My Epic New York Adventure – Part 1

I’ve been talking about it enough, but the weekend finally arrived and I made the trip out to New York and the White Plains card show. I hopped on a bus at 1 am to make the trip into New York City. Sleeping most of the way is the best way to make this trip. It took a little longer than scheduled due to snow along the way, but that actually worked in my favor. Upon arrival, I set up camp inside of the McDonald’s on 42nd Street for breakfast and to wait for my friend to get to the city.

It ended up being a good thing that I got to the city nice and early because the roads were a mess. Driving was slow and most of the roads were reduced to just one lane. We still got there in plenty of time though and got to browse through a fairly empty show for a couple of hours until the weather improved. I started off by finding tables that I’d want to return to after checking everything out. I didn’t notice any singles that caught my interest. I’ll start off this recap with some of the individual cards that I picked up.

I won’t post pictures of all of the cards that I picked up for a quarter, but here’s a sampling. The Chief Team MVP is printed on holofoil that can only be seen along the top and on the top right, a Chaunsey Billups stand-up card in the shape of the NBA Championship trophy is a nice addition to the Celtics collection, Piazza Pacific Vanguard High Voltage from 2000, Juan Gonzalez 1996 Fleer Ultra Power Plus followed by the 1997 version and finally a regular sized card made up for 4 Cracker Jack minis including Kent Hrbek.

When I saw these, I couldn’t pass them up. Most were in great shape and for a quarter, I couldn’t pass them up. This is such an iconic set and while I may never have a Bird rookie of my own, it’s nice to have most of the other Celtics. I like how you get a picture of Parish in a Warriors jersey for their scoring leader card and in a Celtics jersey on his regular card.

The same dealer with the quarter cards also had some dollar boxes, so I sorted through those for a little while. Here are a few of the Piazza’s that I pulled out of the box. 99 UD Encore Homer Odyssey, 94 Leaf Gamers, 00 UD Ionix Pyrotechnics (on nice holofoil), 00 UD Ionix Awesome Powers (Yeah baby!), 98 SP Authentic Sheer Dominance gold and 95 UC3 In Motion. I may have already had the In Motion card, but for a buck I’ll grab another one.

This last batch came form a table that had a bunch of dollar boxes. They were well picked through by the time that I got there, but this table was packed every time that I passed by. 07-08 Echelon KG, 07-08 Triple Threads Big Baby RC /99, Delonte West 05-06 Ultimate Collection /50, Chris Slade second year refractor (this is from when refractors were about one per box), 08-09 Topps Sam Jones vintage orange refractor /199 and Jim Edmonds Sportscaster /50.

There was more, but this is the cream of the crop.

Check Out My Piazzas

It wouldn’t be a delivery from CheckOutMyCards without some additions to my Piazza collection. There are a ton of sets from the late 90s and early 00s that I don’t have any cards from at all.

First up is the beautiful 1995 Leaf Gold Stars card which is numbered to 10,000 copies. This was a big deal in 1995. I traded away the Kirby Puckett that I had from this set and had to pick up the Piazza so that I’d have at least one of these great looking cards in my collection. That’s followed by a 2006 4-in-1 Bowman sticker card, 1995 Fleer/Panini sticker, Classic promotional phone card and 2005 Cracker Jack sticker.

Anyone else collecting back when card companies starting putting phone cards into packs? Classic/Score Board did it more than anyone else, but I think even Topps got into the act.

Since I’m not really impressed by the big “MOJO” hits that come out of higher end products, I’m perfectly happy just buying singles after other people pay way too much to bust open boxes. Topps Tribute is a good example of that. It’s a beautiful base card, but most people don’t even care about these base cards. Next up is a Sterling parallel that’s numbered to just 50 copies. 2007 Topps Hit Parade is a shiny foilboard insert.

The next row starts off with a couple of Triple Threads parallels. The first one is numbered to 559 and the second to 1350. The 2006 Trading Places insert commemorates Piazzas move from the Mets to the Padres as a free agent.

