1984 Fleer NFL Teams in Action

A set I did not know it exist til I went to a card shop in Houston. I thought Topps had monopoly of football til 1989 when Pro Set and Score came in the picture. Turns out Fleer put this small 88 card set out in 1984. They also offered gum as well their trademark stickers.

Start out with stickers as Browns is covered in powdery gum stain. The sticker in miniature form with team schedule on the back.

The cards are in horizontal form. This one feature Cincinnati Bengals with team defensive stats from 1983 season. No player names are on it because this set isn't NFLPA license.

Steelers card featuring their match with Cowboys from Super Bowl 10. Good photo selection as Franco Harris gets tackled.

Colts card of their offensive team stats. The card was damage when it came out the pack.

Giants offensive line plowing the way for their running back score against Cowboys. Interesting note this is Bill Parcells first year coaching the Giants. Another damage card out of the pack,

Patriots defense wrapping Earl Campbell for a tackle

Raiders card featuring their win over the Vikings in Super Bowl 11.

Last card featuring Vikings defense swarming a Packers player.

My final post is this 36 year old gum still intact.

1992 Comic Images Ghost Rider II

The 90's was a great era of comics...well at least in my eyes. With Marvel Comics purchasing Fleer, there was no shortage of comics spilling over into trading cards. Prior to this the comic sets were small and released by the likes of Comics Images and eventually Impel.

I grabbed a sealed box of 1992 Ghost Rider II cards at a comics show in 2019 and the box was shelved as I was working on other projects. However as of late I've been on a Ghost Rider kick of sorts so decided last weekend it was finally time to crack the box open.

This is my first experience with anything from the small card company Comic Images, so I was a little surprised to see how thin the cardboard was that was used for the cards. These are some of the thinnest trading cards I've ever seen. The black border also shows off every imperfection of the cards. While I forgot to snap a picture of the back of the cards, all of them (at least in my box) were off center.

The artwork used on the cards however is dark, gritty and very beautiful. The art hails from the different comic issues and is from different artists...some I'm familiar with and others I'm not. I was happy to see Spider-Man on the first card I pulled from this pack, followed by Sleepwalker.

The card in the lower right hand corner is taken from the Fantastic Four #347 (or #348) when Ghost Rider, along with the grey Hulk, Spider-Man and Wolverine briefly formed the "new Fantastic Four" to exact revenge on the shape-shifting Skrulls. Love those two issues and the art by Arthur Adams was such a treat to view.

Inside each pack was one of ten glow in the dark insert cards. This particular one features art by Rob Liefeld and Ghost Rider's flaming skull (and the logo) glow in the dark. 90's gimmick cards at it's finest.

In the end I was able to put together four complete sets with the glow in the dark cards! I gave one set to my older brother, kept one for myself and I believe another will be sent to a trading buddy of mine. The other will be up for grabs if anyone is interested.

2008 Donruss Elite Extra Edition

I don't delve much into the non-MLB licensed prospect sets that feature players in Photoshopped college gear and other weird uniforms, but this was included as the requisite "hobby" pack in one of the newer repack configurations available sometimes at Target.

67 - L.J. Hoes - I'll try to avoid making an "Area Codes" joke here, and just point out the weird "Baseball Factory" uniform that the subject is wearing. Is Hoes an actual sentient being or a product of some sort of weird baseball science?

10 - Brad Hand - One of the more familiar names in the pack, Hand has made the All-Star team the last three seasons as a reliever. Here you get a look at one of the boring card backs which apparently must have inspired Panini when they took over the Donruss/Playoff licenses not long after this came out.

59 - Josh Reddick - Another solid name. It's actually kind of a surprise to pull two players who are still active and relevant in the game today.

5 - Adam Moore - I can't be the only one who has asked from time to time what the meaning of "Extra Edition". This seems to imply that there would be a "regular" edition of this set, but in most cases it seems that there is not.

54 - Jon Mark Owings - We end with a guy I've definitely never heard of who actually sort of looks like he's wearing a Braves uniform. Is this some sort of Fall League uni? I cant' really tell. It also has the US flag on the back which could mean it is for some sort of national team competition.

2019 Topps 52-Card Baseball Game - Created by Kenny Mayne Booster "Pack"

Topps recently released another collaboration this time with sportscaster Kenny Mayne. Kenny created a 52 game, hence the name.  I opted not to pick up the full game package and decided that I liked the booster pack checklist more and ordered 3 booster "packs"  Packs is not really how to describe these as all the packs came in a clear snap-down.  

Anyways, I'm not sure how to play the game and to be fair I don't care, but the card are  nice quality and feel like playing cards.  Let's have a look at one of the "packs"

I chose the booster packs specifically because the checklist had a few players I collect, sadly this Hand Aaron was the only one I pulled out of all three.

