Set Appreciation Post #10 - 1995 Emotion XL

The local card shop scene in Raleigh is pretty weak.  There is a card shop that is attached to a gas station in one of the far northern suburbs and there is also one that has been dying shopping mall, but actually just moved to within two miles of my house.  Neither are great for different reasons.  I am not going to hold my breath that it's going to be anything great in a new location.  

About a year ago, I was in the dying mall to pick up a pair of extra slim pants for my son.  I had been sorting out some cards at the time, needed a 5,000 count box for storage, so I stopped into the card shop while I was there.  To my surprise, they had out this huge table of old boxes of cards.  Not really their thing.  As you can imagine, the mall card shop's biggest fault is their pricing, which has always been ridiculously high.  The prices on the boxes weren't terrible all things considered, but the Emotion XL box was marked at $30.  A quick search of Ebay listings told me that I had found the rare mall card shop bargain.  Shocking. 

I bought it.  

These were really cool cards back in the day, so I was pretty excited to open this box of cards.  I started opening up the packs and put a bunch of the cards up on my once award winning, now neglected,  Instagram page.  

I ended up with the complete set, but it was much more of a mixed bag than I remembered it to be.  At some point, I stopped posting pictures of the cards.  Yes, I finished up the set.  I put the completed set in a box and shoved them into my card closet.  I liken this set to an old record or CD that you bought at another point in your life.  It was great music at the time, but you can't make it through the whole thing anymore.  

Like the first half of Pearl Jam's Ten album, or almost every Nas album after Illmatic.  

So, let's take a look at the set.  Here is the base card.  

Honestly, I love the full color picture and the last name and team name on the front.  The odd frame corners are a little bit unnecessary, but it's not like they are ruining the card.  The descriptive word is what has not aged well on these cards.  Yes, it would have been awesome to see something like "'Roider" or "Juiced Up" on a Brady Anderson card, but Driving isn't actually all that bad. 

You will see bad in a minute.  Hold that thought.  

Even the pictures on the back of the card are nice.  The little sentence about the player at the top of the card is pretty fair.  The stat line is small, but kudos for mixing in things like AB/HR and OBP% in the mid 1990s.  The card stock is nice too for the mid 1990s. 

THESE ARE TERRIBLE 

Let's get these cards out of the way first.  I went through all 200 cards in the set and picked out 4 that seemed really bad in retrospect.  For more examples, some I disagree with, check out this SB Nation article which likens this set to "Gas Station Cologne".  

"The Heat"??? What does this even mean?  Bichette has a 130 point split difference between his home and road slugging percentage.  He hit almost 300 career home runs, but less than 100 of them came on the road.  I would have gone with something like "Altitude" or "Low Humidity" for his card.  

Will Clark was a pretty intense guy, but this is just stupid.  Couldn't we just get a card that says "Intense", or maybe someone could have used a thesaurus and found a synonym for the word intense.  Personally, I would have done something to reference his tradition of drinking a post game beer.  

Player nicknames aren't emotions.  Dumb.  This is post White Sox, so I would have gone with "Regressing" or maybe "Declining".  

What's dumber than using a player nickname?  

Using a state nickname.  Luckily no Cardinals players have the phrase "ShowMe" stamped on the front of their cards.  

THESE ARE NOT SO TERRIBLE

So, if you clicked on the link to the SB Nation article above, I am going to go against some of the cards that they ripped on in their write up of the Emotion set.  I am not a SB Nation reader, so I was curious about the age of the author, considering he spent a large chunk of the article ripping the Cal Ripken card.  We were born within a few years of each other, so I am going to dismiss age as a factor in his writing and just say it's ignorance in an otherwise humorous article.  

I will give an equally long rant.  

The word on the Cal Ripken word is "Class".  I am not a Cal Ripken person and I rarely write anything about him on this blog.  I agree with the SB Nation article's assertion that MLB went overboard with Cal Ripken during the mid 1990s.  However, the obsession with Ripken was somewhat warranted and necessary.  