The bottom row contains a 2006 Fleer Ultra Midsummer Classic Kings card which celebrates his being named the MVP of the 1996 All-Star Game. Rounding things out is an Upper Deck 2006 World Baseball Classic card showing Piazza playing for Italy.

So far, 5 of the 29 cards that will be part of my next shipment are Mike Piazza cards. I picked up some cool stuff including one card that I grabbed as much for nostalgia purposes than anything else.

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

Father’s Day Haul – Part 4 – Everything Else

The majority of the cards that I took home from the Father’s Day Card show came out of the nickel box and most of them were Piazza cards. I probably have most of them already, but for .05¢ a piece, I wasn’t racking my brain as to whether or not I had the card already. Since there are so many other Piazza collectors out there, I’ll have no problem trading any duplicates away. First off, some cards that don’t have Mike Piazza on them. Not pictured is a Greg Maddux 2000 Tek card. I’ll grab any Tek cards for a nickel all day long.

There wasn’t much in the box in terms of basketball, but I did grab some cool cards. There’s a Paul Pierce Showcase that I could possibly need, a Shaq clear acetate card, a cool Barkley die cut card from Upper Deck, a Bird/Magic Stadium insert, 1978-79 Topps Jo Jo White, 80-81 Dr. J All-Star and three cards that I have no clue about. Their foreign and look/feel like playing cards. The back has the NBA logo on it.

Here’s some miscellaneous Piazzas that didn’t fall into any of the other categories that I set up. There’s some Donruss and Leaf, one Playoff and some minis. Nothing too thrilling in this batch.

Fleer! It always seemed like there were so many Fleer sets because they didn’t really do much as far as high end sets went. Their sets mainly different in what you could pull out of them. There was the set with the patches and the set with the box scores and the set with both the pros and the prospects.

Of all of the Fleer sets, I think that I miss Ultra the most. The two inserts here are tame compared to a lot of them, but they did some extremely cool inserts back in the 90s. I was always a fan of the Platinum sets that had a retro look to them. I think I ended up needing 6 of these 9 cards which isn’t bad at all especially since I knew that I already had the Ultra base cards, but again, they were only a nickel.

Here’s some Upper Deck goodness from back when they could put logos on their cards.There was a time when that Platinum Power insert would have cost me more than what I paid for all 74 of these cards. I already have it, but it’ll be great trade bait. Same goes for the Ovation cards. Love the design on those. I needed everything else which adds some very cool cards to my collection.

Topps has been doing retro and following a very similar strategy with their releases for a long time now, so I don’t understand why everyone wants to call them lazy now that they have the exclusive MLB license. Were the Million Card and Diamond Giveaways not some of the best promotions ever done by any company in any sport? Yes, their quality control could be better, but I don’t know if I would call them lazy. They’re nowhere near as lazy as Panini who does the exact same thing in every set.

Ignore the Fleer Tradition card that snuck in masquerading as a Topps Heritage card and the SportFlix card that, well I have no clue why I put that in there. The Topps All-Stars card is a lot shinier than it appears here. I think I had most of these already, but I can’t pass up things like a 2006 Ginter card or a SportFlix insert. Even if I had paid .45¢ for the Topps All-Stars card, it would have been worth it. Everything else is just a bonus.

Last up, as far as the cards that I’m going to show, are the shiny cards. I forget the year already, but the card in the middle of the bottom row was a variation from the card that I already had. My card had a flat back, but this card had an etched back like you’d see on the front of a Chrome or Finest card. Strange. I had all of these already except for one, but you don’t pass up on shiny cards of a future Hall of Fame catcher when they’re just a nickel each.

So, there you go. This is what I chase when I’ve got the time to dig through boxes at a card show. It’s was a fun Father’s Day for sure.

 

Technorati Tags: Mike Piazza,Fleer,Topps,Upper Deck,Donruss,baseball cards

Father’s Day Haul – Part I

Two great things occurred on Father’s Day. First off, there’s a yearly card show on the day and dads get in for free. Second, my wife gave me some cash and sent me on my way to have some fun. This was great because cash for cards hasn’t been as plentiful since I had to miss time from work for my kidney stone surgery. I looked at a couple of the newer Topps baseball releases, but they didn’t really grab my attention. So, I decided to dig through the boxes there for singles which turned out to be a great decision. Twenty-eight dollars later, I had 99 new cards to add to my collection and to use in various trades.

