Apr 6, 2010

1994 Flair Series 1 Box Break Summary

Now that I've made it back to 2010 safely after bathing in 1993 nostalgia with this box break, it's time to give the final counts.

The box was 24 packs with 10 cards per pack (the intricacies of opening a Flair pack can be an undergraduate research project). The collation was decent (but not perfect), and allinserts were received as promised.

The base set: 216/250 (86.4%) with 12 doubles including a Puckett bipping in a pack

The inserts:

Wave of the Future: Received 6 of 10 (1:4 packs)

Outfield Power: Received 5 of 10 (1:5 packs)

Hot Numbers: Received 1 of 10 (1:24 packs)

Thoughts: In general, it was a refreshing box to open (outside of the physical waste that it generated). The card stock is nearly triple of many base sets today and this was, in a sense, Fleer's bankable brand. 1994 was a good time to collect cards (much as today is). There was a definite cross-section of older stars (Molitor, Puckett, Winfield, etc) intercollated with younger stars of the day (Griffey, Piazza, Thomas, Ramirez). Nearly every pack had a player worth keeping.

Unfortunately, there were no rookies in this series. This was a common theme of this era. Series 1 usually did not have many rookies compared to series 2 or the traded series (or Bowman). There really is and was no investment potential (not only money, but heart and soul) to follow an up and coming player as you grip his rookie card.

Also, the checklists took up the last cards of the series and had no photos or players mentioned at all, a waste of a card, especially if you received one in 1994 when packs cost $4 or $5.

I was satisfied though to get this box for less than 1$/pack and revel in pre-strike 1990s cards. I would recommend it for those who like to build sets of really thick cards.

Needs List

Base Set

2, 12, 20, 28, 29, 40, 62, 63, 65, 96, 101, 112, 122, 125, 127, 136, 137, 144, 145, 152, 153, 161, 162, 172, 182, 184, 194, 195, 211, 214, 230, 232, 235, 246

Wave of the Future: 1, 4, 5, 6

Outfield Power: 1, 3, 4, 5, 10

1 comment:

Play at the Plate said...

I seem to remember being shocked at how much packaging came with those Flair cards.