Here are what the backs looks like, they're all the same.

One nice thing is I got no dupes out of my 3 packs so that's nice. 

2007 Bowman

Here's a hobby pack of Bowman cards from 2007, back from the days of Dice-K, Lincecum and Luke Hochevar, apparently. I believe I picked this up at a card show.

2 - Justin Verlander - Right off the bat we get a card of a pretty big star in Verlander, from one of his early seasons. Verlander was fresh off of a World Series appearance in which neither he nor his team did all that well, if I recall.

17 - Chad Billingsley - Another young pitcher at the time, Billingsley was entering his second big league season at the time of this set's release.

136 - Vladimir Guerrero - Long before his son was all the rage, Vlad (Sr) was finishing up the latter half of his career quite decently.

200 - Alex Rodriguez - I wonder what A-Rod thinks of the recent cheating scandal in baseball. Let's hear it, A-Rod!

BP34 - Derek Griffith Blue Prospects (350/500) - Bowman continues today much in the same vein as they were in 2007, with the expected mix of vets and prospects. This is a color "paper" parallel of one of the prospects. I have no recollection of this player who apparently topped out in A ball.

99 - Jose Reyes Gold - Long gone, though, are the days of the one-per-pack gold parallel. I guess at some point Topps thought we all lost our gold lust or something.

BC40 - Mike Devaney Chrome Prospects - Back to the prospects here. Devaney is the second player who would not appear for another affiliated baseball team after 2007.

BC36 - Chase Wright Chrome Prospects - Wright was a pretty big prospect at the time, probably overly inflated by coming up with the Yanks.

BP14 - Scott Taylor Prospects - Taylor looks like a massive dude, but some of it might have to do with the camera being pointed up at the clouds. 

BP91 - T.J. Nall Prospects - The last card is also a prospect and, yeah... never heard of him. Oh well.

Fairfield 75 Football Cards

Greetings!

Hope everyone enjoyed their New Year's celebrations.  We're seven days into the Roaring '20s and all the tidings of comfort and joy seem to be gone.  It's always a bummer when all the decorations go down.

The new year means new goals...maybe our goal should be to rebound from a horrible 90 post showing in 2019, the worst in the 10+ years of this site.  I'll do what I can to make that a reality!

Anyway, a few months ago, my eldest came home from a Walgreens run with The Wifey all excited because he got this:

Well, not that specific box; the image above is from the interwebs since he trashed the box before I could take a pic of it.  After I went through the stack and tried to figure out why he wanted a repack box of football cards (no particular reason), I checked the site and didn't see that we had one of these boxes posted here. 

I didn't take pictures of all 75 cards, nor did I write down all 75 players or sets they came from.  I did total the years the cards came from and took (not great) pics of some of the more interesting cards that's now somewhere in his room.  Here's what he got:

I'm pretty sure this was on the front of the box.  Pretty nice shot of the two 2-sport players.

Not sure why I took the pic of the back of Morten's 1993 Topps card.  Maybe I was impressed with kicking stats...something Panini would never show.

Here's another back.  I'm 100% sure the back was better than the front (another dig at Panini).

Here's Jim Everett with the Saints.  Unless you're a Saint's fan, this looks out of place.

Oh man, I don't think Herschel sees momma pigskin about to run him over for playing catch with her baby.

Here's the back of the Cardinals' 1989 Topps card, in case you wanted to see how they did.  Boy, they were streaky...and Phoenix Cardinals?

These were back to back in the stack.  I found it interesting that Broderick had no opponents on him (he's kinda floating there), while Bruce is getting mauled by Bears.

I took a picture of Mo here from 2000 Topps because of that gold stamp in the upper right.  However, I forgot to write down what it said and I ain't about to go looking for it in his very messy room.  I'll guess it's a parallel foil of some sort.  If I ever come across the card again, I'll update this post.

Thurman Thomas collects Garfield!

Why did I take a picture of Wade Wilson?  I may have watched Deadpool 2 recently.

The box promises a hit in every 4 boxes.  My son thought he lucked out and this 1990 Action Packed Eric Metcalf was the hit, because it was gold and a little shiny. I had to let him down gently.

You usually see the Astrodome on baseball cards, not football ones. 

This is an awesome looking card back from 1998 Flair Showcase.

My son asked me which were the most valuable cards from the stack, and I chose these two, which were back to back in the stack.

Here's the year by year totals for the 75 cards.  Certainly "junk wax" heavily, but could be worse:

1989 - 11
1990 - 12
1991 - 17
1992 - 10
1993 - 2
1994 - 4
1995 - 10
1996 - 1
2000 - 1
2011 - 2
2018 - 5

Anyway, that's the box.  Here's hoping for a happy, healthy, and prosperous New Year to everyone!  Thanks for reading!