Let's review: 

1. Fans were irked with both the players and owners after the strike in 1994.  Many of the angry fans had promised to stay away from the game.  Baseball is the worst professional sport at selling its superstar players, but they went big on them when the games resumed in 1995 for once,  Ripken was included for an important reason.    

2. Ripken's run at Lou Gehrig's consecutive game streak was the first important event that came up after the strike ended.  I am sure that if there was a player closing in on 3,000 hits, 500 home runs, or 300 wins, that would have been blown up too. 

3. Playing more than 2,000 consecutive games is a legitimately impressive record.  You have to be good enough to start.  Good enough to maintain your starting job over other players.  Healthy enough not to get injured over a 16 year period of time.  It's part talent and part luck, but it's not a record anyone is going to touch anytime soon. 

4. Tell me something bad that Cal Ripken did as a person while he was playing baseball?  ((You can't))

With that being said, as a person who watched a lot of baseball in the 1990s, it's not a stretch to say that Ripken was an important part of bringing disgruntled fans back to the game.  Yes, he was a good player.  Yes he was classy.  Ripken chasing Lou Gehrig during the 1995 season was an important hook that soothed a lot of bad feelings.  

Some other good cards.  

I am going to ignore the word "Precision", and instead focus on the fact that McGwire has a mullet in this picture.   Any McGwire card from the mid 1990s where he has a mullet is an instant winner in my book.  In fact, I am going to add that to my little note pad of future post ideas.  McGwire mullet cards.  

Manny Ramirez always had a great looking swing.  I love the look on his face in this card along with the word "Punishing" that is attached to his card.  I know he's a bit of a lightning rod, so I am not sure if/when he will get into the Hall.  Still a great player though.  

I saw this interview a few years back where someone was talking to Dennis Eckersley.  They brought up blown saves and I instantly thought he was going to start talking about the Kirk Gibson home run in the World Series.  Instead, he starts talking about this Manny Ramirez home run from 1995.  Eckersley threw him a fastball on the inside corner, catcher is not moving his glove in the clip, and Manny hit the ball halfway up the bleachers in Jacobs Field.  

Eckersley is smiling after the home run and says "Wow". 

Last one for the not so terrible section of this post.  

This card also gets torn apart on the SB Nation article, but considering Gwynn was one of the first players to use video to improve his hitting, I think it is a pretty fitting label.  Gwynn is a Hall of Famer based on his statistics, but he's also a very important innovator.  Where would baseball be today without him watching video?  I am sure someone else would have done the same thing at some point, but Gwynn turned video into a popular practice.  

The Best Cardinals Card 

I will go with a former player instead.  The Cardinals cards are decent, but none of them really stood out.  However, you don't get many relief pitchers wearing batting helmets on baseball cards.  Yet, here we are with 1986 National League Rookie of the Year Todd Worrell.  

The Todd Worrell card is also ripped apart in the SB Nation article, but I actually like this card as a Cardinals fan who knows something about his background.  He went to tiny little Biola College, which is apparently in the middle of Los Angeles and was founded by some Presbyterian pastor back in the early 1900s.  It's not an athletic powerhouse, but a Cardinals scout went to one of their games while in town to watch another player.  Worrell played outfield and catcher for the team, but occasionally pitched, mainly as a long reliever.  He threw in the mid 90s as a college position player who didn't really work with a pitching coach.  

Obviously, Worrell did not bat often as a back of the game reliever, but he did register a triple as one of his two Major League hits.  I am sure that players like Worrell, who have experience as a position player, take batting practice every so often.  

The back of the card has the more standard pitcher photos.  I like the one in the background with him finishing his pitch.  Worrell was really tall and had this great downward motion with a low finish at the end of his delivery. 

It's not as cool as the Bob Gibson follow through, but I always thought Worrell looked different.  Max Scherzer does something really similar to this too.  

Best Durham Bulls Player

I am going to ignore the word "Cool" and just focus on the fact that this card has a sweet photo of Braves first baseman Fred McGriff.  He had not actually been on the Durham Bulls at this point in his career.  He did not appear on the Bulls until the end of his career while trying to work his way back up to the Majors with the Rays in 2004.  

