Cardboard History : 1992-93 Fleer

Showing posts with label 1992-93 Fleer. Show all posts

Saturday, May 10, 2025

Filling Bullet Holes

You ever get a good idea for a post title and then build a post around it? Well, that's what happened here. I was cropping some Washington Bullets cards and the title came to me.

I only got to see 1 and a half seasons of Washington Bullets basketball before they rebranded to the Wizards, saying that Bullets was a negative connotation. For many years it was the only stick-and-ball sport name change I had ever seen, until the New Orleans Hornets became the Pelicans and the Charlotte Bobcats became the Hornets version 2. The Hornets version 1 became the Pelicans in 2013 for the 2013-14 season so it really wasn't all THAT long but it seemed longer in my head, until I did the math when making this post.

While the Sonics became the Thunder in 2008, I was not watching basketball at that time. I now realize that it was more of a me problem, but I had walked away from the sport in 2006 and didn't return in 2012. Something I now regret immensely.

Here are the Bullets cards that I scanned today that led to this post.

1992-93 Fleer #231. It was the back of this card specifically that I was working on when I got the post title idea. Since I have everything typed into Excel, I can actually make the post reflect the title. I have 16 Bullets base cards from 1992-93 Fleer, one of my all time favorite sets, and this is the 16th to be scanned, filling the last hole! In addition, I have two promos (From the Drake's Cakes set) and one insert of the Bullets, and they are both scanned already as well. There are two inserts and 4 promos I do not yet have in my collection, maybe some day.

1993-94 Upper Deck #285. For some reason a LOT of my 1993-94 Upper Deck cards are in poorer condition, with a lot of surface scratches. That is the risk you run when you build your collection via repacks, I suppose. But it has led a lot of cards to be put into the "replace before scanning" box. Let's see how this set breaks out. There are 17 base cards for the Bullets in this set, which is interesting. The 1992-93 Fleer set is 444 cards, while 1993-94 Upper Deck is 510- one of the largest sets ever made. Two of the cards are subset cards, which means the players got two cards in the set, only 13 players got cards. Calbert Cheaney got 3 cards in the base set and there is a team card. Despite being a larger set than 1992-93 Fleer, it didn't do as good a job covering the team. Pervis is the 13th base card I've scanned of the Bullets from this set, along with one insert. I have 4 inserts for the team from this set, I think. It's a little harder to figure out since Excel sorting is a little challenging to do when there are offshoot sets (Upper Deck Special Edition and Upper Deck 3-D ProView, plus the Italian and Spanish versions of the set in this case) which it sorts alphabetically. Larry Stewart, Kevin Duckworth and Don MacLean are the three players still awaiting scans. I know that the Stewart card was damaged in the flood of 2015, almost all my cards of him were. It might be too far gone to pull a scan out of.

The third, and actually final card for today, is this Juwan Howard card from 1996-97 Ultra. My all-time favorite NBA set. Despite being my favorite set of all time, it's fairly small at 300 cards and I have not actually completed it yet. I know I could easily go out and buy what I am missing- but that doesn't bring as much satisfaction of getting them naturally. I only have 9 Bullets cards from the base set, as well as two parallels and two inserts. This is only my 6th Bullets card scanned from the base set, and is the second of two subset cards. Interestingly, Juwan's regular player card is one that has not been scanned yet. I have scanned both insets (both Chris Webber) and both of the Gold Medallions I have from the Bullets. Besides Juwan's regular card, Rod Strickland and Ben Wallace still await scans. I do have Ben's Gold Medallion scanned. I figured I would check before I hit post, and I discovered that the 9 cards I have is actually all of them in the base set. There are 4 inserts I don't have, and 16 parallels. I have none of the Platinum Medallions for the Bullets and only the two Golds of Tracy Murray and Ben Wallace.

So this random thought that led to a post ended up teaching me things- that I now have all the 1992-93 Bullets scanned, that I have all the Bullets from 1996-97 Ultra, and although I didn't mention it in the post previously, I found and corrected an error in my excel listing. (I had somehow credited a Charlotte Hornets card from 1992-93 Fleer to the Bullets)

Speaking of filling holes- my records show that I have 1151 Washington Bullets cards. With these three I have now scanned 869 of them. Still a long way to go scanning, although I'm working at it often. Not that I necessarily want to finish any time soon, because I really enjoy it and have no idea what I'm going to do for fun when I finish.

