Box Break Review: 2016-17 Fleer Showcase (My first NHL Box!)

Sorry this has taken me so long to post- I received this box as an Easter gift in 2017 and I'm just now finally getting around to posting it...the queue is long and growing. I don't know why I've been such a slacker in getting this posted, just not mentally in the game I guess. I'm not even writing most of the post until almost a year later, in February 2018. I'm embarrassed about it, but better late than never, no?

This was, as I say in the title, the very first NHL Box I ever opened. (It has since been joined by 16-17 Ice, 16-17 UD S2, 17-18 UD S1 and 1992-93 Ultra s1, and I have some more I'm working on but have not finished yet!)

Fleer has always been my favorite company, a large part of that because they made Ultra, my favorite brand. Fleer Showcase can trace it's roots all the way back to Flair, which eventually evolved into Flair Showcase, then Fleer Showcase, then Flair and Fleer Showcase were two different sets being issued the same years, then finally Flair Showcase being an insert in Fleer Showcase, which is now part of the Upper Deck family. (whew!) The Fleer Showcase set is now the only set of cards Fleer shows up on, although UD reintroduced some Marvel Comics sets with the Fleer banner last year. For most of the brands that made Fleer great, they appear as inserts in this set.

Enough pre-amble, let's see some cards, right?
Here's the base card design.

It's very gold and the players are all glowy. This one happens to be the only card in my collection showing the Nets-inspired alternates the Islanders wore last year.

Some of the photos really could have used more context, like this shot of Alex Ovechkin, who looks kind of possessed...

...which Anze Kopitar appears to be trying to escape from.

Scroll down below to see the rest of the base cards.

There were two rookies in the box, both numbered.

and Kyle Connor is clearly autographed. In fact, this was the first NHL autograph I pulled from a pack myself, and the second in my collection! I had never heard of him at that time, but I have watched the Jets a little more during the 2017-18 season and he's playing a pretty good role in their actually being good this year. He's put up 18 goals on the year in 50 games, with 35 points overall. Zack Mitchell has not done as well, playing only 21 games with three goals this season, he appears to be on the end of the bench in Minnesota.

The real draw of Fleer Showcase is the retro inserts, however. All the Fleer/Skybox brands live on solely in this set, as I've mentioned, but I was not able to pull all of them from my box.

Ultra lives on only as the mirror foil Scoring Kings, a long-time staple of the brand. Tarasenko was key in the Blues winning the first NHL game I saw in it's entirety so that is cool.

EX features a clear cutout with a cloud pattern printed on clear plastic- a definite throwback to the 1996-97 set.

Flair Showcase showed up with 5 cards, including one parallel of the insert, called Blue Ice, which is kind of funny if you know what that is. The card has an unusual texture on the back, is serially numbered, and sparkles much more than the scan shows.

The most populous throwback insert though, was Metal Universe, which saw 6 cards.

The Crosby is die cut, and the Carlo is fairly low numbered, 50 copies exist of this color Precious Metal Gems. There are also Green, Red and Purple, of which I didn't get any. The big problem with the Metal Universe cards, though, is that they are not etched. With the exception of one series in 1997-98, all the other Metal branded cards are etched foil, which I know Upper Deck has the capability to produce, as they used it in the Black Diamond brand for years.

There was also a Skybox Premium insert but they are numbered and rarer, I didn't get any of them. 

There were also three of the Red Glow parallels, which are not numbered. There is also a White Hot parallel, which is numbered to 25, that I was unable to pull.

I have to admit, I love parallels...I love parallels more than inserts, in fact...but in this case I would have been happier getting base cards, as I got none of these three in base format. It was my first cards of Drouin and Stepan, but being a known Rangers fan, I've gotten more Stepans since.

Overall, I got 71 of the 100 non-SP base cards. All the inserts and parallels I got are shown above.
Since it would be a lot of work to post the other 68 base cards, I'm not going to do that. Instead, here's a little gif of them.

They are in number order, but if you want to see the number and card backs, I suggest going to see the set on the Trading Card Database here. You can see the cards I didn't get there, too.

I don't know if they plan to do Fleer Showcase again in the 2017-18 season, but if they do, I hope I get a box again. There's a lot of nostalgia and the cards are pretty cool, even if they are mostly cutout of a full photo...you can still see it in the background.