McGriff ended up making to Tampa. 

That's cool.   

His career was done by the middle of July in 2004.  

That's not cool.  

Best Non-Cardinal/Non-Durham Bull 

in 1995, what was the best reason to buy some Emotion XL cards? Before Strasburg, Bryce Harper, Kris Bryant, Wander Franco, and whatever other uber prospects who were overvalued by baseball card collectors, there was Hideo Nomo.  People were crazy for his cards.  Non-mania might have been worse to some degree because he was actually pitching in the Majors at the same time people were going crazy over his cards.  I didn't go out of my way to find them, but I still ended up with a few from random sets.  

The "Twisting" tag seems a little weak, maybe "Effectively Wild" would have been better.  I like the picture on the front.  It gives you a little insight into Nomo's pitching motion, but the back is really good.  

Love the picture on the left with Nomo's back.  That's not a side view, that's likely from behind the plate.  

I don't love the description of Nomo's throwing motion as herky jerky.  He paused at two different spots during his delivery.  Lots of pitchers have used a pause mid wind-up to throw off the timing of hitters.  Currently, both Johnny Cueto and Marcus Stroman use a pause.  I believe Marichal used one back in the day.  

How Does It Compare?  

I love the photos.  I like Emotion brand concept on some of the cards, but others do not work for various reasons.  Some of the cards did not age well, others were just not very well thought out, which goes with the gist of the SB Nation article, if you read it.  

Good card stock and photos count for something, but not enough to crack the top half of the sets that I have featured on my Set Appreciation Posts.  

10. 2000 Pacific Paramount Update 

9. 2010 Topps USA Baseball  

8. 2000 UD Ionix 

7. 1995 Emotion XL 

6. 2017 Topps Heritage Minor League

5. 1986 Topps Mini League Leaders 

4. 2001 Fleer EX 

3. 1979 Kellogg's 

2. 2002 Topps Super Teams

1. 1983 Topps 

High Tek Iron Man

I really like the Topps Tek cards, but I do not really like the fact that boxes/packs of the cards cost $100.  You do get 40 cards, which is better than some of the box/pack products.  Still not something I would normally touch.  On the other hand, I do like buying the single cards from these products after someone else has gone ahead and spent the $100 to open up the cards.  

The week of Thanksgiving I had a little extra time and managed to sell a few extra cards that were occupying space in my card closet.  Rather than dedicating the earnings to something that was on a checklist waiting to get crossed off, I decided to go out and find the best card I could using the money I had just earned.  

Right around $40.  I think I did alright.  

For less than half the cost for a box of Topps Tek, I landed one of the better autographs that I could have pulled out of a box.  I know, Cal Ripken does not pop up on this blog very often, but I still like him as a baseball player.  One of the likable stars of the game from my younger years.  I would actually like to think that his pursuit of Lou Gehrig's consecutive games streak helped baseball recover after the player's strike in 1994.   

It's an on card autograph and has a very nice signature from the Hall of Fame infielder.  Love the looks of this card.  

I did end up with a second card.  It came from the same seller.  I had a little extra money after bidding on the Ripken card, so why not.  

Do I have a Brian Dozier autograph?  No.  He had a down year in 2018 and ended up getting traded to the Dodgers late in the season.  He's currently a free agent, so no team at the moment.  For a dollar or two, this is a nice card of a second baseman who has had a few 30 and 40 home run seasons.

Really, the important thing is that I got a Cal Ripken autograph.

Quick By My Standards

I have let some of the different set projects that I have posted in this space linger for a long time, either because I did not complete them quickly, or I just never updated the project to show my progress.  Back at the beginning of February, I made a post about putting together a set of the 1983 style cards in that are included in packs of this year's Topps base set.

I started with 8 of the 100 cards, last check in I was down to just 27 cards.  Last week that number was all the way down to 2 cards.  A few days ago in the mail I got a bubble mailer with......

the two cards that I was still missing.  I am crossing this card set off after just two and a half months.  Really pretty good considering that I did not open a box, or significant number of packs.  Almost all 92 cards that I was missing when I started were picked up in trades, or from buying small lots, no singles, off of EBay.

