Mark Prior Monday - 2004 Fleer InScribed

A little while back when I broke down Cubs Lot #4, I mentioned a big chunk of Mark Prior cards but I didn't want to show off the nearly 200 different cards in one post. Doing one or a couple at a time will make the scanning and cropping much more manageable. Prior was a big part of the early-mid 2000's Cubs teams when I wasn't collecting so most of the inserts/subsets were new to my collection. I really enjoy learning about sets that I had ever heard of or knew very little about.

If I were collecting in 2004, I probably would have been trying to complete Fleer InScribed as a set and not just the Cubs from it. I'm a big fan of simplistic yet elegant designs and this one hits the nail on the head. Unfortunately, hobby boxes of the stuff seem to have held their value, at least in the eyes of the sellers.

Keeping it classy, Fleer went with a black and white design with only the players themselves and the team logo in color. I haven't seen every card but of those I did, the player's entire body was on the card so there weren't any unfortunate cropping issues. The leafy addition down by the logo is understated, not running all along the borders or cluttering up the corners and is carried over to tie in the back design. The back is just as simple with some demographics, stats, a facsimile signature from the player and again, just a splash of color. Mark Prior did always have a pretty cool autograph where you were almost able to decipher every letter.

The set consisted on 100 consecutively numbered cards broken down in 75 base cards, 10 retired players serial numbered to 1000 and 15 Rookies that were serialed numbed to 750. There were also red and gold facsimile signature parallels in addition to other inserts that include autographs and relics.

The three-card Cubs team set is rounded out with Kerry Wood and Sammy Sosa. According to my records, I have the whole set now. The Priors above are my card but I borrowed the images below from Zistle.