This is the first card that started me down the road of picking up singles. I’ve had my eye on this card since series one was released, but all of the auctions on eBay ended too high for my tastes once you factored in shipping costs. A dealer had it available for $5 at the show and while I almost passed it up, in the end I decided to pull the trigger and grab the card since it had part of a nice pinstripe. I figured that the chances of me winning this card for $2 - $2.50 on eBay were pretty slim. The weird thing is, if there’s a regular version of this card, I don’t have it yet. That happens to me a lot now that the majority of my Piazza cards come from online purchases.

With the exception of that first card, the other 98 cards all came from the same dealer who had a bunch of great cards available cheaply. This Piazza is the first of the cards that I pulled from the .10¢ box. This is a 1998 SPx Power Explosion that’s numbered to 4,000 copies.

The back of this card is pretty cool. It lists HR and RBI hit at home and on the road by month. There’s also a chart that shows how many home runs were hit to each field both home and away. Piazza loved right field in Los Angeles hitting 10 of his home runs there. He also hit 8 home runs to center on the road. He only hit 4 home runs to right on the road. Piazza hit 40 home runs in 2007.

Next up from the dime box is a David Ortiz 2006 Turkey Red red bordered parallel with the ad back. Sure, he’s in a Twins jersey here and I don’t really collect cards of Ortiz with the Twins, but for the ad back parallel, I couldn’t pass it up for a dime.

While the Turkey Red insert sets were nice, I really liked the full sets for the the colored border parallels and ad back variants. I could have done without the chrome versions of the cards in a retro set, but Topps isn’t going to stop that any time soon. I would have liked for the colored parallels to have been numbered similar to what you’d see in Upper Deck’s Masterpieces sets. I’ve got some Turkey Red rainbows, but unless you do some research, there’s no telling which colors are rarer than others.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, one of the best things about other card blogs is seeing cards that I never knew existed. Whether it’s a Fleer Diamond Cut Piazza, Fenway Favorites or some of the very cool Stadium Club Basketball inserts from when I wasn’t collecting.

Here’s a great example of that. I saw these Stadium Club Triumvirate cards on another blog and made a note that I wanted to pick at least one of them up. When I saw this Barkley for a dime, I knew that I was buying this card. There are two other Rockets players and the three cards fit together like a puzzle. The backgrounds of these cards are translucent which gives them a very cool look.

What I really need to do is track down the Celtics/Red Sox/Patriots pairings. There’s a complete set from one year listed on SportLots.com from two different sellers, but it’ll cost me $12 with shipping to get all three of them and that’s a little much for me.

Next up is another cool 90s insert set that I first saw on another blog (which was either Hoopography or Hupe Royalty, but I can’t remember at the moment). The die cut at the top of these cards is what makes that so great. The fact that it’s a refractor makes it even cooler. It’s listed as a refractor on the back, so I’m guessing that there are non-shiny versions of these cards as well. For a dime, I would have picked up any version of this card, they’re just that cool. This insert set is a great example of the crazy themed insert sets that companies came up with. You can find both old and new insert cards in the dime box, but I’d rather have cards that are visually appealing such as this one.

Why pick up just one Rock Star when you can pick up two. Here’s a card of Timmy Hardaway in his later days with the Heat. Hardaway became a huge star while paired up with Chris Mullin and Mitch Richmond in the exciting trio nicknamed Run TMC.

If you saw my jumbo shoeboxes, you’d see that they are filled with all kinds of oddball inserts from the 90s just like this. Most of them would probably go into dollar boxes today, but they’re worth a whole lot more than that to me.

I love how well these Rock Stars cards scanned. You can see the texture in the background and the shininess of the card.

This card was one that I picked up just for the novelty of it. I had seen these Authentix upgradable cards before, but never owned one before. This is a Leandro Barbosa rookie that is numbered to 1250 copies. It’s an interesting card and I think that I definitely need to track down the card and upgrade tickets for my Paul Pierce collection. Such a strange concept that isn’t nearly as cool as the inserts above. The whole ticket theme hasn’t gone over well whether done by Fleer or Topps.