Yes, the set is finished, but I am also going to leave the door open to find more of these cards when Topps releases Series 2 at some point this summer.  There were some things that I really enjoyed about this project.  First, the 1983 sets were the first cards in my collection.  I started opening packs of cards at some point that summer.  I have always loved these cards.  Second, there were plenty of players that I enjoy collecting on the checklist.....

a few Cardinals, a few former Durham Bulls, and also a few players I saw while they were in college.  The Carlos Martinez card is probably my favorite Cardinal.   Also plenty of older players in the set too, which is my lone, small criticism of this set.  It would be nice if the cards of the retired players included on the checklist had a connection to the actual year of the card design.  Might have said this in another post.  My three favorite older cards in the set.....

probably have to be the three shown above since they were actually around and playing in 1983. 

All three were younger players at this point, but they still were pretty impactful that season.  Especially Ripken, considering the final play of the 1983 season was a soft line out to him, which ended the World Series.  

 There were plenty of good players who were active during the 1983 season, eager to see what Topps comes up with in the next batch of cards in Series 2.  I'd be excited to see a Tony Gwynn, Wade Boggs, or a Willie McGee.  Doubtful I will see a McGee, but a Gwynn in some brown, orange, and yellow Padres digs would be sweet.  

Friday Five: Top 5 1980s Fleer Sets

We have worn the Durham Bulls and Cardinals out during the past few months, so I am going to go back to the whole baseball card thing for awhile.  You know, I started this blog as a baseball card blog, but wander off to food and Wes Anderson movies.  Back to my roots for the next few months on my weekly Friday Five posts.  This week I am focused on the 1980s Fleer products.  After carefully looking through all the Fleer sets produced in the 1980s, including Update sets, I have picked out the best of the best based on design, cool base set cards, and important rookies cards.

Sets are in numerical order by year.  Cue the music....

1982 Fleer 

This was the second Fleer set issued in the 1980s behind the error filled 1981 set.  The design was really simple with the white border, colored band, and player information in that oval thing at the bottom center of the card.  If you flip through the base set there are lots of good early eighties players in here: Nolan Ryan, Ozzie Smith, Reggie Jackson, etc.  The Brad Mills card is actually my favorite card out of the base set.  The set is really made by the most important rookie card in the product.

Not the best of the Cal Ripken rookie cards, but there are not really any bad ones.  Easily the best card in this set and the only reason that this set makes this list.  Hate to play you that way Brad Mills, but it's true.  If you do not own this set it worth it for the Ripken card alone.   If you own the Ripken card, but not the rest of the rest...Well, there's Brad Mills.  

1983 Fleer 

This was the first year that I collected cards and my first pack of baseball cards.  My first card was a Jim Smith.  The base set is pretty similar to the 1982 set in terms of photography, but the design of the card was changed up a bit.  The grey bordered cards were a little something different at the time and I still cannot recall many sets with just a grey border outside of this and the 1970 Topps.  Seriously, nothing too cool about most of the base set, but there were three pretty important rookie cards in this product......

All Hall of Famers.  My favorite of the group is the Sandberg card.  Love that blue pinstriped Cubs uniform.  This set is really affordable considering that it has three Hall of Fame rookie cards.  The cost of buying the whole set is not going to be too much more than buying three nice copies of the important rookie cards in the set.   

1984 Fleer Update

The only Update set on my list and one of the absolute best sets of the 1980s.  The cards are actually somewhat difficult to find and the set has two monster rookie in it.  My favorite card in the base set is the Pete Rose Expos card.  The all-time hits leader was briefly on the Expos during the 1984 season in between his stint with the Phillies and second go around with the Reds.  The two best cards belong to Roger Clemens and Kirby Puckett.  

Both players are in the Hall of Fame and these are their only 1984 issued cards.  Both have several rookie cards in 1985 products that are also considered rookie issues, but these are the top of the food pyramid as far as 1980s rookie cards in Fleer products.  Yes, I would put these two above the Ripken rookie card.  Finding this set is much more of a challenge than the other sets on my list and will cost considerably more money. 

