Tuesday, February 23, 2021

Glamorous insert cards

Fleer cards got a bit weird around the turn of the Millennium. 

Card Number 597: Fleer Triple Crown Glamour Boys, 2001; #11

It might just be me, but 'Glamour Boys' sounds slightly suspect.

This holofoil insert card scanned green on my flatbed scanner.


So I had a couple of goes with the overhead scanner to try and get a better image.



That third attempt kind of works!

The 'shopped shadow behind Tony's head on the back looks odd. He also has grey stubble.


I'd query the write up on the back. In his 'Complete Baseball Player' book, Tony freely admitted that he would sometimes chase balls that were out of the strike zone because sometimes it was easy to get a hit that way.  

Card Number 598: Fleer Tradition Lumber Company, 2001; #5

'Lumber' is used in several card set names as an alternative word for wood. 


The figures on this card don't include Tony's hits from his final season. He recorded 33 hits in 2001 and finished his career with a total of 3,141. His average didn't change.

This is a very orange card, front and back.


The opening factoid on this cardback feels about 15 years too late. Watching video replays was a big deal when Tony started doing it in the mid-1980s. (Before he was nicknamed Mr Padre, he was called Captain Video for his pioneering study of taped performances.) By 2001, it was surely quite common for batsmen to incorporate video into their training.

However, I like the rhyming line "A tough man to fan". The little photo on the cardback looks like it was taken at a press conference. 

Total: 598 cards

2 comments:

  1. These kind of remind me of current Topps inserts. They're a little stale and boring. Feels like they were produced for the sake of producing an insert set and were a little rushed. But I think every card company has their share of stale and boring inserts.

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    Replies
    1. Fleer definitely ran out of ideas and overstretched themselves around about the year 2000.

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