After the tragic death of Nick Adenhart at the hands of a drunk driver, I’m surprised that Miguel Cabrera didn’t get more crap after his DUI conviction. I don’t see how people could be stupid enough to drink and drive in the first place, but to do it after one of your peers had recently been killed that way is even stupider.

This card didn’t deserve to be in the dime box so I added it to my stack so that it could be rescued. Dump cards because players got injured, never made it to the majors or have dropped in popularity, but don’t dump cards due to a player dying. That just doesn’t seem right to me.

This is a 1996 Playoff Illusions Terry Glenn rookie card. This appears to be Playoff’s version of chrome. It’s embossed with patterns that look like a topography map. There are rainbow colors all over the place and a giant flying Elvis head Patriots logo. It’s by far one of the most gaudy cards that I’ve ever seen. There’s no way that I could pass this one up for a dime. Many times, the really bad inserts are just as fun as the really good ones. It’s like a cardboard train wreck.

Normally, I wouldn’t go anywhere near a Curtis Martin card where he was in a Jets uniform, but I had to make an exception for this card. I love the vintage Vegas look to this card. It’s a simple design, but it looks great. A refractor version of this card would look even sweeter.

I also picked up a Brett Tomko 1996 Best on-card autographed card that I’m assuming was in the dime box due to a dinged corner, a 1981 Topps Coke Carl Yastrzemski, a couple of Sandbergs for a friend and a 2008 SPx Jerod Mayo rookie numbered to 999.

15 cards down and 84 to go. I’m pretty sure that the deal gave me these 14 dime cards for one dollar so that’s $6 spent for these 15 cards.

 

Technorati Tags: Mike Piazza,David Ortiz,Curtis Martin,Upper Deck,Topps,baseball cards,basketball cards,football cards

Recent Ebay Acquisitions

Anyone who has been following this blog (or its previous incarnation) for any length of time knows that I collect some strange stuff and love all kinds of oddball items.  It helps that a lot of these oddball items don’t sell for much money.

Jeremy Piven’s role as Ari Gold on Entourage has gotten him noticed by everyone, but I’ve been a big fan of his for years.  I love his delivery and the type of sarcastic humor that seems to be his specialty.  I own a copy of PCU on VHS and think that his two minutes in Cameron Crowe’s Singles rank as one of the all-time best cameos in a movie.  Eddie Vedder and Chris Cornell also have great cameos (for their unintentional hilarity) in the movie.

I’m not a huge fan of Razor’s products.  The head of the company seems to be a shyster and there’s always been a shady aura around the company.  That being said, I couldn’t pass up this card for .99¢ plus shipping.  Who knows if it is from a shirt that Piven ever really wore or not.  I’ve seen a lot of his clothing show up in charity auctions so it is entirely possible.  The card itself is pretty ugly.  There’s no picture and the design is just bland.  The big white swatch is just begging for an autograph.  If I ever found a reliable TTM address for Mr. Piven, I’d send this right off to him.

Jeremy is a big Bears fan so I figured that arranging the letters in this way was appropriate. I have no clue where I stand on this catch phrase, but the letters keep popping up for a buck and I keep buying them.  It’s too bad that I didn’t hold off on collecting this because someone recently posted the whole set at a really good price.  I was tempted to buy it in spite of the ones that I already had.

When I won this card, I wasn’t sure yet if I already owned it or not, but for $6.19 delivered I figured that I wouldn’t mind owning a second copy of this rookie refractor numbered to 199 if it was already in my collection.

As I type this, Big Baby is at the free throw line against the Pistons after collecting a big defensive rebound late in the game.  Davis had a little bit of a rough time when he was starting in place of Garnett especially when Shaq was healthy.  With the second unit, Davis fills the role of the guy waiting just outside of the lane for a pass from a penetrator who draws his defender.  Shaq is that guy in the starting lineup.  Davis doesn’t yet have the outside range that Garnett has and when he got those shots in the flow of the offense, he wasn’t hitting them as often as Garnett does.  He’s back to being a beast now that he’s coming off the bench again and has renewed his quest for a 6th Man Award.