1987 Fleer

The 1987 Fleer set should only be bought if you want some rookie cards of some pretty good baseball players.  There is Will Clark, Barry Larkin, Barry Bonds, and Rafael Palmeiro.  The rest of the 1987 Fleer set is rather boring.  The blue card design is pretty cool, but again it all comes down to the big rookie cards in this set.  

I am not going to get in too deep on the whole steroids thing right now, but there is a lot of Hall of Fame caliber talent in this set given how cheap it is on sites like Ebay.  If you can track down a copy the Tiffany version of this set looks really nice and rarely costs more than $30 and comes in a nice tin.  The high gloss finish is well worth the extra money.  

1989 Fleer

If I had to pick out just one base set from the 1980s Fleer products this would be it.  The design leaves a little bit to be desired, but in my opinion it offers one of the best base cards of the decade and an underrated rookie card too.  The Ripken card is one of the more iconic modern baseball cards for all the wrong reasons.  This is the unedited version of the card, but some of the edits are rare and extremely pricey.  The two rookie cards worth owning.......

The Griffey rookie card is nice and is underrated in someways, but the real prize here is the Randy Johnson rookie card which is underrated in almost everyday imaginable.  Similar to the Ripken card there are different variations of the Johnson card because of a Marlboro cigarette sign over his right shoulder.  Some cards the sign is visible, others it is blocked out by different colored boxes.  Like most things 1980s Fleer the Johnson card is not too expensive and is not too difficult to track down either.  

Five 2000 Topps Sets later....

I need to do a comprehensive post again about my reorganization project I have been working on for the past year.  It just keeps going and going.  This week I was snowed in my house and tackled my stack of 2000 Topps cards.  It was a pretty big stack. 

They are not even all in the picture.  Basically, I have been breaking my boxes, sorted by team, into sets of cards.  Some sets I might have gone overboard.  Slightly.  I really liked the Hank Aaron reprints in this set, but at some point should have just bought the insert set and stopped opening packs.  I broke several giant stacks of cards down into the sets. 

 

Five sets later I decided it was time to stop.  I still have a big stack of cards from this set, but it is less than 80% of the 470 cards needed to complete the set.  I am taking all of the leftover singles and putting them in with the rest of my dupes which I am using as trade bait.  I am also going to start selling them in player lots.  Some of them are pretty pick lots of cards.  Anyway, if you are not familiar with the 2000 Topps set here's my quick run down.  

2000 Topps Cal Ripken

The base set is your usually Topps base set.  The 2000 set is a little bit smaller than most of the Topps sets at only 479 cards plus a Mark McGwire reprint.  Topps went through a phase in the late 90s were they put out a few smaller base sets.  This set was the last of the little base sets.  The 2001 Topps set is 792 I believe.  Inside and outside of the base set there are a few things to like about this set. 

2000 Topps Mark McGwire 1985 Topps Reprint

I really liked the Mark McGwire rookie reprint.  Yes, I like the Cardinals.  This set was issued before Topps had any of the Archives or Fan Favorites lines and this was a singular reprint.  Topps had done reprints with Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, and Hank Aaron in this set.  What's one more reprint?  Besides, many collectors actually count this as the last card in the set and Topps did short-print this card.  Although, I always seem to remember landing more than a few of these.  My stack of dupes agrees. 

I also really liked these 20th Century Best subset cards which showed the active Major League leader in a particular category.  Check out Frank Thomas and his OBP.  Pretty cool that Topps threw this card into the 2000 Topps set.  I wonder if Billy Beane helped design the set?  There are also sparkly versions of these cards that are serial numbered and cost $4 on Ebay instead of $0.50.  Worth a look around. 

Outside of the base set I had two inserts I really liked from this set (three, but you've all seen a Hank Aaron card-imagine it reprinted).  The Topps Combos insert was ten cards that looked a lot like the art work Topps had been using in their Topps Gallery Heritage Sets.  Only these cards had combinations of players instead of a singular player.  Always really liked this Pedro and Big Unit card.  Pedro might be too tall, or is Randy Johnson too short?  Something is off, but I still love it. 