Tuesday, December 20, 2016

You can always depend on the kindness of bloggers

No "Total Blaster" today...I opened one...but somebody already opened it before I got it, and stole the relic. I have contacted the major dealer I got it from, and will update with the final outcome, for now Total Blaster 16 will be skipped.

On a much happier note, I got three packages in the mail today. The first was a trade from the Trading Card Database, which got me a new NBA player and might have even completed a set for me, I have not even taken the time to check before getting this post made.

Next was a Christmas card from The Collector, a thank you for my being his Secret Santa. Two cards from 1992-93 Fleer, a favorite set of mine, which you will see in the second photo. It's always a good day to get one of them, and here I got an insert and one of the Drake's promos, a set I've been working on for more than 20 years!

The biggest package came from Dennis of Too Many Verlanders/Too Many Manninghams. Dennis put up a post where he posted a ton of stuff and said if you want any, to claim it. I have never traded with Dennis before, in fact I don't know if I had ever even commented on one of his posts, but I saw this big stack of SI for Kids cards, and I had to jump on them. Even though these are marketed towards kids, I find I appreciate them more the older I get. When I was younger, when these cards were new, if it wasn't NBA or NASCAR, I didn't care. It was wasted space to me. Now, I appreciate getting to see and learn about the other sports. and one thing SI for Kids does that nobody else does is include other sports besides the Big 5. There are entire sports that are represented solely by SI for Kids cards in my collection. And, even though some of these are duplicates, they are still in original panel form- I used to separate mine when I was a kid, but it led to a lot of damaged cards. Way too many. I'm glad to get a full panel now to sort of replace them, even though my collection total won't actually change.
Not only is this going to a fill a lot of holes in my collection, it's going to add a bunch of new names as well. Most of the people from outside the big 5 and even some of the non-NBA and NASCAR people from them will be new too. There are even some of the oversized Legends cards that they did in 1995-96, which are not as easily found as the standard sized cards, although I'm not sure if they count as rare.

Look at them all! The table can't even hold them all! It'll take me a few days to get these processed into my collection, but it's going to be fun!

He also had this group of oversized cards, which I had to claim. Again, as I've gotten older, I have appreciated oversized and other sized cards much more. When I was younger if it was not standard size, it didn't count...I'm not even sure if the oversized cards I got when they were new are counted in my collection. Someday when I finish scanning everything and sort them back by set, I will recount and figure it out, but that's years away.
The cards from Chris at The Collector are shown on the right. They are standard size.
Dennis also included a pack of 2008 Topps baseball, which I will open up shortly, but I forgot to include it in the photo and I'm in too much pain to go take another. The Mourning may be a dupe here but the rest are all new. It may be new as well, I'd have to check my collection listing on the Trading Card Database, but I am trying to get this posted while I am still awake, which won't be much longer, haha.
The Sharpshooters insert that got glare from my camera flash is Hersey Hawkins.

Dennis, thank you so much for all these cards! Sometime into next year I will bolster your Michigan alumni basketball collection, don't think I will have enough time to get them together by the end of this year, but I will send along a thank you bundle!
And thank you Chris for knocking two more cards off my wantlist for one of my all-time favorite sets!

Thursday, February 4, 2016

NBA 20th Anniversary Countdown #11 1992-93 Fleer

A set I'm not sure why I like so much...but I do.

#11: 1992-93 Fleer

Why I like it: I like the design. It's color coded with simulated basketball textured boxes for the player's name and team. The back design is my all-time favorite in the hobby. (I think!)

Set size/completion: 444 cards, I have 443 of them. 99.8% complete according to the Database. I am missing only #344, Scott Brooks, to have the complete collection. (I only have one version of the #4 Jon Koncak card, but I don't consider variations necessary for a complete set.)

This is a set that looks better in person than it does in scans. For some reason they scan darker than are, and this is a set that must be scanned only with cards from the same set. The gold border doesn't scan particularly well either, and it is very much condition sensitive. In writing up these posts, I realize that in actuality this should probably be #13, with 1997-98 Ultra and 2012-13 Hoops ranking above it, but I'm not going to re-write these posts to change it! And besides, my ranking changes all the time. Sets that would have been in my top 5 at one point in my life now does not make the top 20, or even come anywhere near close to it. I can't guarantee that next year at this time the ranking won't change significantly- and not by new sets being issued, but just how I'm feeling at that time.