One eBay seller had both of these Big Baby on sale for $3 a piece with free shipping so I couldn’t refuse.  Normally you are paying $3 just for a shipping fee, so this looked like a great deal to me.  Once I got the cards, I wasn’t disappointed.  These are beautiful, thick cards with a foil board sheen to them.

The two cards do look similar, but I’m fine with that for a couple of reasons.  First off, there are different pictures used for the two cards.  Second, there aren’t other versions of these cards out there with big blank spaces where the jerseys are on these cards.

Compare the Davis SPx cards to these Pierce cards from Panini.  First off, there would usually be an ugly version of these cards with a blank space or team logo in place of the jersey swatch.  I think that Panini spared collectors from those travesties in National Treasures.

You can still see the trademark Panini laziness in the fact that these are essentially the same card with a different hole cut in the front.  Boring.  How difficult would it be to produce a second card with a different picture?  Does it really save that much money on product costs to print up the same front for both?  *Yawn*

Clay Buchholz doesn’t have too many rookie cards. I think there’s just this one and Bowman Sterling.  This one costs too much locally so I finally picked one up for a good price on eBay.

This officially completes my Trifecta of Buchholz.  I’ve got an Allen & Ginter auto and a Bowman jersey card.  I’ve got to get my butt in gear and start posting more of those.  Off of the top of my head, I think I have Dwight Evans, Mike Piazza, Clay Buchholz, David Ortiz, Ken Griffey, Paul Pierce, Glen Davis, Al Jefferson and Delonte West.  I might also have some random ones where the whole Trifecta exists in one card.

I also added a new Buchholz memorabilia card to my collection.  I’ve had my eye on this card for a little while and finally won it for the right price (a dollar plus shipping).  You can pull some beautiful cards out of Sweet Spot, but it’s such a huge crapshoot and there are always some terrible clunker autos.  The singles are great if you can pick them up at the right price though.

This is a lot of cards that I didn’t think I had a shot of winning at the price I did.  For just over $12, I picked up a Bryce Brentz refractor auto /500 as well as two refractor versions of the base card.  I’ve seen auctions for the non-refractor version of the auto close higher than this one did.  I still haven’t picked up any Vitek autos, but I’m putting together a nice little Brentz collection.

This is another card that I’ve had my eye on for a while now.  A couple of copies of this card went for $20 and more because they just weren’t showing up on eBay and everyone trying to collect the name needed them.  I waited and got the card for $5.50 plus shipping.

Hrbek still has a decent fan following and his better cards see some action when they show up on eBay.  It’s always easier collecting a player who isn’t a member of one of the local teams because you can usually find their cards for good price.

Here’s a great looking Hrbek auto out of 2009 Sweet Spot.  This one cost me a little over $20, but I had a little bit of money in the PayPal account and really wanted this.  The black numbers on the front looked weird to me since I’m used to gold numbered, but that’s what they used that year.  I think that I have a Sweet Spot auto of the majority of player that I collect because the cards are just so beautiful looking.

I forget now which blog I first saw these cards on, but once I saw them I knew that I had to add one to my collection.  It just so happens that there’s a Piazza in the set so not only do I get to add one of these cards to my collection, but I also get to add something to one of my player collections.

This is a great acetate card that pictures one of my favorite players in front of the Green Monster from the best park in the league.  These cards look even better in person with the etched foil and large player picture.  Great stuff.

This last card is one that I had to pick up since I already had the black version.  I’m not anti-manufactured cards as long as they look nice.  All cards are manufactured.  It doesn’t matter that much to me if the card is just a flat piece of cardboard, a think piece of cardboard or something with a letter or bat embedded in it.  If Topps goes back to the well once to often then I may tire of these cards, but right now I’m enjoying them.

So, there you go.  A little bit of this and a little bit of that.  Hope you enjoyed!