 

I am not sure what happened here with the scan, but this card is really cool.  If I wasn't working tomorrow I would rescan it.  School on Saturdays is fun.  Anyway, this set is die-cut and focuses on really good defensive players.  Some different names in here and the cards are die-cut.  That's always fun.  

Top 50 On Cardboard- #2 Cal Ripken Jr.

Top 50 On Cardboard 
#2
Cal Ripken

Hobby Impact-
During the early parts of my collecting career Cal Ripken was Bryce Harper and Derek Jeter rolled into one player.  Ripken had incredibly popular and valuable rookie cards that can all be found in the different 1982 card releases.  There are four basic rookie cards if you are in the market for one.  There are the three base sets from 1982: Donruss, Fleer, and Topps.  Then there is also the 1982 Topps Traded.  He also has a couple of Rochester Red Wings cards floating around from his time in the minors if you want a challenging early 80s rookie to find.  Bring your wallet.

More about his rookie cards later.

Ripken was known as the Iron Horse on the field and built his reputation around his high level of play, despite never taking a day off.  Ripken was kind of the same in the baseball card hobby.  His first cards appeared in 1982 and for twenty years every set, almost, had a Ripken card.  As the hobby grew in the early 90s, the quantity of Ripken cards took off.  He was frequently a target for insert sets, and later on parallels, relics, and autographs.  Further, one of the safest buys for collectors was always a Ripken card.  He's still immensely popular and his cards still hold great value.

I do not specifically pursue Ripken cards, but I do not sell or trade them when I land them.  For me, I had two primary targets in rounding out my Ripken collection.  First, I wanted his complete line of rookie cards (minus the minor leaguers) which I accomplished.  My next target was an autograph.  I have had several over the year and at some point decided to get rid of all my sticker autographs, but I still have two on-card signatures in my collection.

My favorite:

I know that this Upper Deck card is not serial numbered and there is no print run known, but I love these cards.  I have had a few of these come and go through my collection over the years, but they are great cards.  The sticker autographs of Ripken tend to sell for $50-$70, but can go further north depending on the print run and brand.  Anybody seen the new Leaf cards Ripken autographed?  They are selling for less than $40.

Nicer brands with on-card signatures can easily cost more than $100.

On The Field-
This is a simple one to do, but I am probably understating the obvious.  Ripken is rated as the third best shortstop of all-time.  He was one of the greatest offensive shortstops of all-time, reaching 400 home runs and 3000 hits.  Ripken did play his last five years at 3B, but still he's deserving of the ranking.  Outside of the rankings Ripken also won the 1982 Rookie of the Year, the 1983 and 1991 American League MVP awards, and a pair of All-Star game MVPs in 1991 and 2001.

For me, Ripken's most important accomplishment in the game has to do with his consecutive games played streak.  I know this gets a lot of play, but it's a tremendous record and will likely not be touched for a long time, if ever.  You could see the record approaching a long way off, but it took a long time for Cal Ripken to achieve the mark of 2,130 consecutive games.  Honestly, it could not have come at a better time for Major League Baseball.

Fresh off a bad strike which prematurely ended the 1994 season, and delayed the beginning of the 1995 season, the Cal Ripken games played streak kept many fans attached to the game of baseball.  It was a good positive for the game after a few years of negative.  While many point to the home run exploits of Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, and Ken Griffey Jr. as the savior of the game post-strike, but Ripken deserves just as much, if not more.

This short video clip does not do the streak breaking game justice, but I realize that people pop in to read my blog for my a couple of minutes, not two hours.  Although, the full game is posted on YouTube.



Favorite Card-
When I was a kid the 1982 Topps Traded Cal Ripken Jr. card was one of the great baseball cards of the time.  I would argue that it's that greatest card from the early eighties.  I never owned one of these as a kid, or a teenager, or a college student.  New employed young person?  Nope.  It took me a long time to cross the card off my list of cool cards to add to my collection.  I rarely buy graded cards, so I need to be patient and track down a really nice raw copy.

