Additional Ultra

Happy New Year! I'm kicking off 2021 with a couple of bonus Fleer Ultra cards.

Card Number 561: Fleer Ultra Checklist, 1996; #4

Tony is getting ready to bat in the photo on the front of this checklist.

Fleer Ultra, like the Fleer flagship sets, often featured players from each team in alphabetical number-sequential order. They could have gone a step further and ensured the player on the front was one of the players on the back, but they didn't. Instead Tony has the team members from the Blue Jays, Braves, Cubs and Reds.

I'd not seen Wonderful Monds (#443) listed on a baseball card before. Also known as Wonder, he played seven seasons in the minor leagues after being drafted by the Braves in 1993. His middle name was Terrific. 

Wonderful Terrific Monds. With a name like that it's such a shame he never made it to the Majors. He is a good reminder of why it's always worth checking out a checklist.

(I want card number 443 now.)

Card Number 562: Fleer Ultra, 1998; #AT14

This was an insert set with a 'paint effect' overlaid on the photo. Ah, the early days of Photoshop when such things were new and exciting. 

The back has a bit of an odd write-up, that describes Tony as a Don Quixote type character, tilting at impossible windmills. "Tony will never achieve perfection... but he will never stop trying."

It does make me wonder if the same copywriter who came up with the really weird write ups on some of the Skybox cards was let loose here on this insert set.

Total: 562 cards