Blast From the Past: 1993 Fleer Ultra Performers

One of the fun things about organizing your collection is finding stuff that you completely forgot that you had. Do I really have 3 sets of 1994 Upper Deck Fun Packs? (Boy did I love busting that stuff. So much fun.) I’m going to feature some of the smaller, oddball sets that I’ve uncovered as they go from the box they were in to their new home in my man cave.

Back before the Internet really took off around 1995 or so, everything done in the collecting world was done through snail mail. Once you factored in the amount of time that it took to process most of these offers, it really did feel like your cards were being delivered via snail.

I had a lot more free time back in those days so I loved taking advantage of these offers. Fleer had a ton of these offers and many of them were for the last cards to complete the Career Highlights set that you were pulling out of the packs. This set was a little different in that it was its own standalone set. I can’t remember for sure, but I’m thinking that you had to send in around $10 and some empty wrappers in order to acquire this set. I forget if this was advertised on the wrappers themselves or in magazine ads. The cards are very nice looking and feature some of the biggest stars of the time.

When it came to special offers such as this one, I almost always sent away for multiple sets. For this set, I’m glad that I had two sets shipped my way. At the time, I was a Juan Gonzalez collector and so one of these went into that collection. I also have a binder full of almost every 1993 Rockies card produced and the David Nied went into that collection.

This set was limited to 150,000 copies which seems like a lot now, but for 1993 that was a limited edition. Along with these 9 cards, there was also a Barry Bonds (never to be pictured in this blog) and a header card congratulating you on adding this set to your collection. You can see the serial numbering on the back of the Greg Maddux card. You get a matched set of serial numbers which is nice. On the back of the cards, they give each player a nickname of sorts. The Big Hurt is now “The Comiskey Cannon” while J.T. Show is “Snowballer.” (Clerks had not yet been released at this time or there’s no way they would have gone with that.)

There aren’t any recent completed auctions for this set on eBay, but a few of the singles have sold for a dollar or two. Smart dealers could make a quick profit on these back in the 90s. Most people wouldn’t send away for these sets and with the serial numbering you could average around $3 a card and do pretty well. Remember, this is the era when unnumbered Griffey, Thomas and Bonds inserts would sell for $10 or $20 all of the time. I know that we’d sell a ton of the Career Highlights cards both in the shop and at card shows