1993 Fleer Flair

These are great looking cards (despite the goil foil, but I won't go into it again...) but I never look at these without thinking of those cheesy high school senior yearbook pictures that debuted in the 80's with the ghosted head shot looking in a different direction than the other picture. I guess it could be worse, Fleer could have issued a set with everybody wearing painters caps, skinny wool ties, or having big oversized combs sticking out of their back pockets. 

The 1993 Fleer Flair Detroit Tigers:

200 John Doherty

201 Cecil Fielder

202 Travis Fryman

203 Kirk Gibson

204 Mike Henneman

205 Chad Kreuter

206 Scott Livingstone

207 Tony Phillips

208 Mickey Tettleton

209 Alan Trammell

210 David Wells

211 Lou Whitaker

1993 Fleer Ultra

My guess is that someone at Fleer figured out that if you make a set so beautiful it ranks as one of the all time best, why mess with it? So they made a few tweaks and released another great looking Ultra set in '93. Not quite as good as '92, but it's so damn close there's not really much to say that I haven't already said about the '92's. 

I absolutely love that card of David Haas looking like he's about to try and field the flaming baseball logo that is headed for his feet. His eyes are staring right at it. Magnificent.

The 1993 Fleer Ultra Detroit Tigers:

194 Milt Cuyler

195 Rob Deer

196 John Doherty

197 Travis Fryman

198 Dan Gladden

199 Mike Henneman

200 John Kiely

201 Chad Kreuter

202 Scott Livingstone

203 Tony Phillips

204 Alan Trammell

548 Cecil Fielder

549 Kirk Gibson

550 Greg Gohr

551 David Haas

552 Bill Krueger

553 Mike Moore

554 Mickey Tettleton

555 Lou Whitaker

I only know about one insert card, and I don't have it.

Home Run Kings

3  Cecil Fielder

1993 Fleer

Wow, I didn't realize that it's been over two weeks since my last entry. Between Facebook, other writing projects, and just plain writer's block when thinking about the upcoming lackluster 90's sets, I just haven't been able to muster up the gumption to get on here and keep plugging away. But with a little help from my friends at Anheuser-Busch, maybe I can get something going tonight.

There were a couple of great looking issues from Fleer in '93. This wasn't one of them. This is quite possibly one of the most boring sets ever. But compared to a lot of the crap that came out in the 90's, boring is ok. 

At the time I actually thought these were pretty cool and collected the whole 9 billion card base set, which I gave away shortly after completing. But I kept the Tigers cards, so here they are, pink trim be damned. 

The 1993 Fleer Detroit Tigers:

224 Milt Cuyler

225 Rob Deer

226 John Doherty

227 Cecil Fielder

228 Trvis Fryman

229 Mike Henneman

230 John Kiely

231 Kurt Knudsen

232 Scott Livingstone

233 Tony Phillips

234 Mickey Tettleton

345  League Leaders Cecil Fielder

603 Skeeter Barnes

604 Mark Carreon

605 Dan Gladden

606 Bill Gullickson

607 Chad Kreuter

608 Mark Leiter

609 Mike Munoz

610 Rich Rowland

611 Frank Tanana

612 Walt Terrell

613 Alan Trammell

614 Lou Whitaker

711 Round Trippers Cecil Fielder

714 Super Star Special Cecil Fielder

There were a few different inserts, but I only have one. At least it was the one of one of the greatest players in MLB history, and I'm not talking about Cecil. (sorry, that's a Detroit Tigers Forum inside joke.....check out the link in the sidebar to find many more)

1993 AL All-Stars

5 Cecil Fielder

Major League Prospects

15 Rico Brogna

Pro-Visions II

3 Cecil Fielder

Rookie Sensations

6 Scott Livingstone

Fleer introduced the mother of all update sets in '93, with this one checking in at 300 cards. So essentially it was a full third series. No inserts that I know of, but a nice list of Tigers.

1993 Fleer Final Edition:

209F Kirk Gibson

210F Greg Gohr

211F Bill Krueger

212F Bob MacDonald

213F Mike Moore

214F David Wells

I've mentioned before my rule of collecting Tigers team sets, but it was a long time ago, so I'll mention it again, because one of the rules applies here. My general rule of thumb is that if the team listed on the front says "Detroit Tigers" and the player is pictured in another uniform, or like the '88 Topps Dickie Noles card it says in small print something about playing for the Tigers, or the player featured is in a Tigers uniform even though he is listed on another team, he goes in my team set collection. 

It's sort of hard for me to keep track of these because I don't have the full sets to look through to verify that I have these exceptions. The folks who published the team set book I am using (which is getting very near it's end) don't see it the way I see it. So I'm more or less at the mercy of either having it or not to be able to list it here. 

Three paragraphs about this lousy Kevin Ritz card. It may not be quality, but I's say the writers block has lifted for the time being. 

1993 Bowman

On the flip side, I have come to love blogging about Bowman cards, simply to look back at the Tigers I have absolutely no recollection of......

