1996 Fleer

I'm tired of looking at that picture of the homecoming queen at the top of my blog. Time to do something else, even if it's half-assed.

I really dug the '96 Fleer, even if they don't look all that great. The matte finish was a great idea. But the design couldn't have been any worse than it was. I mean, I'm a minimalist and all when it comes to cards, but good grief. This may have been the plainest set in baseball card history. These make '61 Topps look like '90 Topps. (Ok, they don't, but you get the picture.....)

I never realized how much Clint Sodowsky looks like Michael Biehn. From The Abyss. Yeah, that's right....right about the time his starts wigging out.

The 1996 Fleer Detroit Tigers:

105 Danny Bautista

106 Joe Boever

107 Chad Curtis

108 John Doherty

109 Cecil Fielder

110 John Flaherty

111 Travis Fryman

112 Chris Gomez

113 Bob Higginson

114 Mark Lewis

115 Jose Lima

116 Felipe Lira

117 Brian Maxcy

118 C.J. Nitkowski

119 Phil Plantier

120 Clint Sodowsky

121 Alan Trammell

122 Lou Whitaker

There was a parallel set printed on glossy stock that was the same as the regular set.

There was also an update set:

U33 Kimera Bartee

U34 Mark Lewis

U35 Melvin Nieves

U36 Mark Parent

U37 Eddie Williams

U219 Cecil Fielder ENCORE

I have a couple of inserts, I don't know for sure if that's all there were.

Prospect

3 Tony Clark

Team Leader

6 Travis Fryman

The number of former and future Padres on that roster is staggering, and it would only get worse.....

Reaffirmation Of Why I Fucking Hate Topps, Part 4

I knew better than to attempt this. That's why I'm madder at myself than I am at Topps. But this is fucking ridiculous. Let me start with who I'm still missing before I really say how I feel about the whole motherfucking deal.

UH20 Justin Masterson RC

UH39 Jose Molina

UH45 Eric Hurley RC

UH57 Ramon Castro

UH63 Eric Brunfeldt

UH78 Dallas Braden

UH81 J.C. Romero

UH108 Shin-Soo Choo

UH144 Robinson Tejada

UH189 Micah Hoffpauir RC

UH201 Travis Denker RC

UH225 Ryan Tucker RC

UH234 Carl Pavano

UH309 John Bowker RC

Now to the punch. I BOUGHT 8 BLASTERS AND A FUCKING HOBBY BOX AND I'M STILL MISSING THIS MANY CARDS. IIRC correctly, each blaster had 80 cards. The hobby box had 360. THAT'S 1,000 CARDS. HOW THE FUCK CAN THAT NOT BE ENOUGH TO COMPLETE A 330 CARD SET???

Ok, I'm done with capital letters for the rest of this post. But shit, that's fucking ridiculous. On top of the 14 cards I'm missing, I got roughly 100 insert cards, the majority of which are crap (see picture above, which by the way is off-centered, has a ding on the corner, and has two serious crimps about an inch from the top, and that's the way it came out of the pack.....) Hell, I got three Millard Fillmore cards for crying out loud!

Out of all those inserts, I only got one Tiger. (The Galarraga jersey card). If anybody is interested in making a trade for any of these insert cards for some Tigers inserts, please respond below. Not knowing this set all that well, I would suppose that the best three inserts I got are a Miguel Tejada jersey card, something called Silk Collection of Andre Ethier (cool card, but if somebody has a Tiger one of these I'll gladly part with this one), and a chrome refractor of Max Ramirez of the Rangers. I'll trade all three. If you collect a certain team, post below which one and I'll tell you what I have for inserts. I'm also interested in finishing the WBC set if you have doubles of those too.

I know. It's my own damn fault. I knew this was going to happen and I let it anyway. But good grief, this is horrible. The best (being sarcastic here...) part is that the 8 blasters were priced at $20 each, and the hobby box was priced at $72. That would've been $232 before the Meijer discount (I got each blaster for $8 and the hobby box for $40, which is still $104). I'm still missing cards. Yeah Topps, It's Upper Deck cards sitting next to yours in the store which is why collectors are unhappy. Go fuck your collective selves.