Finishing Fleer Fortnight in a Traditional way

Fleer Tradition was the company's retro range at the tail end of the 90s and across the cusp of the millennium. It sometimes combined a mix of fairly ordinary looking cards with vintage style parallels and sometimes just went for a full set of full-on retro designs. Some sets also had some well-designed subsets and insert sets. One of my favourite Tony Gwynn cards ever is a Fleer Tradition insert that I blogged about in my first month of blogging.

Card Number 954: Fleer Tradition, 1998; #250

An unusual - and fantastic! - photo on the front of this base card. Tony has a pen in his hand so he was presumably turning that shirt into an autographed shirt!

The use of the shirt for the backdrop on the cardback is very effective. I've not seen it done on many (if any) cards. It seems like the sort of design technique that should appear frequently because it's such a simple yet impactful idea. 

There is lots more colour in the stats box than is usually applied on a card, whihc makes it easier to read than the usual rows of tiny numbers. Plenty of thought went into the design of this card.

Card Number 955: Fleer Tradition, 1998; #315

There were 10 "Golden Memories" cards in the middle of the 600 card Fleer Tradition set in 1998. It's a shiny card that looks really special but is actually 'just' a base card. Trading Card Database has a note that these cards were inserted at a ratio of 1 in 6 packs, which probably makes them more common than regular base cards.

The back has a flamboyant cameo frame and a factoid about how Tony scored 4 hits in 5 at bats against Greg Maddux in a game in 1997. 

Greg famously reckoned Tony was the only player it was impossible to strike out. It's always worth a re-quote.

“Sometimes hitters can pick up differences in spin. They can identify pitches if there are different release points or if a curveball starts with an upward hump as it leaves the pitcher’s hand. 

But if a pitcher can change speeds, every hitter is helpless, limited by human vision. 

Except for that f---ing Tony Gwynn.”

Card Number 956: Fleer Tradition Update, 1999; #U-145

Fleer Tradition was so popular in the late 90s is merited an update series, which included some season highlights from that year.

I doubt any regular readers don't know that the 6th August 1999 was the date of Tony's 3000th hit. This is one of the first cards released commemorating it. 

What is really strange is that Tony was the first player in 20 years to reach the 3,000 hit mark. The next player to reach 3,000 hits was Wade Boggs on the 7th August 1999. The day after Tony reached that milestone!

Card Number 957: Fleer Tradition Dividends insert, 2000; #9

Sometimes when an insert series has an odd name like 'Dividends', I just assume it's because baseball companies were running out of words...

Red borders always make a card look good. However, the offset nature of the black and white photo is a little jarring.

The same photo appears on the back, except it's rendered in sepia.

Although the write up implies hits were inevitable when Tony made a plate appearance, they were relatively rare in the 2000 season because Tony made comparatively few plate appearances - just 140 compared to 446 in 1999.

Total: 957 cards

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

It's even more Tradition!

And a treat today, as Fleer inadvertently revive a great tradition of baseball card production.

Card Number 418: Fleer Tradition, 2000; #346

Fleer ditched the base set that looked like every other card set and instead rendered all 450 cards in a retro look that wasn't based on a Fleer set, as much as the Topps set from 1954 (judge for yourself)

One thing I really like about the back is that the watermark logo looks like a proper gum stain!

But the "gum stain" isn't the great tradition of card production from back in the day that I was referring to. (Although, as an aside, it surely won't be long before Topps start adding faux gum stains or tobacco stains to their retro products!)

Card Number 419: Fleer Tradition, 2001; #141

No, the tradition I was talking about was the good old miscut card! I bought these at the same time, just because! I've also scanned them together.

You can see how on the bottom one the ribbon is much closer to the bottom of the card. The dark line on the top edge is actually part of the image from the next card on the printing plate.

The misalignment is also noticeable on the cardbacks.

It's not obvious which set this is meant to be, so I think it's an attempt at a totally new retro-looking set. It also earns itself bonus points for having a cartoon on the back.

Little things like miscut cards amuse me. In one sense this kind of mistake helped Fleer succeed in making a genuinely retro product.

Total: 419 cards.

It's Tradition

In a similar move to other card companies, Fleer brought out a retro range towards the end of the 90s. Fleer Tradition produced a normal-looking base set and then additional retro styles cards. Unlike Upper Deck, who borrowed freely from Topps templates, Fleer had a couple of their own retro designs they could use. 

Card Number 415: Fleer Tradition Vintage '63 (Insert), 1998; #52

This was Fleer's revitalisation of their 1963 design. There were 128 cards in this 'vintage' insert series, along with 600 base cards and multiple other inserts. This was the era of big card sets!

The photo is nicely centred on the Jackie Robinson 50th anniversary sleeve patch and Tony is autographing a shirt. The patch dates this to the 1997 season. 

The back is done in a similar retro style. I like the way the stats are set out. 

Card Number 416: Fleer Tradition, 1999; #43

Tony did bat flips too!

This is the base card in the set. The full bleed photo marks the set out as more high end.

There's an oddly positioned photo on the back with Tony looking awkward, and a huge stats box.

One thing I would say about Fleer cards at the end of the 90s - they included the year under the Fleer logo. That's very handy for collectors. 

Card Number 417: Fleer Tradition - Vintage '61 (Insert), 1999; #43

This time Fleer revived their own design from 1961 for the 50 card insert series. It's the same photo as the base card with Tony cut out and dropped on a plain background.

The back is arranged nicely. They aped the DonRuss tendency to include a player's full name. 

The write up notes that Tony was the closest active player to 3,000 hits - a milestone he would reach during the 1999 season.

Total: 417 cards

One card only - Fleer Grassroots

I can't express how much I adore this baseball card. If I could only pick 10 cards to keep out of my Tony Gwynn binder, this would be the first one I pick.

Card Number 61: Fleer Tradition, 2001; #13GR

The scan doesn't really do it justice. I can't really define what makes it so appealing. Maybe it's the way Tony's name follows the arch of the frame. All I know is that when I picked it up while going through a job lot, my first response was 'Wow!'

It has a nice, handsome card back too. There were 15 cards in the 'Grass Roots' insert series within the Fleer Tradition set. I'm not sure what the reference to 'Grass Roots's is about. The write up on the back offers no clues as to why they chose to call it 'Grass Roots'.

This was from Tony's final season and predicts Tony would finish with a higher lifetime batting average than Honus Wagner. When Tony retired, the Fleer cardback writers were proved correct as he finished with a career total of .338 with 19 seasons in a row posting over .300; two more seasons than Wagner.

It's interesting to speculate if Tony would have won even more batting titles and finished with an even higher career total, if he hadn't played so many games while carrying an injury. There were some seasons where he would have finished with a higher average if he hadn't played for the final few weeks of the season.

Fleer Tradition cards were an equivalent to Topps Heritage, but are sadly no longer produced. I'm just glad to have this lovely card in my collection.

Total: 61/394