1993 Bowman Detroit Tigers:

11 Lou Whitaker

39 Chris Gomez

67 Travis Fryman

95 Danny Bautista

151 Kenny Carlisle

179 Mike Moore

207 Ben Blomdahl

235 Scott Livingstone

263 Rick Greene

291 Brian Edmondson

319 Ivan Cruz

332 Rob Deer

391 Alan Trammell

419 Tony Phillips

447 Justin Mashore

475 Cecil Fielder

503 Jason Pfaff

531 Sean Bergman

559 Mike Henneman

587 Justin Thompson

615 Mickey Tettleton

643 Felipe Lira

671 Greg Gohr

Add Carlisle, Blomdahl, Edmondson, Mashore, and Pfaff to the list. I swear I think Bowman made some of these guys up. Hell, I don't remember Greene or Cruz except for seeing them on other cards. Boy did we suck back then.....

1993 Stadium Club

I don't think I have ever liked a Stadium Club set, but hands down that is the best Tony Phillips card ever. 

1993 Stadium Club:

5 Tony Phillips

31 Mickey Tettleton

65 Kurt Knudsen

116 Mark Leiter

135 Lou Whitaker

156 Milt Cuyler

191 Danny Gladden

212 John Kiely

223 Walt Terrell

248 Mike Munoz

267 Frank Tanana

328 Scott Livingstone

357 Rob Deer

389 Skeeter Barnes

416 Alan Trammell

448 Travis Fryman

480 Mike Henneman

503 Cecil Fielder

519 Rich Rowland

530 Rico Brogna

574 Bill Gullickson

673 Kirk Gibson

685 Greg Gohr

693 Mike Moore

I want one of those caps. Better yet I'd like to see an Indians card from 1993 with one of those throwbacks just to see what they look like. 

1993 Topps

Well between facebook and the election I have been severely slacking around here getting some stuff up. Hopefully I can get on a roll and get this finished by the end of the year so I can move on to newer stuff as well as the unveiling of my own personally designed set of baseball cards. With that being said, let's get going.

If I've said it once, I've said it at least more than once, but never on cyberspace though, and here it is: 1993 Topps was the last great base set they ever made. As far as I'm concerned, they've never even come close, and I don't even have any sentimental attachment to this set. (Other than that bitching card of Buddy Groom in the cool throwback. Check out the rotting Cleveland Municpal Stadium in the background.....) 

It's just a nice looking set. It's uncluttered, easy to read (gold foil will change all that in the years to come) and has some really nice subsets too. In fact, I wish Topps did more things like having multiple managers/all-stars/prospects on a single card. 

The Coming Attractions, Manager, and All-Star cards are nice in an innovative yet not too flashy sort of way. Since I mostly only collect Tigers, it's also a cool way to get some other guys that I normally wouldn't pay attention to, like Art Howe and Barry Larkin. The only thing bad about the Phil Clark Coming Attractions card is that Phil Clark is on it. Otherwise it's a nifty looking card. I know I've bashed the silly Score subsets in the past, and deservedly so, but these never gave off that chintzy vibe to me that Score did. 

The 1993 Topps Detroit Tigers:

26 Skeeter Barnes

53 Frank Tanana

80 Cecil Fielder

107 John Kiely

135 Mickey Tettleton

160 Lou Whitaker

189 Tony Phillips

216 Mark Leiter

233 Rick Greene

243 Rob Deer

272 Kurt Knudsen

298 Scott Livingstone

325 Bill Gullickson

353 Buddy Groom

379 Mike Munoz

392 Travis Fryman

423 Ivan Cruz

429 Milt Cuyler

491 Shawn Hare

506 Sparky Anderson

536 Dave Haas

567 Mark Carreon

598 Rico Brogna

626 Danny Gladden

660 Alan Trammell

692 Chad Kreuter

713 John Doherty

756 Mike Henneman

802 Phil Clark

The Traded set was short but sweet.

8T Kirk Gibson

50T David Wells

Topps continued with those crappy goil foil parallels that are just about impossible to read. Had I known they would eventually ALWAYS use the gold foil, I might not have disliked these so much.

In an obvious attempt to capitalize on the popularity of Soul Asylum, Topps debuted the Black Gold insert set. These could have left without a trace and nobody would have cared. They were definitely not the runaway train that Topps had hoped for......

30 Cecil Fielder

41 Mickey Tettleton

The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face

My apologies to the three regular readers of this blog for the delay of my much anticipated review of 1993 Topps, but I have spent the past week making the jump to Facebook in hopes of possibly doubling, or dare I say, tripling, readership here at DTCAS.

I think a slow down was to be expected with regards to my trying to blog about fourteen something different sets a night. I'm about to begin chronicling a ten year period in card collecting history which saw upwards of twenty to thirty different releases a year, and quite frankly my liver just can't keep up with those kinds of numbers anymore.

However, now that I am Facebooking, I would like to add a little more literary, musical, and movie related content to the site as well. Given that a large percentage of my Facebook "friends" are "creative types" I hope to drive up readership to such lofty heights as ten or more people. Also, I just plain enjoy discussing that type of stuff.

For the three readers who have stuck around from the beginning, don't worry. It'll still be primarily about the Documentation of the Cardboard Preservation of the Legends of the OED. But a little musing here and there about the collective works of John Hughes; unreleased and rear bootlegs of The Outfield; wondering why Richard Russo keeps writing the same novel; or the age old question of who was faster, Superman or The Flash; will hopefully provide a much needed increase in participation here at DTCAS.

Oh yeah, you can find me here:

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1615624708&ref=profile