I actually found one this first fall I moved to North Carolina at a small antique store in Hickory.  I was riding along with a friend who was looking for some furniture and was not really in the market to buy baseball cards.  The card was tucked into a display case and the owner told me a half hour long story about the time he met Vinegar Bend Mizell at a gas station.  Awesome.  One long story later, I walked out of the antique store with this beauty:

1982 Topps Traded Cal Ripken 

Complete Set: 2000 Fleer Gamers

There is a reason that several of the card companies from the card boom of the late 90s and early 2000s are bankrupt and out of business.  The main reason was probably the fact that the companies competed with each other, but also with themselves.  There is only so much money that collectors spend on cards each year, as much as we would all love an unlimited budget, and Fleer, Donruss, Upper Deck, and Topps pumped out an overabundance of products.  There were products that were definite hits and a few flops along the way too.  There were also a few card products that flew under the radar.  The Fleer Gamers set is one of those sets that has gotten a little bit better and stronger with age.

2000 Fleer Gamers Jose Canseco 

First, the base set is nothing that great.  It's pretty typical of a Fleer release from this era and that is all I can really say about the design.  There are 120 total cards in the set, so it's not too difficult to track down the complete set with a box and a little help.  In fact, the box prices are one of the best things about this set.  Back in 2000, this set was one of way too many released by Fleer.  Of course, it was deemed a flop and many shops and Ebay sellers have boxes of Fleer Gamers on the cheap.  With a mediocre base set why would one care to roll the dice on a $30-$40 box of wax?  Inserts, Relics, and Autographs. 

2000 Fleer Gamers Cal Ripken Cal To Greatness 

Let's start with the inserts.  They are not very Fleer like in some regards.  There are die-cuts that look more like something that Pacific would put out on the market, but if nothing else there is the stand-by Cal Ripken insert set which yields two to three cards per box.  The Cal to Greatness set is pretty popular and the cards in the set hover around $5 on Ebay.  Three of these cards alone can pay for half of your box before you pull anything else.

2000 Fleer Gamers Lumber Ray Lankford Bat Card

The relic cards look like your typical late 90s relic set, small relic, not so great player card that would sell on Ebay for $2.  Almost not worth buying when you include shipping, except Fleer actually did a few things right with this relic set that most sets in the card boom era failed miserably with.  First, the list of players included in the relic set (all bat pieces) includes plenty of Hall of Famers, but also a lot of solid players with little to no relic exposure.  I could use Ray Lankford as my example, of a player with no relic cards outside of this set, and an above average Major League resume.  There is also a relic card for ESPN announcer Chris Singleton which is also his only relic card.  Of course there are the usual suspects of good players, average players, with a few Hall of Famers sprinkled into the mix.  Which leads me to my second point.  

The set is named Lumbers, the relic cards are all bats (notice a theme) and yet the relic cards are only planted two per case, or one every box and a half.  If Topps put out a set like this there would be a bat card in every pack.  The result of short-printing unique relic cards is directly reflected by the price that collectors pay for these cards on the secondary market.  Excluding a $0.99 bat card of Royals prospect-flop Carlos Febles, almost every bat card from this set is over $5 on Ebay with star players over $10 and Hall of Famers north of that point.  But wait, there's more....

2000 Fleer Gamers Lumber Shawn Green Bat/Auto 

To make this set a little bit sweeter Fleer also put in signed (on-card) versions of the bat cards.  The autographs were seeded at about one per ten boxes, or one per case and a half.  Long odds for an autograph.  The checklist includes Derek Jeter and Robert Alomar as the Hall of Famers included, but also features Rafael Palmeiro, Paul Konerko, Sean Casey, and ARod.  The autographs tend to fetch a pretty good price with most commons reach at least $20 on the secondary market.

Overall, I am aware that the base set is not that appealing, but if you are looking to pick up a cheap box and find something cool (and enjoy opening some wax) then this is a great product to look into picking up.  Boxes are easy to find on Ebay and the right hit could add a great card to your collection, or give you a nice trade chip to pick up something else for your collection.