Saturday, November 22, 2008

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. 

Thursday, November 6, 2008

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

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

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: