Several months ago, I went on an eBay spending spree and picked up a couple of lots of miscellaneous Cubs cards. A bunch of it was junk wax, and though I'm a little ashamed to admit it, I needed a good chunk of it. In upgrade form though. The stuff that carried over from my childhood wasn't in the greatest shape and my borderline OCD tendencies didn't like that.
Buying in bulk is also much cheaper than $0.18 per card plus shipping, even when you factor in the extra stuff I didn't need/want. With some big chunks now out of the way, I can figure out what's left and drop the $0.18 on those.
Plus, you can come across some oddball stuff. I'm not sure I can call a set released by one of the big five card companies an oddball, but I don't think the 1994 Fleer Extra Bases set was too mainstream. I don't even know how it was released/distributed. I certainly don't remember seeing packs of it or even singles at a card show back then. They just showed up in one of my lots a few months ago.
In fact, I think Fleer printed these out last year. They're not breaking any licensing agreements because these came out in "1994", right? Sounds like a solid business plan.
One of the things I liked about Fleer back in the day was their card order. Players on the same team were kept together and alphabetical by their last name. Once I found the master checklist online, I confirmed the player before Willie Banks and after Rick Wilkins were not Cubs and realized I had the complete Cubs set. Although, it looks like there are a pair of inserts I'll have to chase down.
They are the same width as your standard baseball card at 2 1/2" but they are taller, measuring in at 4 3/4". That's kind of neat, until I started thinking about storing them. As I complete the team sets, I've been moving them into binders so now I have to look for oddball sized pages.
This set came out after Ryne Sandberg's first retirement but he gets a mention on the back of Rey Sanchez's card. Does his name constitute this as a Sandberg Cameo card?
At 12 cards in the checklist, the Cubs fall shy of the 14+ card average per team (only 28 back then) in the 400 card set. Aside from the annoyance of storing them, I think it is a pretty sharp set. Full length color photos on both sides, a blurb and a couple years worth of statistics. The photo selection is also pretty good and seems to have benefitted from the elongated cards. The Extra Bases logo is a little excessive but not enough to ruin the card. I might have swapped that logo and the Cubs logo from the back but then there is no set identifier on the front. Hmm...
Back to the sorting and finding more goodies I initially overlooked!
If anybody knows off the top of their heads what pages these would fit into, I'd appreciate it. The measurements again are 2.5" x 4.75". Hopefully there's a page that fits three across and two down, six total? At twelve cards, two pages would be perfect.
Small update: I found a link to the breakdown of a pack over at A Pack to Be Named Later. Even seeing the wrapper doesn't ring any bells.
I bought several packs of these back in 1994 at a card shop. At the time I thought they were pretty cool. I stowed them away in my collection and sort of forgot about them. About 12 years later I came across them while reorganizing and fell in love with them again. I like to collect autographs and these cards are great for signatures. I quickly did an ebay search and found someone selling unopened boxes and got one for next to nothing.
ReplyDeleteStoring the cards is simple. Ultra-Pro makes 6 pocket sheets (available at any adequate card shop or online) that these are a perfect fit for. If you have 800, 1600, 2400, or 3200 count boxes, just rotate them 90 degrees and they can be stored perpendicular to your normal sized cards (since they have the same width).