One Card Only - brilliant blue!

I have been blessed by people contacting me to either offer me first dibs on Tony Gwynn cards they have for sale (one of whom said he wanted me to have first refusal because I am a "proper collector"), securing large quantities of cards for me to go through on a sale or return basis, and some people who have just sent me cards for free. 

One of those generous souls who has recently sent me a free card is Ross who messaged me on Facebook to ask if I had this card. I did not, and it arrived in the post shortly after.

Card Number 327: Fleer Brilliants, 1999; #79B

The B stands for Blue parallel. And it is very blue!

I recently sat down with my wife Cathy and showed her my various binders of Tony Gwynn cards. She knows I've acquired a lot recently, and I usually show her them when they arrive, but she hadn't seen all of them. Seeing this card she ssked: "Is this when he was an ice skater?"

I hadn't seen that Tony looked like he was ice skating before. Now I can't unsee it.

Fleer Brilliants was a 175 card set with both blue and gold parallel sets (in fact, there were two types of gold parallel), released on the cusp of the new Millennium. This was the era when Fleer were launching a few new sets every season and not many of them lasted more than a year.

I would give this card a bonus point for the pseudo-gothic font they used for his name. Those Ns are formidable. It's also on the back.

The factoids on the back says Tony was one of only eight players to hit .300 for 14 consecutive seasons, which is a bit odd because in 1999 he had hit .300 for 16 consecutive seasons. It makes me wonder if the cardback copy was recycled from somewhere or this set was a long time in the planning and it hadn't been updated. 

I would like to say a big thank you to Ross for contacting me out of the blue and sending me this beautiful blue card.

Total: 327/394