Lacrosse Card Landscape: 1993 STX MILL Set

The trading card industry experienced a lull in popularity from roughly 1992 through the early 2000s. As the economy tightened, several trading cards lines were halted and card shops across the country closed their doors for good. Not surprisingly, this was also a period of very little lacrosse card production.

However, four sets issued during that period have emerged to become some of the most important releases in nearly 150 years of lacrosse card production. Lacrosse Card Landscape articles for the month of July 2024 will focus on these sets: 1993 STX MILL, 1999 Choice NLL All-Stars, 2000 NLL Championship Game and 2001 MLL.

The 1986 Fleer basketball set is among the most popular and important of all hoops issues. As the first major NBA set since 1981 Topps, ‘86 Fleer is rich with veteran superstars and game-changing rookies. As for the cards themselves, a combination of low quality control and colored borders that reveal even the most minute flaws have kept population reports relatively low in terms of ultra-high-grade examples.

The result is cards are collected in one form or another by fans of all ages and socioeconomic levels. In short, there are many reasons why the 1986 Fleer set will forever be an important part of the basketball card hobby.

Lacrosse Culture Daily readers may wonder why the opening paragraph of a lacrosse card article is all about basketball cards. The answer is simple. One could substitute the 1993 STX Major Indoor Lacrosse League (MILL) set for 1986 Fleer, and lacrosse for basketball, and the above paragraph would still be accurate. It is actually quite interesting how much these two sets have in common. And as ‘86 Fleer is for basketball, the 1993 STX MILL set is a cornerstone issue for its genre.

The 1993 MILL set is the result of a collaboration between lacrosse equipment manufacturer STX and Nastasi International, a public relations and event services company. Consisting of 70 base cards and five unnumbered inserts, the base set boasts a clean design with red, white and blue borders on the fronts. Card backs also feature a color image (still a relatively unique detail for the time), player bio, statistics and appropriate logos and trademarks.

Two inserts (Checklist and Gait Brothers Lacrosse Camp ‘93 cards) share the same base design, while the remaining three (Gary Gait, Paul Gait and STX cards) have a very different appearance with a foil application on the fronts.

The checklist is grouped by team: Baltimore Thunder (1-10), Boston Blazers (11-20) Buffalo Bandits (21-29), Detroit Turbos (30-38), New York Saints (37, 40-42, 44-50, Philadelphia Wings (51-60) and Pittsburgh Bulls (61-70). A numbering mistake resulted in no cards for #39 or #44, but two cards each for #37 and #43).

These cards are very attractive; the design is clean and the colors are very crisp. However, a combination of low quality control during production and the passing of time provide considerable challenges to modern collectors attempting to locate high-grade cards. The colored borders chip easily, and the white paper underneath shines like a beacon against the otherwise red and blue edges.

Many of these cards arrived chipped straight from the pack. This goes for the card fronts, but also with the blue banner at the top of the card backs. Additionally, centering can be inconsistent. Detroit Turbos cards in particular suffer from poor left-to-right centering.

The most important element of this set, other than the attractive design and it being the first major lacrosse product in several decades, is the checklist. This set accounts for the first trading cards ever issued for many of the game’s biggest names. As the 1986 Fleer set contains rookie cards for Michael Jordan, Hakeem Olajuwon, Isaiah Thomas, Charles Barkley and several others, 1993 STX MILL contains the first cards of Gary and Paul Gait, Tim Soudan, Derek Keenan, Darris and Rich Kilgour, John Tavares, Vinny Sombrotto, Kevin Finneran, Dallas Eliuk, Tony Resch, Dave Pietramala and others. For a 70-card checklist, this set is dense with important rookie cards.

These cards are not necessarily rare. While they weren’t produced anywhere near the quantities of other sports of the era, multiple eBay listings are typically active at any given time. Unopened product, however, has become a valued rarity. Once offered on discount at $10-or-less per box, collectors would be hard-pressed to find intact foil boxes at much less than $1,000 each. And as unopened material is likely the best opportunity to obtain high-grade cards, that price may not be as expensive as it seems. Current eBay listings for PSA 9 examples of the #54 Gary Gait cards range from $499-$890. The PSA Population Report shows that only four #54 Gary Gait cards have ever received a PSA 10 designation, the company’s highest grade. 

If we continue the comparison with 1986 Fleer, then it would be natural to equate the Gary Gait rookie card with that of Michael Jordan. PSA’s Auction Prices Realized tracks public sales of their graded cards back to the early 2000s. There are currently 325 examples of the 1986 Fleer #57 Michael Jordan in PSA 10. The earliest sales shown for this grade were $6,871.25 (2004) and $6,867.88 (2008), while the most recent are $169,066 and $160,736.40 (both in 2023), with a spike in-between as high as $738,000 (2021). Basketball has a significantly larger fan base and few athletes have ever achieved the same international popularity as Michael Jordan, but there still appears to be significant room for growth with the Gary Gait card, especially considering the low population of PSA 10 examples.

For lacrosse fans wanting to take their hobby beyond the PLL issues of the last five years, the 1993 STX set is a solid place to start. And if you believe lacrosse will continue to grow in popularity, then picking up these cards should probably be done sooner rather than later.

Check out the rest of Lacrosse Card Landscape here!