One Random Pack: 1993-94 Fleer basketball

The response that I've gotten from the last couple of early 90's packs has been far greater than I expected. I'd like to think that it's because of how well the posts are written (is there an eye rolling emoji that I could insert here?), but I'm pretty sure that it's just the nostalgia that most collector's have for this particular era that's driving the interest (how else can one explain a pack of Pro Set hockey generating 10+ comments?).

So with that in mind, I've got yet another twenty-five cent early 90's pack from ye olde "copy/print/cards-on-the-side" shop... and this time the cards are from a set that I don't remember buying a lot of way back when (happy day!)

I mean I know I bought some at the time, but I don't recall owning a ton of it like I do with the Hoops, Skybox, and Topps sets from that year. I guess there was only so much money to go around, and Fleer was the odd man out that year. It's kind of interesting too that this set was basically the last Fleer release to have minimal insert sets, because the following year would be the start of Fleer's famous insert blitzkrieg -- which, as a dedicated set collector, I didn't much care for at the time, now of course I adore the insane amount of inserts that were made during the 90's.

Before we get to the opening, I just wanted to note that this pack was an absolute pain in the butt to scan! The scanner kept chopping off the borders, and the crisp glossy finish was rendered considerably less glossy (and crisp), but I figure you people were worth the aggravation, so even though I thought about scrapping this pack, I powered through for all of you :)

I miss the days of league leader subsets. Cedric led the league in field goal percentage (57.6%) during the 1992-93 season.

I don't remember Randy White at all! Apparently he was taken by the Mavs with 8th overall pick in 1989 (ahead of guys like Nick Anderson, Tim Hardaway, Shawn Kemp, Vlade Divac, and Clifford Robinson), spent five fairly unproductive years in Dallas, and then left to play overseas.

This might be the scariest (best?) basketball card ever made!

Sweet dreams are not made of this.

I've talked about giving up on set collecting many times over the last year or so, and just recently I decided to give up on trying to finish any insert/parallel (90's stuff) sets as well. I'm still very much interested in such things, I just don't want to have to feel like I've got to complete anything anymore, especially since I already rarely pay attention to what I do and don't have when looking through boxes at shows, or even when I'm looking around on COMC -- I always just end up getting whatever appeals to me at that particular time, even if I already have multiple copies of whatever it is.

Because of this change in collecting, I've also started changing how I store and sort my 90's basketball inserts and parallels too. In an effort to make things easier to put away (and to look at), I have started sorting everything by player, and then bindering them. This will all be talked about more in a future post, but I brought up now for two reasons: A) I've been somewhat surprised by how many cards I have of certain player's, John Stockton being one of those. And 2) The image on this particular card seems to be a familiar theme on John's cards, in that there's often a defender (Greg Anthony in this case) trying to prevent him from doing what he did so well by keeping their body right up on him... hindsight tells us that this defensive strategy didn't work out so well.

There are a handful of guys who are often associated with "a dunk", John Starks is one of those guys:

If you're the sort to send out TTM requests, good luck if you ever try to send one to Chris Morris -- I've tried two different addresses, both were failure's. I wish I knew whether it was because he's hard to track down, or if it's just because he doesn't like signing autographs?

Fun fact: Reggie Williams, Muggsy Bogues, Reggie Lewis, and David Wingate all played together on the same high school basketball team (Paul Laurence Dunbar high school in Baltimore).

David Robinson is another guy that I apparently have more cards of than I had previously realized. This addition now makes for an even 100 cards of The Admiral, which doesn't seem to shabby, especially since only two of those are base cards.

Fleer backs were almost always good during those early years, they opted for less stats on the '93-94 set, but in my mind the back was still just as good as ever, if only because I really liked the secondary image over the player's last name.

 Is that a young Anthony Bourdain in the background? eBay here I come! :)

People always give Shawn Bradley the business for getting dunked on (while trying to contest the shot) so much, well, Patrick Ewing got dunked on quite a bit too, and yet nobody ever tries to drag his name through the mud for doing so. Double standard?

Good player, but boy has he made some terrible decisions over the years, and in his case... age doesn't seem to be bringing wisdom.

Led the league in three-point percentage (.453) during the 1992-93 season.

Grant Long is one of those guys that seemed like he was around forever (15 seasons), and if you collected cards in the early 90's, you probably pulled your fair share of his cards (they were like water).

Spent the first eight years of his career with the Cavs and Clippers, scored a lot of points and suffered a lot of losses. Spent the last seven years of his career with the Bulls and Lakers, scored a lot less points and won five rings... funny how things work out!

It looks like Vlade's about to get got by Manute.

This is a set that I wouldn't mind opening up more of, maybe even a box (or two), but with it's glossy finish, I don't think that I'd chance buying a box, lest they all be stuck together -- $20 (that's with shipping) seems like a lot to pay for a potential brick. At least buying by the pack, you can tell when they are or aren't stuck together, this pack clearly wasn't, hence my purchasing it!

Normally this is where I would mention that if anyone's interested in anything, be sure to let me know, but there were an awful lot of keepers in this pack. There's only four that I'm not keeping: Randy White, Chris Morris, Reggie Williams, and Mark West -- so I guess if anyone's interested in those, you know what to do.


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.