 

Technorati Tags: Mike Piazza,Glen Davis,Kent Hrbek,Bryce Brentz,Jeremy Piven,Clay Buchholz,baseball cards,basketball cards,autographs,Topps Upper Deck,Fleer

The Right Card for the Right Price

Ever have a card that you needed to add to your collection, but never found one at a price you were comfortable with paying?  It’s extremely rewarding when your patience pays off and you can finally add that card to your collection at a price you’re comfortable paying.  For me, that card was the 1992 Fleer Update Mike Piazza RC.

I was lucky when it came to 1992 Bowman.  I was a fan of ‘91 Bowman and was looking forward to the release of 'the ‘92 set.  I grabbed a box the first weekend it was out and pulled a Piazza out of my box.  I was also able to find one dealer who was willing to sell a Piazza for the $3 that it was listed for in the first Beckett that had Bowman pricing.  Every other dealer informed me that they were holding the card until the next book came out.  Remember, Beckett is only the bible for dealers when they like what is says.

I wasn’t as lucky when it came to the Fleer Update Piazza.  By the time that set came out, Piazza was well on his way to winning the NL Rookie of the Year Award and his Bowman rookie was the hottest rookie card in the hobby.  Many dealers took a bath on 1991 Fleer Update sets and orders were lower for the 1992 sets.  This happened a lot with update and traded sets in the 90s.  One year would be overproduced and the next would be scarce.  I remember back when 1999 Fleer Tradition Updates were the hot set due to rookie cards of Rick Ankiel and Josh Beckett.  You can get those sets for a few dollars these days.

I don’t remember seeing a lot of the 1992 Fleer Update sets when they were released and the ones that I did see were overpriced from day 1.  Both the Piazza card and the set continued to climb as there was a perceived scarcity in regards to this set.  So, it was a set that never got added to my collection.

These days, many of the sets that were formerly considered scarce in the 90s are now thought of to be overproduced.  You can find plenty of unopened 1992 Fleer Update sets online.  The same goes for the once red hot 1992 Topps Update that contained Nomar Garciaparra’s rookie.  I’m still waiting for the day that they discover cases of the 1992 Stadium Club Dome set in somebody's basement.

The 1992 Fleer Update set has been on my eBay watch list for a while now.  Some good auctions ended while I wasn’t paying attention and others ended higher than I was willing to pay.  A week ago, I finally won an auction at a great price.  The winning bid for the 1992 Fleer Update Set: $25 with free shipping.  It looked like the seller had a case that they were trying to get rid of.  They originally had the sets listed with a Buy It Now price of $29 which was already good, but they had offers on so I figured why not take a shot.  I offered the $25 and it was accepted.  I got the set Monday and now this card is finally in my collection where it belongs.  The card is pretty ugly compared to the classy ‘92 Bowman, but as one of only two Piazza rookies out there, I had to pick one up.

Technorati Tags: Mike Piazza,1992 Fleer Update Baseball

Box Break: 2006 Fleer Baseball

I wanted to open a low cost box with a lot of varied cards in it and decided on 2006 Fleer Baseball.  The normally cheap box was even less expensive due to a Blowout Cards special.  I remembered how much fun it was to open boxes of Fleer products in the 90s and hope to find more of the same from this box even though it was Upper Deck in Fleer clothing.

The base cards are a little bland.  My biggest beef is with all of the blank space down at the bottom of the card.  Did the bars for the player name and position really have to be that big?  Other than that, this is fine for a flagship set.

What I used to love about Fleer sets, especially Fleer Ultra, were the wide range of fun insert sets that you’d find.  There would be foil, die cuts, glitter, acetate, faux leather, wood, etc.  Unfortunately, this set doesn’t come close to living up to the Fleer legacy.  There are a variety of insert sets, but they’re all plain and none of them really stand out.  At the price I paid, I can’t complain, but I would have hated paying full price for this.  It’s yet another Upper Deck that’s not worth anything near the original retail price.

I’ll start things off with the Team Leaders cards.  You get two studio shots on each card; one of a pitcher and one of a hitter.  "Team Leaders is in gold foil and that’s about as fancy as these cards get.  This box contained 11 Team Leaders cards and while I didn’t pull the Red Sox, I did get the Mariners, Marlins, Mets, Rockies, Braves, Royals, White Sox, Blue Jays, A’s, Padres, and Phillies.  The majority of the cards from this box are up for trade so if you see anything you like, drop me a line.

