Unlucky All Star

I've been sent a couple of cards by Brian, who has been opening lots of cards from the late 80s and early 90s. He has kindly been sending me pictures of any Tony Gwynn cards he comes across and put any I didn't have to one side. That includes this card produced by Fleer in 1988 which would have come from a pack sold like a pack of cards rather than in wax packs. Fleer produced several sets like this in the 1980s.

Card Number 577: Fleer Baseball All-Stars, 1988; #13

It's semi-ironic that Tony was given card number #13 in this set considering he wasn't able to play in the '88 All Star Game because of injury. Somebody somewhere has probably done a list of discrepancies between these Fleer sets and the eventual All Star rosters. Fleer hedged their bets a bit by including 44 cards knowing there would be 60 players involved so the odds were they would have most of the actual All Stars in the set. 

There was no way Fleer could predict injuries, of course, and based on his previous year's form, Tony was a shoo-in for selection. On the back, Tony's figures for 1987 were incredible. 

I've accumulated a few cards from these standalone sets. The cards are generally a higher quality than the big flagship Fleer sets sold in wax pack. The blue and yellow stripes are eye-catching and make these look colourful and fun. Unfortunately this is the tenth card from this kind of range that I have picked up, so it will be sitting on its own for a while in my 9-pocket binder pages. For reference, the other nine look like this:

So I suppose the challenge is on now to fill a second page of these cards!

Total: 577 cards