I think the back of the card may be my favorite of all time...although I have not really thought too much about that. The basketball pattern is great, the color coding, the large photo in the shape of the "key". I'm not really too sold on the pink, which Fleer used for several years in the stat area, but it's not enough of a detraction to bring the back down.

There were not a lot of inserts in the set- but there are a lot of promos.

Inserts include All-Stars, Rookie Sensations, Sharpshooters, Team Leaders and Total D, as well as a Larry Johnson set that also has an autograph parallel. The inserts are not too spectacular, All-Stars is my favorite. I have not scanned any of several of them yet.

All-Stars

Sharpshooters

Larry Johnson

Team Leader

Rookie Sensations

There are quite a few promo sets associated with 1992-93 Fleer. The most prominent is the Drake's set, which looks just like the base cards, but have different numbers. There is nothing at all to let you know it's the Drake's set EXCEPT the number.

The standard Shaquille O'Neal card is #401.

There is also a Tony's Pizza set, which again looks exactly like the base set, only they carry no number at all.

The standard Petrovic card is #147.

There is also a promo set for Spaulding, and several team-released sets as well. There might be some I don't even know about, either!

Wednesday, December 30, 2015

December Trade Recap

December was another good month for me for trading. I consider any month where I make more than one trade a good one. My total number of trades for 2015 was 14, which is a little more than I expected, to be honest. Considering I have almost exclusively base cards available to trade, it limits the number I can do. 6 of my 14 trades came in November and December combined.

All 14 of my trades were made on the Trading Card Database, and one of them, early in the year, was the largest trade I have ever made.. I discovered a mistake in the post I made about it back then. I stated that it got me to 1 card away from 1993-94 Upper Deck. that isn't actually true, because the trade I just got in the mail on 12/28/15 got me to 1 card away from the set! When I was looking at my listing, I missed the card I got this trade. The info on my tradelist on the Database was correct and helped me get the card now.

I don't have any idea exactly how many cards I got in trade in 2015, other than in the month of December. I got 5 cards in the first trade, 4 in the second, and 56 in the third and final trade, 65 total. I also got several replacements for cards that got destroyed in the flood of 2/5/15, including the 1991-92 Upper Deck Muggsy Bogues card, which was totally obliterated in the flood. It, and the other replacements, are not counted as part of the 56 new.

Trade #1 for December saw me get 5 of the 1991 Vette Set cards. This is a set I was fairly close to completing, and as of now it is one of many sets where I am missing only 1 card. I only scanned 1 of them I got. This is card #99 of 100 in the set. It didn't scan all that well, the real card does not have those lines on it.

The second trade saw me get 4 of the Distinguished Service inserts from 2007 Topps Baseball. This was a very interesting set, it highlighted baseball players who served in the military, as well as some military only people. I got one earlier in the year as well, now having 5 of them. Again, I only scanned one. These arrived just a couple of days before Christmas and I've been working on the cards I got that day ever since.

The last trade to arrive, arriving on 12/28/15, was the largest, which saw me receive 56 new cards, as stated above. All 56 are NBA, and cover in age 1988-89 through 2004-05. The largest group of them was from 1992-93 Fleer, one of my all time favorite sets. I got 23 new ones here, and, even better, it brings me to only one card short of the set! While I did not complete any sets with this trade, it moved 4 sets to one card short. In addition to 1992-93 Fleer, it also moved 1991-92 Fleer, 1993-94 Upper Deck, and 2002-03 Topps to that mark. I also got some new cards for sets that I have not added to in a long time. 2000-01 Victory got two new cards...my records show my last new addition to the set was all the way back on July 23rd, 2002! For a 330 card set, that's a very long time. Of course, I was pretty much totally away from the NBA from 2006-12. 2003-04 Standing O got a new card, and the last time that happened was 3/2/04, and 2004-05 Ultra, my favorite of the three that I hadn't added to in over a decade, saw it's last new addition on 8/11/04. The package also included 6 new cards from 1997-98 Upper Deck. For some reason this set almost never comes up in the mixed boxes I like to get. Although this was not the first time I added to the set in 2015, is the largest new addition I've made to this set since 2002 or 2003. Here are some highlights.