SPx logos in the X prongs on the right, while the Steel version appears to have a barbed-wire like design.

I opened a ton of 1997 SPx.  Steel parallels #26-50 are very short-printed compared to #1-25.  I put together multiple full sets of Bronze, Silver, and Golds (and even had about half the Grand Finale's at one point).  I'm still missing a few cards of the Steel set.

Do you mean the left side of the front? You guys are just confusing me even more.

My Frank Thomas card (SPX17) is all foil on the front except for the left side picture, the D-shaped design including name/team, the SPx logo and Frank's # and position. The left side picture is just mirror foil with no etching. The right side picture is entirely holofoil and the "background" X has the SPx logo constantly repeated also in holofoil.

Billy, if the logos in the X are scanned, they can easily look like lines or even barbed wire. I can clearly see that on my my card just by holding it at a different angle in the light. It almost looks like thick scratch-marks across the logos.

trauty wrote:

Billy's pretty much right.  The right side of the silver parallel is also etched foil.  The right side of the steel parallel is also mirror foil.

Based on the lack of etching that is a Steel

Open these two on different tabs and you will easily see the difference.  The siver parallel has the SPx logo etched in the large "X" on the RIGHT hand-side of the card.  The steel parallel looks morelike a mirror in that area.

Silver - http://www.tradingcarddb.com/ViewCard.cfm/sid/10962/cid/1894618/1997-SPx---Silver-SPX14-Mo-Vaughn

Steel - http://www.tradingcarddb.com/ViewCard.cfm/sid/10963/cid/1894660/1997-SPx---Steel-SPX6-John-Smoltz

In the imagesof the Silver parallel, #5, 7, 9 & 36 are actually scansof the Steel parallel.  Inaccuracy report has been submitted. 

Not from your side-by-side suggestion, but I finally get it. I did the different tabs thing several times on multiple cards before I made this thread.

What was missing in all the previous posts (or I just misunderstood) was this simple description.

*Silver is ALL etched foil, including the SPx logos in the X.

*Steel is mirror foil on the left and Holofoil SPx logos in the X.

Thanks for the help guys! I had mine listed as Steel on Beckett. But I've had it for so long that I wasn't sure why. I wanted to make sure.