Fleer has done some cool Lumber Company cards in the past, but this one doesn’t compare.  The design is a nice one and on its own it would be fine, but you can’t help but to compare it to Lumber Company cards of the past.  This box contained Miguel Cabrera, Manny Ramirez, Vlad Guerrero, A-Rod, Troy Glaus, Aramis Ramirez, Eric Chavez, Alfonso Soriano and Ken Griffey Jr.  I’m being unfair to this insert set because it does look nice.  I just wish that there was something in this box that was more than just gold foil.

Like the majority of the insert sets in this product, this one also returns from previous years.  Upper Deck did themselves a disservice by doing this because you can’t help but to think of better looking versions of these sets.

The Smoke ‘n Heat inserts have flames on the bottom and a red fire baseball in the background.  This set focuses on pitchers and I pulled the following: John Smoltz, King Felix, Carlos Zambrano, Pedro Martinez, Curt Schilling and Roy Oswalt.

This is the first insert set that I really dislike the look of.  The red background just doesn’t do it for me.

The good thing about a set such as this one with numerous insert sets is that they get to focus on lots of things you may not usually see insert cards devoted to.  This next set focuses on some of the best fielders in the league.

The Smooth Leather insert set is very basic with a foil stamp.  This box contained Greg Maddux, Mike Mussina, A-Rod, Ichiro and Scott Rolen.

One thing that you always found plenty of in Fleer sets were parallel cards.  Fleer Ultra always had gold medallion parallels and you’d find various other parallels in their others sets.  There is a parallel version of the base set, but you don’t get many of them in a box.  My box only contained three of the parallel cards which are gray on the left side and have a glossy front as opposed to the non-glossy base cards.

The three player on my parallel cards were J.T. Snow, Noah Lowry and Alfonso Soriano.  These parallels aren’t numbered and even though there are only three in a box, I don’t see there being much demand for these cards.

The next insert set is the only one that had any kind of flair to it.  Not Flair as in super thick, super glossy cards, but you will find a little bit of etched foil on these cards.  That’s saying a lot for this set.  Sorry to keep harping on the fact that Upper Deck phoned it in on these inserts, but that’s the feeling that you get opening one of these boxes.  It’s similar to opening a box of 2010 Topps and wishing there were only half as many insert sets.

The Stars of Tomorrow cards are pretty nice looking.  You’ve got team colors, etched foil and a nice design.  We’ve got a winner here.  Unfortunately, there are only three of these in a box.  I pulled Joe Mauer, Rickie Weeks and Jeff Francoeur.  2 out of 3 isn’t bad as far as predicting the stars of tomorrow goes.  Mauer is currently one of the superstars of today.  I’ve got to check and see if there are any Red Sox in this insert set because I think they’d look very good in this design.

We’ve got one more insert set and then the one hit that I pulled out of the box.  The final insert set celebrates the previous season’s award winners.

A-Rod was the AL Most Valuable Player and Huston Street was the AL Rookie of the Year.  Those were the only Award Winners in my box.  These cards are classy looking with gold foil along the borders of the picture and the two banners in front of the picture.

I always liked cards like this that commemorate events from the previous season.  I like having cards of all-stars, home run derby champions, award winners and record setters.  I’d like to see more of that in sets again.

The hit from the box was this Miguel Tejada plain white jersey swatch.  I’ve got to say that Upper Deck picked a really strange picture to use on this card.  Is Tejada doing the Hokey Pokey and putting his whole butt in?  Did someone just pull his finger?  If there were more of the picture, you could tell more easily that Tejada was looking towards first to see if he had successfully turned a double play.  Instead, it looks like Tejada is sitting on an invisible chair.

This was still a fun break and you get a ton of cards.  A little more variety in the inserts would have been nice though.  This was a great value, the condition of the cards was good, I can’t complain about the collation and the design of the cards was alright.  I would give the box a B-.

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